My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards.

The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt,--sometimes a misfortune,--as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it,--but oftenest of all a PUNISHMENT.
Empty heads,--heads without ideas in wholesome variety and sufficient number to furnish food for the mental clockwork, -- ill-regulated heads, where the faculties are not under the control of the will,--these are the ones that hold the brains which their owners are so apt to tamper with, by introducing the appliances we have been talking about.

Now, when a gentleman's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own fault; and so it is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be taught the lesson of self-government.

I trust the tariff of Heaven has an ad valorem scale for them--and all of us.
But to come back to poets and artists;--if they really are more prone to the abuse of stimulants,--and I fear that this is true, -- the reason of it is only too clear.

A man abandons himself to a fine frenzy, and the power which flows through him, as I once explained to you, makes him the medium of a great poem or a great picture.