costly pages, dear sir, and feast your eyes with the delicious vignettes, that ever and anon glance out from between the leaves, like the ruby clusters of Bacchus himself, glowing amidst the foliage of some tall marriageable elm, or stately poplar; pause upon these exquisite gems; contemplate the rosy god in each and all of these five thousand attitudes: worship him where, frantic and furious, he tosses the thyrsus amidst the agitated arms of his congregated Mænades: adore him where, proudly seated upon the rich skins of the monsters whom he subdued, he pours out the foaming cup of wine and wisdom before the eyes of savage men, whom the very scent of the ethereal stuff hath already half civilized: envy him, where beneath the thick shadow of his own glorious plant, he with one hand twines the ivy wreath around the ivory brows of Ariadne, and with the other approximates the dew of divinity to the lips of beauty. Feast, revel, riot in the elegance of these unrivalled cameos, and when you have saturated your eye with forms that might create a thirst beneath the ribs of gout, and draw three corks out of one bottle-then, O Christopher! and not till then, will you be in a fit condition for understanding the profound feelings of respect, and grateful attachment, with which it is now my agree able duty to introduce to your acquaintance, and that of "my public," the learnedly luxurious Dissertations of my good friend, and jolly little compotator, Dr Alexander Henderson. The Doctor is, absque omni dubio, the first historian of our age. He unites in his single person the most admirable qualifications of all the other masters in this great branch of literature, who now lend lustre to the European hemisphere-the extensive erudition of a Ranken-the noble self-reliance and audacious virtue of a Brodie-the elegant style of a Sismondi-and the practical sense of an Egan. In many respects, to be sure, the superiority he displays may be referred to the immense superiority and unapproachable merits of the theme he has chosen. The history of the Cellar of Burgundy is a matter of infinitely more improving nature than that of the House of the same name: a thousand will take profound interest in a dissertation upon the sack and hippocras of the mid dle ages, for one that will bother his head with the small Italian republics of the same era: We would rather have luminous notions touching the precise nature of the liquor which Sir John Falstaff quaffed, than the secret intrigues which brought Charles the First to the scaffold: and, great as is our respect for Mr Langan, there is still another claret which possesses claims upon our sympathies, far, far above that which has of late flowed so copiously from his potatoe-trap. This work, in a word, is fitted to interest and delight, not one class of students, but all. The classical scholar will here find the best of all commentaries on the most delightful passages of those delightful writers, whom he is accustomed to turn over with a daily and a nightly hand: he will speculate upon the flavour that a Nestor loved, and sit in erudite judgment over the benmost binns of a Nero. The English antiquarian will enjoy the flood of light that streams upon the joyous pages of Ben Jonson verdea will no longer puzzle the Giffords, nor Petersumeen be a stumbling-block to the Nareses.* The man of science will analyse the effervescence of Sheeraz: the Physician will hear the masterly defence of Claret against the charge of goutification, and return humanized to the exercises of his calling: the ecclesiastical historian will mourn with Dr Henderson over the injuries done to the Medoc and the Cote d'or by the suppression of the monastic establishments of France: the lover of light reading will find the charms of romance united with the truth and dignity of history: The saint will have no lack of sighing, as he glances his grave eye over the records of human debauchery, and at the same time, he may, in passing, pick up a hint or two that will be of use at the next dinner of the African Association: The conscious wine-merchant will read and tremble: and every good fellow, from George the Fourth, down to Michael Angelo the Second, will read and rejoice. It was in England only, and perhaps in this age of England, that a work of this complete and satisfactory description could have been prepared. We produce no wines, and we are the great consumers of all the best wines of the globe. We are free from the · The Pedro-Ximenes is the name of the best Malaga grape. violent prejudices, therefore, which induce the man of the Marue to turn up his nose at the flask of him of the Loire, and vice versa. We look down as from a higher and a calmer region, upon all the noisy controversies about the rival claims of the Lyonnais and the Bordelais, the Mayne and the Rhein-gau. We can do equal justice to the sweets of Malaga, and Rousillon, and despise the narrow-minded bigotry which sets up either Madeira or Sherry at the expense of the other's ancestral stimulancy. In former days, indeed, we partook, however absurdly, in the paltry prejudices which we now spurn with our