BEER STREET AND GIN LANE.
"The nature and use of aliments maketh men either chaste or incontinent; either courageous or cowardly; either meek or quarrelsome: let those who deny these truths come to me; let them follow my counsel in eating and drinking, and I promise them they will find great helps thereupon towards moral philosophy. They will acquire more prudence, more diligence, more memory."—Galen.
Fully impressed with the truth of this axiom, Mr. Hogarth engraved the two following prints, in which he has considered porter as the liquor natural to an English constitution; and that villanous distillation, gin, as pernicious and poisonous. While that noble beverage properly termed British Burgundy[37] refreshes the weary, exhilarates the faint, and cheers the depressed, an infernal compound of juniper and fiery spirits debases the mind, destroys the constitution, and brings its thirsty votaries to an untimely grave.
These, as well as the four preceding prints, are calculated for the lower orders of society, and exhibit such a contrast as must strike the most careless observer. In the first, we see healthy and happy beings inhaling copious draughts of a liquor which seems perfectly congenial to their mental and corporeal powers; in the second, a group of emaciated wretches who, by swallowing liquid fire, have consumed both.
BEER STREET.
"Beer, happy product of our isle,