“The good of ancient times let others state,
  I think it lucky I was born so late."[171]

It concludes with the words, “Even in the best society one third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk.”

This reminds us that, in the matter of temperance, Sydney Smith was far in advance of his time.  That he was no

  “budge doctor of the Stoic fur,
  Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence,”

is plain enough from his correspondence.  “The wretchedness of human life,” he wrote in 1817, “is only to be encountered upon the basis of meat and wine”; but he had a curiously keen sense of the evils induced by “the sweet poyson."[172] As early as 1814 he urged Lord Holland to “leave off wine entirely,” for, though never guilty of excess, Holland showed a “respectable and dangerous plenitude.”  After a visit to London in the same year, Sydney wrote:—­

“I liked London better than ever I liked it before, and simply, I believe, from water-drinking.  Without this, London is stupefaction and inflammation.  It is not the love of wine, but thoughtlessness and unconscious imitation:  other men poke out their hands for the revolving wine, and one does the same, without thinking of it.  All people above the condition of labourers are ruined by excess of stimulus and nourishment, clergy included.  I never yet saw any gentleman who ate and drank as little as was reasonable.”

In 1828 he wrote to Lady Holland (of Holland House):—­

“I not only was never better, but never half so well:  indeed I find I have been very ill all my life, without knowing it.  Let me state some of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors.  First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a plough-boy.  If I wake, no needless terrors, no black visions of life, but pleasing hopes and pleasing recollections:  Holland House, past and to come!  If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes.  Secondly, I can take longer walks, and make greater exertions, without fatigue.  My understanding is improved, and I comprehend Political Economy.  Only one evil ensues from it:  I am in such extravagant spirits that I must look out for some one who will bore and depress me.”

In 1834 he wrote:—­

“I am better in health, avoiding all fermented liquors, and drinking nothing but London water, with a million insects in every drop.  He who drinks a tumbler of London water has literally in his stomach more animated beings than there are men, women, and children on the face of the globe.”

In spite of this disquieting analysis he persevered, and wrote two years later:—­

“I have had no gout, nor any symptom of it:  by eating little, and drinking only water, I keep body and mind in a serene state, and spare the great toe.  Looking back at my past life, I find that all my miseries of body and mind have proceeded from indigestion.  Young people in early life should be thoroughly taught the moral, intellectual, and physical evils of indigestion.”

Saba, Lady Holland, who had a discreet but provoking trick of omitting the proper name wherever we specially thirst to know it, thus reports her father’s conversation:—­