heels. Time was when we were all for the Cyprus-time was also when we were all for the Xeres grapetime was when little or nothing would go down with us but Hockamore-and time was when even Rhedycina's learned bowers resounded to strains not simply laudative of Oporto, but vituperative and vilipensive of Bourdeaux. We have outlived these follies. We are now completely of the liberal school of winebibbing: our grandsire's dumpy black bottle of sherry leaves the vicinity of the oven, and stands in friendly juxta-position with the long-necker of five year old demi-mousseux, and the doubly-iced juice of Schloss-Johannisberg that has been buried in the cave of caves ever since the great era of The Reformation. The native of the Alto-Douro is contented to precede him of the Garonne, as some sturdy pioneer trudges in proud solemnity before the march of a battalion of Voltigeurs. The coup de-milieu of Constantia or Frontignac forms an agreeable link between the Sillery, which has washed down the venison, and the Hock, which is to add pungency to the partridge-pie. We take Chambertin to the omelet, and Sauterne to the tart. In a word, we do justice to the boundless munificence of nature, and see no more harm in imbibing white wine and red wine, dry wine and sweet wine, still wine and sparkling wine, during the same repast, than we would in doing homage within the same fortnight to the ripe luxuries of a Ronzi de Begnis, the airy graces of a Mercandotti, the vigorous charms of a Vestris, and the meek modest radiance of a Maria Tree. This speaks the spirit of the same unfettered age that can love a Virgil as well as worship a Homer; that places the bust of a Dante beside that of a Mil ton; that binds the laurel on a Hoggwithout robbing the brows of a Hesiod-and thirsts for Lord Byron's autobiography without offering to sacrifice for its purchase, either the veracities of a Rock, or the decencies of a Faublas. On a work, sir, such as yours, calculated for extensive and popular circulation, it would ill become an individual like myself, to obtrude much matter of a recondite and obscure order, or adapted to the intellectual taste of particular classes of readers only. Allow me, therefore, to pass lightly over the dissertations with which this volume opens, touching the various vintages of the nations of antiquity. In truth, even the genius and erudition of a Henderson have been able to scatter but an imperfect ray over subjects, mantled, as these are, with the shades of a long night of nearly two thousand years' duration. It is still, we must admit, dubious whether the wine that Telemachus drew out of the cellars of his royal father partook more of the nature of port or of sherry. The Homeric epithet of Black may mean either the deep hue inalienable from the juice of the purple grape, or the fine grave tinge merely which wines that are called white acquire, in consequence of being kept for several lustres, whether in glass bottles, according to the modern custom, or in earthen jars, after the manner of the heroic ages. That Nestor, however, drank, during the battle with which the 13th book of the Iliad opens, wine both of a red and of a strong sort, is indisputable. The epithets of a and gupos are used together in the same line, and their significancy is clear and obvious to the most German capacity. Dido, again, when she gave her first grand dinner to the Trojan prince, appears to have sported something near akin to champagne. "IMPIGER hausit SPUMANTEM pateram.” chosen, since the act is that of swallowThe epithet impiger is admirably ing sparkling, or right mousseux wine for a spumans patera can hardly be supposed to mean, in the mouth of a writer so chaste as Virgil, anything short of that. He would not have talked of that as foaming, which, in point of fact, merely creamed; and while the rapidity of quaffing a cup of foaming champagne cannot be too great, since the vinous principle of that wine evaporates in a great measure with the effervescence of the gas it embodies, a poet of Virgil's delicate taste would have been careful not to represent Bitias as tumbling down his throat, in that hasty and furious method, a glass of burgundy, or claret, or indeed of any other wine whatever. On the contrary, he would no doubt have pictured this "officer and gentleman" as sucking down his liquor in a quiet, decorous, leisurely, and respectful style, suffering his lips to remain as long as possible in contact with the rim, which had just been honoured by the touch of the imperial beauty. And, indeed, when I look at the passage again, nothing can be more admirable than the strict cohesion and propriety of all the terms, applied either to what the Queen, or to what her guest, does. "Hic Regina gravem gemmis auroque poposcit .... Implevitque mero pateram ore Tum Bitiæ dedit increpitans: ille impiger hausit Spumantem pateram-et pleno se proluit auro. Observe the politeness of her Majesty. She merely touched the cup with the extreme edge of her charm ing lip; not that she would not have liked abundantly to take a deeper share, but that she knew very well her friend would not get the article in its utmost perfection, unless he caught the foam in its boiling moments-summo tenus attigit ore-and then how does she hand it to the Trojan ?