1863 Cups and their customs

PREFACE.

IV

(if the term please our readers)

Bacclianology

should not hold a respectable

place, and be

entitled to its due mead of praise ; so, by way of introduction, we have ventured to take a cursory glance at the customs which have been attached to drinking from the earliest periods to the present time. This, however, we set forth as no elaborate history, but only as an arrange- ment of such scraps as have from time to time fallen in our way, and have helped us to form ideas of the social manners of bygone times. We have selected a sprig of Borage for our frontispiece, by reason of the usefulness of that pleasant herb in the flavouring of cups. Else- where than in England, plants for flavouring are accounted of rare virtue. So much are they esteemed in the East, that an anti-Brahminical '' They command you to cut down a living and sweet basil-plant, that you may crown a lifeless stone.'' Our use of flavour- ing-herbs is the reverse of this justly condemned one ; for we crop them that hearts may be warmed and life lengthened. And here we would remark that, although our endeavours are directed towards the resusci- tation of better times than those we live in— writer, showing the worthlessness of Hindu superstitions, says,