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DOMESTIC MANNEBS OF THE PBUSSIANS.

It is true, history teils us that drunkenness was, in olden timos,a mai'ked characteristic of the several Teutonic tribes; at thepresent day, however, there is certainly less patent intoxicationin Germany than in England; and from the police-regulationsforcing every wine-and-beer-shop to be closed at eleven, it isof course impossible that late drinking can be indulged in.

The more enlightened Prussians, however, informed usthat their compatriots are still far from being temperate overtheir cups, and assuredly at their wedding-feasts, called "hoch-zeit," (literally, high time,) gorging and guzzling are indulged inamong middle-class people-—even by the bride and bridemaids— to an extent that has hardly any parallel amongst the mostbestial of Englishmen.

It is a great question, however, whether drunkenness isreally a test as to the drinking-habits of a nation. Para-doxical as it may sound, we believe that intoxication, so farfrom being a sign of habitual indulgence in liquor, is preciselythe contrary; being, indeed, a streng proof that the inebriatedindividual is unused to stimulants. Your experienced toper isnever tipsy, simply because, from long custom, he is enabledto stand such a quantity of strong waters as would maddenor stupefy some half-dozen really sober men. At supper-parties the young hands are always the first to find " the

spirits entered for home consumption in the United Kingdom is, on the average,only 25 to 26 million gallons — and this though the population of Great Britainand Ireland is nearly double that of Prussia. Dividing, then, the quantity con-sumed by the number of people in each country, we find every one in the UnitedKingdom drinks, on an average, three quarts of spirits throughout the year,whilst each individual in Prussia — including men, women, and children —swallows no less than 4 times that quantity, or three gallons per head. Therelative consumption of beer, also, is Said by Mr. M'Culloch to be equallyexcessive on the part of the Prussian people ; and yet in England the countryresounds with the declamation of our teetotal societies against the drinldngpropensities of the people, whilst in educated Prussia not one voice is raisedagainst the vice !