ou believest that, having abjured the arm of the flesh, I
cannot hinder thee. And yet, as thy friend, I advise thee to desist; for
shouldst thou succeed in rousing the old Adam within me, perchance he
may prove too strong, not only for me, but for _thee_." There was no use
of attempting to answer such an argument.]

The present, however, is not an inquiry into the first principles either
of ethics or of physiology. The object of this rambling preamble is to
win from the reader a morsel of genial fellow-feeling towards the human
frailty which I propose to examine and lay bare before him, trusting
that he will treat it neither with the haughty disdain of the
immaculate, nor the grim charity of the "miserable sinner:" that he may
even, when sighing over it as a failing, yet kindly remember that, in
comparison with many others, it is a failing that leans to virtue's
side. It will not demand that breadth of charity which even rather rigid
fathers are permitted to exercise by the licence of the existing school
of French fiction.[25] Neither will it exact such extensive toleration
as that of the old Aberdeen laird's wife, who, when her sister
lairdesses were enriching the tea-table conversation with broad
descriptions of the abominable vices of their several spouses, said her
own "was just a gueed, weel-tempered, couthy, queat, innocent, daedlin,
drucken body--wi' nae ill practices aboot him ava!" But all things in
their own time and place. To understand the due weight and bearing of
this feeling of optimism, it is necessary to remember that its happy
owner had probably spent her youth in that golden age when it was deemed
churlish to bottle the claret, and each guest filled his stoup at the
fountain of the flowing hogshead; and if the darker days of dear claret
came upon her times, there was still to fall back upon the silver age of
smuggled usquebaugh, when the types of a really hospitable country-house
were an anker of whisky always on the spigot, a caldron ever on the
bubble with boiling water, and a cask of sugar with a spade in it,--all
for the manufacture of toddy.

[Footnote 25: In the renowned Dame aux Camelias, the respectable, rigid,
and rather indignant father, addresses his erring son thus: "Que vous
ayez une maitresse, c'est fort bien; que vous la payiez comme un galant
homme doit payer l'amour d'une fille entretenue, c'est on ne peut mieux;
mais que vous oubliez les choses les plus saintes pour elle, que vous
p