attempt to analyse, much less to criticise, this elaborate work.
The greater part of its contents lie beyond the scope of a non-professional writer. But if Mr. Gastafsen is not more accurate in his dealing with these matters than he is with those of which we do happen to have a little knowledge, the value of his book mast be largely dis- counted. It is not a very important matter, and yet it is significant,
that he puts Aristophanes, the comedian, in the fourth century. The
same account may be made of his accepting as history the romantic invention of Ctesias about Sardanapalus, and of Xenophon about
*Cyrus. Again, Tac. Ann. xv. 3G, is, we think, misquoted. Nero is not
there represented as "having dared to violate the temple of Vesta," and having been consequently "seized with an agitation and tremor in his body," &c. He visited all the temples on the occasion of his intended journey to the East, and came in due course, as the custom was, to that of Vesta last. It was not the
whole temple, but the adytum, which males might not enter ;
it was once in the year, on the Vestalia (Jane 9th), that none but women walked to the temple. The tremor and agita- tion which he experienced he considered to be no sign of the goddess' wrath, but a warning of danger should he make the pro- posed journey. It is true that these things do not bear upon the argument ; but they tend to make one suspicions of what does. Mr.
Gustafsen started, he tells us in his preface, with the idea that there "possibly existed a safe dietetic dose of alcohol." His conclusion is thus stated, or rather suggested,—" As to the title of this book, though it may at first appear exaggerated and sensational, I believe it to be a scientifically accurate description of the nature and career of alcohol in the life of man. Life never is, it is always becoming ;
it is not a state bat a flow,' says Professor J. Moleschott. And of death, Dr. Harfeland says,--` Generally speaking, death is not a
change undergone in a moment, but a gradual passage from a con- dition of active to a condition of latent life.' As there are many springs and foundations of life, so there are, doubtless, many founda- tions of death,—death national, individual, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, as well as physical ; but among them alcohol, if the true story of it is told by those who bear witness in this work, is pre- eminently a destroyer in every department of life, and, therefore, is truly the foundation of death."
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