Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840 edition. Excerpt: ... famous, that, when 1 came to Madrid, I saw wrote over the doors of most houses that sold wine, Vino Sainte Clemente. As to tha temperance of the people, I must say, that, notwithstanding those two excellent qualities of good and cheap, I never saw, all the three years I was prisoner there, any one person overcome with drinking. It is true, there may be a reason, and a political one, assigned for that abstemiousness of theirs, which is this, that if any man, upon any occasion, should be brought in as an evidence against you, if you can prove that he was ever drunk, it will invalidate his whole evidence. I could not but think this a grand improvement upon the Spartans. They made their slaves purposely drunk, to show their youth the folly of the vice by the sottish behaviour of their servants under it: but they never reached to that noble height of laying a penalty upon the aggressor, or of discouraging a voluntary impotence of reason by a disreputable impotence of interest. The Spaniard, therefore, in my opinion, in this exceeds the Spartan, as much as a natural beauty exceeds one procured by art; for, though shame may somewhat influence some few, terror is of force to deter all. A man, we have seen it, may shake hands with shame; but interest, says another proverb, will never lie. A wise institution, therefore, doubtless is this of the Spaniard; but such as I fear will never take place in Germany, Holland, France, or Great Britain. But though I commend their temperance, I would not be thought by any means to approve of their bigotry. If there may be such a thing as intemperance in religion, I much fear their ebriety in that will be found to be over-measure. Under the notion of devotion, I have seen men among them, and of sense too, guilty...