The story of my personal experiences of alcohol is one which would require more time than I can now command to write properly. I can now only say that I did not begin wine, as a habit, till I was thirty-seven; that, at first, an occasional effect was favourable to the brain power, but always followed by corresponding reaction towards feebleness. About fifty-seven, I was obliged to give up wine altogether; I found great general advantage from doing so, and no disadvantage whatever as regards mental activity. I am now sixty-eight, and take a glass of claret every third day, or oftener. This medicine does not produce any perceptible effect on the brain directly, but I have a fancy that I sleep better after wine; and sleep I have always looked to as the best brain restorative. [Footnote: SLEEP IS THE BEST STIMULANT.—The best possible thing for a man to do when he feels too weak to carry anything through is to go to bed and sleep for a week, if he can. This is the only recuperation of brain-power, the only recuperation of brain-force; because during sleep the brain is in a state of rest, in a condition to receive and appropriate particles of nutriment from the blood, which take the place of those that have been consumed in previous labour, since the very act of thinking consumes or burns up solid particles, as every turn of the wheel or screw of the steamer is the result of the consumption by fire of the fuel in the furnace. The supply of consumed brain-substance can only be had from the nutritive particles in the blood, which were obtained from the food eaten previously; and the brain is so constituted that it can best receive and appropriate to itself those nutritive particles during a state of rest, of quiet, and stillness of sleep. Mere stimulants supply nothing in themselves; they goad the brain, and force it to a greater consumption of its substance, until the substance has been so exhausted that there is not power enough left to receive a supply, just as men are so near death by thirst and starvation that there is not power enough left to swallow anything, and is over.—Scientific American.] Spirits I have never drunk; Though I have been a smoker for many years, I cannot say anything as to its effects.

MARK PATTISON.
March 16, 1882.