I came to Europe under the impression that there was more drunkenness among us than in any other country, England, perhaps, excepted.  A residence of six months in Paris changed my views entirely.  You will judge of my surprise when first I saw a platoon of the Royal Guard,—­literally a whole platoon, so far as numbers and the order of their promenade was concerned,—­staggering drunk, within plain view of the palace of their master.  From this time I became more observant, and not a day passed that I did not see men, and even women, in the same situation in the open streets.  Usually, when the fact was mentioned to Americans, they expressed surprise, declaring they had never seen such a thing!  They were too much amused with other sights to regard this; and then they had come abroad with different notions, and it is easier to float in the current of popular opinion than to stem it.  In two or three instances I have taken the unbelievers with me into the streets, where I have never failed to convince them of their mistake in the course of an hour.  These experiments, too, were usually made in the better quarters of the town, or near our own residence, where one is much less apt to meet with drunkenness than in the other quarters.  On one occasion, a party of four of us went out with this object, and we passed thirteen drunken men, during a walk of an hour.  Many of them were so far gone as to be totally unable to walk.  I once saw, on the occasion of a festival, three men literally wallowing in the gutter before my window; a degree of beastly degradation I never witnessed in any other country.

The usual reply of a Frenchman, when the subject has been introduced, was that the army of occupation introduced the habit into the capital.  But I have spoken to you of M——­, a man whose candour is only equalled by his information.  He laughed at this account of the matter, saying that he had now known France nearly sixty years; it is his native country; and he says that he cannot see any difference, in this particular, in his time.  It is probable that, during the wars of Napoleon, when there was so great a demand for men of the lower classes, it was less usual to encounter this vice in the open streets, than now, for want of subjects; but, by all I can learn, there never was a time when drunkards did not abound in France.  I do assure you that, in the course of passing between Paris and London, I have been more struck by drunkenness in the streets of the former, than in those of the latter.

Not long since, I asked a labourer if he ever got grise, and he laughingly told me—­“yes, whenever he could.”  He moreover added, that a good portion of his associates did the same thing.  Now I take it, this word grise contains the essence of the superiority of wine over whiskey.  It means fuddled, a condition from which one recovers more readily, than from downright drunkenness, and of which the physical effects are not so injurious.  I believe the consequences of even total inebriety from wine, are not as bad as those which follow inebriety from whiskey and rum.  But your real amateur here is no more content with wine than he is with us; he drinks a white brandy that is pretty near the pure alcohol.