The cholera has laid bare the secrets of drunkenness, all over Europe.  At first we were astonished when the disease got among the upper classes; but, with all my experience, I confess I was astonished at hearing it whispered of a gentleman, as I certainly did in a dozen instances—­“mais il avait l’habitude de boire trop.”  Cholera, beyond a question, killed many a sober man, but it also laid bare the fault of many a devotee of the bottle.

Drunkenness, almost as a matter of course, abounds in nearly all, if not in all, the armies of Europe.  It is peculiarly the soldier’s and the sailor’s vice, and some queer scenes have occurred directly under my own eyes here, which go to prove it.  Take among others, the fact, that a whole guard, not long since, got drunk in the Faubourg St. Germain, and actually arrested people in the streets and confined them in the guard-house.  The Invalids are notorious for staggering back to their quarters; and I presume I have seen a thousand of these worthies, first and last, as happy as if they had all their eyes, and arms, and legs about them.  The official reports show ten thousand cases of females arrested for drunkenness, in Paris, during the last year.—­But to return to our vineyards.

Although I am quite certain drunkenness is not prevented by the fact that wine is within the reach of the mass, it is easy to see that its use is less injurious, physically, than that of the stronger compounds and distillations, to which the people of the non-vine-growing regions have recourse as substitutes.  Nature is a better brewer than man, and the pure juice of the grape is less injurious than the mixed and fiery beverages that are used in America.  In reasonable quantities, it is not injurious at all.  Five-and-twenty years since, when I first visited Europe, I was astonished to see wine drunk in tumblers.  I did not at first understand that half of what I had up to that time been drinking was brandy, under the name of wine.

While our imported wines are, as a whole, so good, we do not always show the same discrimination in choosing.  There is very little good champagne, for instance, drunk in America.  A vast deal is consumed, and we are beginning to understand that it is properly a table-wine, or one that is to be taken with the meats; but sparkling champagne is, ex necessitate, a wine of inferior quality.  No wine mousses, as the French term it, that has body enough to pass a certain period without fermentation.  My friend de V——­ is a proprietor of vines at Ai, and he tells me that the English take most of their good wines, which are the “still champagnes,” and the Russians and the Americans the poor, or the sparkling.  A great deal of the sparkling, however, is consumed in France, the price better suiting French economy.  But the wine-growers of Champagne themselves speak of us as consumers of their second-class liquors.