-Why increpitans to be sure; in other words, saying, "Now's your time, my lord be quick-don't bother with drinking healths, but off with it-off with it like a man. This is the true meaning of the increpitans. Upon the impiger we have already commentedand what can be better than the fine, full close-so satisfactory, so complete, so perfect-pleno se proluit auro. He turned up the cup with so alert a little finger, that some of the generous foam ran down his beard-se proluit. As to the exact sense of pleno auro, I really cannot speak in a decisive style. Does it mean the full golden cup? or does it rather point to the wine itself -the liquid gold?-the rich ambercoloured nectar? If this last be the truth of the case, then Dido's cham pagne was not of the Ay sort, which is almost colourless, but right Sillery, the hue of which is very nearly the same with that of gold in its virgin state-or perhaps Vin de la Marechale, which generally has even a deeper tone. Pink champagne it certainly could not have been, since, whatever might have been the case at a subsequent period of the entertainment, it is impossible that a lady who had just sat down should mistake the brightness of the rosé for the transparency and indeed pellucidity of the doré. N.B.-Many people read the works of the classics merely for the words, the language, the poetry, the eloquence, and so forth. This is highly absurd. Lessons of practical sense and real wisdom are lurking in every page, if one would but lock for them. And here, for example, the Virgilian narrative of the Carthaginian banquet affords an excellent hint to many worthy persons, who, I hope, will attend to the thing, now that I have should always be given in a large, a fairly pointed it out. Champagne very large glass. Pateræ are out of date, but ale-glasses, or at least tumblers, are to be found in every establishment; and he who gives champagne in a thimble, betrays the soul of a tailor. But let us get on: I hate the chat of those beaux-esprits, who dare to cast out insinuations against the wines that bedewed the lips of the Anacreons and the Horaces. They mixed sea-water with their wine in making it, says one: They put honey in it, cries another: They drank it sorely diluted, grumbles a third: It tasted of pitch and rosin, mutters a fourth. I despise this. When we shall have reared buildings equal to the Parthenon or the Coliseum: when we shall have written poems as sublime as the Iliad, and as elegant as the Pervigilium Veneris: when our statuaries rival the Phidiases and Praxitileses: our historians, the Tacituses and Thucydideses; our philosophers, the Platos and Aristotles,-(Aristotle, by the way, wrote a History of Wines, which has unfortunately perished, and I heartily wish all his metaphysics had gone instead ;)-when our orators, sir, shall rival the Ciceros and Demostheneses of antiquity, then, and not till then, shall we be entitled to imagine that the palates of those great men were less refined than our own. Can any man presume "Seu te in remoto gramine per dies Interiore notâ Falerni !". Do you not see him before you? Spread out at full length upon the remote herbage, far away from the din of cities, flinging all the hum of men and things a thousand leagues behind him, he devotes not the night, not the afternoon, but the day, the whole of the blessed festival day, to the employment of making himself happy-what English circumbendibus can do justice to the nervous and pregnant conciseness of the word bearis ?-with a flask of Falernian from the deepest recesses of his cellar!-Interiore notâ Falerni! and bearis!-What words are these? Was this a man that did not possess the right use of his tongue, lips, and larynx? Was this a man upon whom you could have passed off a bottle of vin ordinaire, or mere tischwein, as the genuine liquor of Beaune or Rudesheim? No, no; you may depend upon it these people were up to the whole concern just as much as the very best of us.-Think but of these glorious lines of old Hermippus Εστι δε τις οίνος όν δη Σαπείαν καλευσιν Could any modern extol the divine and illustrating this by the remarks that "wine which tastes hard when new, become delightful by age, while that which pleases in the wood never proves of durable excellence."