It may
stupefy, though this is by no means observable in the mental action of
learned Bavarians. The charge of dulness, so sarcastically made against
them, could be retorted with about as much show of reason against
Prussians, Hanoverians, Saxons, or, indeed, any other people. The
students, after their _Kneips_, have what they call
_Katzenjammer_,--cat-sickness,--the effect of debauch, loss of rest, and
general irregularities; and those who do most of the beer-drinking do
least of the studying. I should, indeed, fear fatal effects from
drinking half the quantity of water which some of them take of beer. The
drunkenness produced by beer is at least a very different thing from
that produced by distilled spirits. The one may be a stupor, the other
is a brief and sudden insanity. Beer holds no one captive by such spell
as that which seizes some natures on the first taste of ardent spirits,
throwing them beyond their own control until their week's frolic is
ended. The cases are rare, if they ever occur, in which the beer-drinker
is enticed from the prosecution of his business, if he has one,--and
beer furnishes the main substitute for business to those who have no
other employment.
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