For many centuries wine was drank and sung before any persons had an idea that it was possible to extract the spirituous portion, which is the essence of its power.  The Arabs, however, taught us the art of distillation, invented by them to extract the perfume of flowers, and especially of the rose, so celebrated in their poems.  Then persons began to fancy that in wine a source of excitement might be found to give taste a peculiar exaltation.  By gradual experiments alcohol, spirits of wine, and brandy were discovered.

Alcohol is the monarch of liquids, and takes possession of the extreme tastes of the palate.  Its various preparations offer us countless new flavors, and to certain medicinal remedies, it gives an energy they could not well do without.  It has even become a formidable weapon:  the natives of the new world having been more utterly destroyed by brandy than by gunpowder.

The method by which alcohol was discovered, has led to yet more important results, as it consisted in the separation and exhibition of the constituent parts of a body, it became a guide to those engaged in analogous pursuits, and made us acquainted with new substances, such as quinine, morphine, strychnine and other similar ones.

Be this as it may, the thirst for a liquid which nature has shrouded in veils, the extraordinary appetite acting on all races of men, under all climates and temperatures, is well calculated to attract the attention of the observer.

I have often been inclined to place the passion for spirituous liquors, utterly unknown to animals, side by side with anxiety for the future, equally strange to them, and to look on the one and the other as distinctive attributes of the last sublunary revolution.

Meditation X.

An episode on the end of the world.

I said—­last sublunary revolution, and this idea awakened many strange ideas.

Many things demonstrate to us that our globe has undergone many changes, each of which was, so to say, “an end of the world.”  Some instinct tells us many other changes are to follow.

More than once, we have thought these revolutions likely to come, and the comet of Jerome Lalande has sent many persons to the confessional.

The effect of all this has been that every one is disposed to surround this catastrophe with vengeance, exterminating angels, trumps and other accessories.

Alas! there is no use to take so much trouble to ruin us.  We are not worth so much display, and if God please, he can change the surface of the globe without any trouble.

Let us for a moment suppose that one of those wandering stars, the route and mission of which none know, and the appearance of which is always accompanied by some traditional terror; let us suppose that it passes near enough to the sun, to be charged with a superabundance of caloric, and approach near enough to us to create a heat of sixty degrees Reaumur over the whole earth (as hot again as the temperature caused by the comet of 1811.)