The late dining hours may make the social circle more formal, but they have been far less favourable to drinking propensities.

After such dinners as ours are now, suppers are clearly out of the question.
One is astonished to look back and recall the scenes to which were attached associations of hilarity, conviviality, and enjoyment.

Drinking parties were protracted beyond the whole Sunday, having begun by a dinner on Saturday; imbecility and prostrate helplessness were a common result of these bright and jovial scenes; and by what perversion of language, or by what obliquity of sentiment, the notions of pleasure could be attached to scenes of such excess--to the nausea, the disgust of sated appetite, and the racking headache--it is not easy to explain.
There were men of heads so hard, and of stomachs so insensible, that, like my friend Saunders Paul, they could stand anything in the way of drink.

But to men in general, and to the more delicate constitutions, such a life must have been a cause of great misery.

To a certain extent, and up to a certain point, wine may be a refreshment and a wholesome stimulant; nay, it is a medicine, and a valuable one, and as such, comes recommended on fitting occasions by the physician.