APICIAN MORSELS, &c.

CHAPTER I.

DIETETIC TEMPERANCE, &c.

“Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy, gives indolence (healthfulness) of body, and tranquillity of mind; the best guardian of youth, and support of old age.”—Temple’s Essays.

IN an extended sense, temperance is synonymous with moderation, and may be recommended as a duty every man owes to himself in the exercise of all his affections and passions; and is here closely allied to prudence, which forbids the undue gratification of any desire whatever. In a restricted sense, it is that virtue which guards against those injuries our health is exposed to, by an excessive indulgence of our appetites in eating and drinking. Nature lays us under an obligation to eat and drink for the support of our bodily frame; and has endowed us with faculties and powers to choose and prepare that diet which is most salutary and agreeable to our tastes: the great danger we are exposed to is, that of consulting the latter quality rather than the former; and hence of being tempted to exceed the due measure requisite for subsistence.

Intemperance in eating and drinking loads the vessels with a redundancy of juices, increases the rapidity of the circulation, until a plethora corrupt the humours, and either carries off the miserable victims, by inflammatory disorders, in the prime of life, or sows the seeds of chronical infirmities, that accelerate the incapacities and distresses of old age before the natural term. All the arguments that are brought against suicide, whether by sword, pistol, or poison, hold good in some degree against intemperance. Who does not know, that the oftener a building is shocked, the sooner it will fall; the more violence used to a delicate machine, the sooner it will be destroyed; and no machine is so exquisitely delicate as the human body.

The principal vices repressed by temperance are incontinency, and excesses in eating and drinking: if there be any more, they flow from one or other of these causes. It would, at present, lead us to too great a length, to consider this virtue fully in both points of view. To the last, then, as more appropriate to our particular subject, we shall chiefly confine what further remarks we may have to offer on dietetic temperance.

“Wine,” says an eminent author, “raises the imagination, but depresses the judgment. He that resigns his reason is guilty of every thing be is liable to in the absence of it. A drunken man is the greatest monster in human nature, and the most despicable character in human society; this vice has very fatal effects on the mind, the body, and fortune of the person who is devoted to it; as to the mind, it discovers every flaw in it, and makes every latent seed sprout out in the soul; it adds fury to the passions, and force to the objects that are apt to inflame them. Wine often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric man into an assassin; it gives bitterness to resentment, makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.”

Seneca says “that drunkenness does not produce, but discovers faults.” Experience teaches us the contrary; wine shows a man out of himself, and infuses into the mind qualities to which it is a stranger in its more sober moments. Some men are induced to drink excessively, as a cure for sorrow, and a relief from misfortune; but they deceive themselves: wine can only sharpen and imbitter misery.

Temperance is our guard against a thousand unseen ills. If this virtue restrain not our natural inclinations, they will soon exceed all bounds of reason and of prudence. The Grecian philosophers ranked temperance among the highest of all Christian virtues. It is undoubtedly a preservative against numerous diseases; an enemy to passion, and a security against the dire effects of excessive vices and immoderate desires. And every man of reflection is aware, that by keeping this vigilant sentinel always on duty, we are armed and secured against that tremendous host of foes which perpetually hover round the unguarded victims of intemperance. And, besides checking those irregular passions which may be said to reside in the soul, there are others that dwell in the senses, equally capable of destroying the body, particularly an inordinate indulgence in indolence, sleeping, eating, drinking, and many other things in their nature not only innocent in themselves, but indispensably necessary under due regulation; which, yet, by their abuse, become the fatal instruments of our destruction. Our great ethic poet has summed up the whole very sententiously, when he tells us,

Know, all the good that individuals find,

Or God and Nature meant to meet mankind,

Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense

Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence.

But health consists with temperance alone;

And peace, fair Virtue, peace is all thy own.

Temperance, as has been observed, is closely allied to justice—justice to ourselves, because a conduct that injures our health and endangers our lives, violates that duty a man owes to himself:—justice to others, because we owe a duty to the community at large, of which we are members, as well as to our more intimate connexions; all which sustain an injury when we are disabled from fulfilling our obligations. Here then appears the necessity of temperance; and hence arises the great duty of parents, not only to practise it themselves, but to train up and habituate their children to it, since they are accountable for the health, morals, and happiness of their offspring.