s a fervent admirer, but having studied the
wise maxims of Pythagoras, and being a disciple of the Brahma school,
abominators of flesh and strong liquors, he hoped to be excused, by
drinking the ladies in _aqua pura_.--" Water is a monstrous drink for
Christians!" said the alderman, "the sure precursor of coughs, colds,
consumptions, agues, dropsies, pleurisies, and spleen. I never knew
a water-drinker in my life that was ever a fellow of any spirit, mere
morbid anatomies, starvelings and hypochondriacs: your water-drinkers
never die of old age, but melancholy."--"Right, right, alderman," said
Mr. Pendragon; "a cup of generous wine is, in my opinion, excellent
physic; it makes a man lean, and reduces him to friendly dependence on
every thing that bars his way: sometimes it is a little grating to
his feelings, to be sure, but it generally passes off with an hic-cup.
According to Galen, sir, the waters of _Astracan_ breed worms in
those who taste them; those ~104~~of _Verduri_, the fairest river in
Macedonia, make the cattle who drink of them black, while those of
Peleca, in Thessaly, turn every thing white; and Bodine states that the
stuttering of the families of Aquatania, about Labden, is entirely owing
to their being water-drinkers: a man might as well drink of the river
Styx as the river Thames, '_Stygio monstrum conforme paludi_,' a
monstrous drink, thickened by the decomposition of dead Christians and
dead brutes, and purified by the odoriferous introduction of gas water
and puddle water, joined to a pleasant and healthy amalgamation of all
the impurities of the common sewers.

'As nothing goes in so thick,
And nothing comes out so thin,
It must follow, of course,
That no-thing can be worse,
As the dregs are all left within.'"

"Very well, Mr. Pendragon, very well, indeed," said Mr. Galen Cornaro,
an eccentric of the same school, but not equally averse to wine;
"'temperance is a bridle of gold; and he who uses it rightly is more
like a god than a man.' I have no objection to a cup of generous wine,
provided nature requires it--but 'simple diet,' says Pliny, 'is best;'
for many dishes bring many diseases. Do you know John Abernethy, sir? he
is the _manus dei_ of my idolatry. 'What ought I to drink?' inquired a
friend of mine of the surgeon. 'What do you give your horse, sir?' was
the question in reply. 'Water.' 'Then drink water,' said Abernethy.
After this my fri