In the present state of society, it is, perhaps, less necessary than it would have been formerly, that I should give you any caution or advice on the subject of temperance. Five-and-thirty years ago, it was customary to drink a good deal of wine after dinner, and young men at Oxford were not behind-hand with the rest of the world in complying with this bad custom.
It was then generally the system, to initiate a freshman by making him completely drunk. Scripture is by no means sufficiently listened to now, but perhaps its warnings were less known and less regarded then. The master of the revels and his abettors were ignorant, or unmindful, of the threatenings denounced by the voice of Inspiration,—Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also: and again—Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink. Regardless of these denunciations, and trusting to the strength of their own heads, and the practised discipline of their own stomachs, their noble ambition was to make drunk as many of their guests as possible, especially any luckless freshman who chanced to be of the party. Those who, whether from religious principle or from manliness of character, did not choose to submit to be made drunk, were obliged either to encounter these kind endeavours with sturdy resistance,—resistance which sometimes occasioned a total cessation of intercourse and acquaintance,—or to evade them by stratagem. Glass after glass was dexterously emptied upon the carpet under the table, or the purple stream sought concealment under heaps of walnut-shells and orange-peel. In short, at a tolerably large wine-party there was wasted, or worse than wasted, a quantity of Port wine sufficient to check the ravages of a typhus fever in an entire village.
These days of Celtic barbarism are, I hope, utterly passed away. As in general society very little wine is consumed, (excepting at dinner,) so Oxford has caught the spirit of the times, and the bacchanalian revels to which I have alluded are, I believe, much less common than they were formerly, if not entirely exploded. I am afraid, however, that even now more wine is drunk in some colleges, than is consistent either with Christian temperance, or with habits of study, or with the preservation of health.
I need not point out to you, my dear nephew, the evils which, in a religious point of view, result from drinking to excess. You, I well know, would shudder at the idea of wilfully depriving yourself of reason, and of sinking yourself to the situation of a beast or of a maniac. A man, who has thrown away his reason, has little right to hope for the continuance of the assisting and preventing grace of God. And destitute of the controlling guidance, both of reason and of Divine Grace, what is there left to prevent his ungoverned passions from carrying him into the most perilous excesses? There are deadly vices, to which young men are, at all times, but too powerfully solicited by their natural appetites; and when those appetites are stimulated by drinking, and all salutary control shaken off, the danger is great indeed. You perhaps may remember an Eastern apologue to the following effect, (I know not where to find it): The Devil having, by the impulse of terror, induced a holy man to consent to commit some crime, allowed him to choose, whether he would get drunk, or be guilty of either of two of the most horrible enormities he could conceive. The poor victim chose drunkenness, as being the least offence, but in the state to which he had thus brought himself, was guilty of all three.
And even if you are kept back from any additional guilt, yet you well know, that by throwing away your reason, you become capable of being guilty of all sorts of absurdities,—that you are liable to say and do a hundred foolish things, of which, when you return to your senses, you will be heartily ashamed,—that you expose yourself to the ridicule and contempt of those, who witness the degraded state to which you have reduced yourself.
A drunken Christian is almost a contradiction in terms; and something the same may be said of a drunken gentleman. Among many in the middle and the industrious classes of society, there is much intelligence, much quick perception of what is morally right, and of general propriety of behaviour. As such men are not backward in shewing respect, where respect is really due, so they are keen-sighted in detecting gross inconsistencies of conduct, and ready to bestow the full measure of contempt upon those, who, while placed above them by the advantages of birth, and fortune, and education, yet meanly condescend, by their vices and their excesses, to degrade themselves below them.
The inconsistency of any excess in drinking, with the main purpose for which you were sent to Oxford, is palpable. You go to Oxford professedly for study. Independently of the time actually occupied by a wine-party, any excess will, probably, indispose you for study the morning after;
Corpus onustum
Hesternis vitiis animum quoque prægravat una,
Atque affigit humo divinæ particulam auræ.
You will rise from your bed heavy and languid, probably with some disposition to headache; and will be far more inclined to lounge in an easy-chair, or to saunter about in listless idleness, than to sit down to active mental exertion.
I must add, that the habit of drinking much wine during your continuance at Oxford, is not unlikely materially to injure your health in the succeeding periods of your life. Such habit has a tendency permanently to derange and weaken the digestive powers, and to injure and harden the internal coats and the orifices of the stomach. I am persuaded, that much of the tendency to apoplectic and paralytic affections; much of the general indisposition, which we often witness in men advanced beyond the middle period of the usual term of human life,—men who have of late perhaps, lived temperately—is to be attributed to the wine which they drank when young.