to a monologue, in which he describes
how he, the drunken husband, stays out all night, and makes it up with
his "old ooman" when he gets home; and in the course of his remarks of
course he declares teetotalism is humbug, that there was truth in wine,
but he'd be blessed if there was any in water; that the man who would
drink the latter would be a muddy cistern--forgetting all the while the
_tu quoque_ the water-drinkers would very fairly urge, on the authority
even of Mr Henry Drummond; and then I came away, thinking that if
drinking made men witty and light-hearted, I had been very unfortunate on
the night of my visit. Once upon a time, as the writer was in the Cave
of Harmony, the polite manager asked him his opinion of a new comic
singer. Having given it, the red-faced little man turned to us with a
sigh, and said, "Ah, sir, you have no idea what a dearth there is of
comic talent now-a-days." And truly he was right. There is little fun
and comedy and wit anywhere. I know not where they are; I know where
they are not. You will not find them in the taverns where men sit all
the evening listening to music for which they do not care, and drinking
all the while. How should there be, since wine is now admitted to be the
product of the laboratory, not of the grape?

THE SPORTING PUBLIC-HOUSE

Was instituted for the combined purpose of encouraging drinking, and what
its admirers term the noble art of self-defence. There was a time when
boxing was in fashion; when but few of our noblemen and gentlemen did not
take lessons in the pugilistic art. "I can assert, without fear of
contradiction," writes Pierce Egan, "that I furnished the present Duke of
Buccleuch with a pair of boxing-gloves and all the volumes of 'Boxiana'
during his studies at Eton College." Prince George of Cambridge learnt
the rudiments of the art from young Richmond; the late Duke of Portland
was a pupil of that Jackson whose name is familiar to all readers of
Byron. At the first public dinner of the Pugilistic Society, held at the
Thatched House Tavern, 1814, a baronet, Sir Henry Smith, was in the
chair; and it is a fact, when the war with France was terminated, and the
Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, accompanied by Blucher and
Platoff, visited this country, that not anything they had witnessed
appeared to interest them more than the sparring matches between Jackson,
Tom Crib, Belcher, Old Dutch Sam, at a _dejeuner_ given by Lo