w is its literal meaning. The
spirit and intention are for the major morality, and concern Natural
Religion, but when upon a point of ritual or of dedication or special
worship a man talks to you of the Spirit and Intention, and complains
of the dryness of the Word, look at him askance. He is not far removed
from Heresy.

I knew a man once that was given to drinking, and I made up this rule
for him to distinguish between Bacchus and the Devil. To wit: that he
should never drink what has been made and sold since the
Reformation--I mean especially spirits and champagne. Let him (said I)
drink red wine and white, good beer and mead--if he could get
it--liqueurs made by monks, and, in a word, all those feeding,
fortifying, and confirming beverages that our fathers drank in old
time; but not whisky, nor brandy, nor sparkling wines, not absinthe,
nor the kind of drink called gin. This he promised to do, and all went
well. He became a merry companion, and began to write odes. His prose
clarified and set, that had before been very mixed and cloudy. He
slept well; he comprehended divine things; he was already half a
republican, when one fatal day--it was the feast of the eleven
thousand virgins, and they were too busy up in heaven to consider the
needs of us poor hobbling, polyktonous and betempted wretches of
men--I went with him to the Society for the Prevention of Annoyances
to the Rich, where a certain usurer's son was to read a paper on the
cruelty of Spaniards to their mules. As we were all seated there round
a table with a staring green cloth on it, and a damnable gas pendant
above, the host of that evening offered him whisky and water, and, my
back being turned, he took it. Then when I would have taken it from
him he used these words--

'After all, it is the intention of a pledge that matters;' and I saw
that all was over, for he had abandoned definition, and was plunged
back into the horrible mazes of Conscience and Natural Religion.

What do you think, then, was the consequence? Why, he had to take some
nasty pledge or other to drink nothing whatever, and become a
spectacle and a judgement, whereas if he had kept his exact word he
might by this time have been a happy man.

Remembering him and pondering upon the advantage of strict rule, I
hung on to my cart, taking care to let my feet still feel the road,
and so passed through the high limestone gates of the gorge, and was
in the fourth valley of the Jura, with th