Now about temperance, let me say thus much.  Of course, I must approve the modern very philanthropic movement, but only in its rational aspect of moderation.  In my youth, the pendulum swung towards excess, now its reaction being exactly opposite; both extremes to my mind are wrong.  And here let me state (valeat quantum) that I never exceeded in liquor but once in my life:  that once serving afterwards as a valuable life lesson all through the wine-parties of Christ Church, the abounding hospitalities of America, both North and South, through two long visits—­and the genialities of our own Great Britain during my several Reading Tours.  If it had not been for that three days’ frightful headache when I was a youth (in that sense a good providence), I could not have escaped so many generous hosts and seductive beverages.  That one departure from sobriety happened thus.  My uncle, Colonel Selwyn, just returned from his nine years’ command at Graham’s Town, South Africa, gave a grand dinner at the Opera Colonnade to his friends and relatives, resolved (according to the fashion of the time) to fill them all to the full with generous Bacchus by obligatory toasts, he himself pretending to prefer his own bottle of brown sherry,—­in fact, dishonest toast and water; but that sort of practical joke was also a fashion of the day.  The result, of course, was what he desired; everybody but himself had too much, whilst his mean sobriety, cruel uncle! enjoyed the calm superiority of temperance over tipsiness.  However, the lesson to me (though never intended as such) was most timely,—­just as I was entering life to be forewarned by having been for only that once overtaken.  I have ever since been thankful for it as a mercy; and few have been so favoured; how many can truly say, only that once?  But I pass on, having a great deal more to write about temperance.  On my first visit to America in 1851, all that mighty people indulged freely in strong drinks of the strangest names and most delicious flavours:  on my second in 1876,—­just a quarter of a century after,—­there was almost nothing to be got but iced water.  Accordingly when I was at Charleston I took up my parable,—­and spoke through a local paper as follows:  I fear the extract is somewhat lengthy, but as an exhaustive argument (and the piece, moreover, being unprinted in any of my books), I choose to give it here in full, to be skipped if the reader pleases.  It is introduced thus by an editor:—­

“In these days of extreme abstinence from wine and spirits, it is refreshing to see what the strong common-sense of an eminent moral philosopher has to say about temperance.  We make, then, a longish extract, well-nigh exhaustive of the subject, which occurs in a lecture, entitled ‘America Revisited—­1851 and 1877,’ from the pen of Martin Tupper, explaining itself.  The author introduces his poetic essay thus:—­’Since my former visit to the States twenty-five years ago, few changes are more remarkable than that in