* Could Mr Albert Cay or Mr Samuel Anderson talk in a more knowing vein upon this subject than the tutor of Nero the no! These folks drank their chammatricide? No-meo periculo, answer pagne when it was young, and their sherry when it was old, just as we do they quaffed their Rozan, Sir, from the tap, and bottled their Chateau Margoux in magnum bonums. ving, it is but too apparent, followed the The wines of these glorious days hafate of the poetry, rhetoric, sculpture, and architecture of those who consumed them in commendable quantity, and with blameless gusto-the semi-barbarous possessors of the European soil it they could. They gradually, as the were constrained to make the best of Scotch philosophers say, would improve in the manufacture; and, by the time tal Alfred, it appears not unlikely that of Charlemagne, and our own immorlent wines existed in the Western hea considerable portion of really excelmisphere. The monks were the great promoters of the science:-Successively spreading themselves from Italy to the remotest regions of Europe, these sacred swarms carried with them, wherever they went, the relish which their juvenile lips had imbibed for something stronger than mead, and more tasty than beer. Wherever the plant would grow, it was reared bethem, as Dr Henderson has most conneath their fatherly hands, and to vincingly manifested, the primest vineyards of the Bordelais, the Lyonnais, and the Rhinegau, owe their origin. Unsanctified fingers, it is, alas! true, now gather the roseate clusters of THE HERMITAGE, yet the name still speaks stat nominis umbra-and the memory of the Sçavants of the Cloister lingers in like manner in Clos-Vogeot, Clos-duTart, Clos St Jean, Clos Morjot, and all the other compounds of that interesting family.-The Bacchus of modern mythology ought uniformly to the cucullus, sport "And I do think that I could drink I have already hinted, that the taste of our own ancestors, in regard to wine, underwent many and very re ⚫ Epist. 36. markable mutations: but this is precise ly one of the subjects which my jolly little Aberdonian M.D. has treated in a most felicitous manner; and, under correction, I apprehend that a wellchosen quotation from this part of the Doctor's ponderous tome will appear by no means out of place in your immortal pages; while, at the same time, by being transferred thither, his erudite remarks will probably reach the optics of a vast multitude of most respectable persons, who would never dream of looking into, far less of purchasing, a two guinea quarto, even though its subject be Wine. With your permission, therefore, I now desire Mr James Ballantyne, Mr Daniel M'Corkindale, or whomsoever it may more immediately concern, to set up in brevier the following luculent observations :— "The union which subsisted between England and the northern provinces of France after the Norman conquest, but, above all, the acquisition of the Dutchy of Guienne in 1152, naturally led to an interchange of commodities between the two countries. Accordingly we find, that, in two years from the last-mentioned date, the trade in wines with Bourdeaux had commenced : and, among our older statutes, are numerous ordinances relating to the importation of French wines, most of which, in conformity to the mistaken notions of political economy in those times, fix the maximum of price for which they were to be sold. Thus in the first year of King John, it was enacted, that the wines of Anjou should not be sold for more than twenty-four shillings a-tun; and that the wines of Poitou should not be higher then twenty shillings; while the other wines of France were limited to twenty-five shillings a-tun, unless they were so good as to induce any one to give for them two merks or more.' This appears to be the earliest statute on the subject of the foreign wine trade. With regard to the wines specified, it would appear, from Paulmier's account, that those of Anjou, which were embarked at Nantes, and probably included the produce of Touraine, were chiefly white, and distinguished by their strength and sweetness; while the growths of Poitou, otherwise called Rochelle wines, from the port where they were shipped, were of the light red class. In the retail trade, the latter were directed to be sold at fourpence the gallon, -the former at sixpence. But according to Harrison, this ordinance did not last long; for the merchants could not bear it; and so they fell to and sold white wine for eighteenpence the gallon, and red and claret for sixpence.' Both Anjou and Poitou belonged at that time to England. "During the following reign, the impor tations would appear to have increased; for most of the chroniclers ascribe the neglect of the English vineyards to that fondness for French wines which then came upon us. But by this time the crusades had probably also introduced a taste for the sweet wines of Italy and Greece, which are occasionally mentioned by our early poets, and which, at a subsequent period, were certainly well known in this country. In an account rendered to the Exchequer by the Chamberlain of London, in the thirtieth year of HENRY III., we find that officer was allowed 4047. in acquittance of 404 dolia of French, Gascon, and Anjevin wines, imported at London and Sandwich; -391 and half a mark, for 22 dolia of wine of St John and the Moselle (de vino S. Johannis et de Oblinquo) ;-30% for 20 dolia of new, or perhaps sweet, French wine (musti Gallici); and 1846. 16d. for 900, 20 19 dolia of wines of Gascony, Anjou, French wine, Moselle wine, and wine of St John, which were bought. The last-mentioned may have been an Italian sweet wine, or else the wine of St Jean d'Angeley, which is celebrated in the Bataille des Vins' on account of its extraordinary strength. "In order to cover the harshness and acidity common to the greater part of the wines of this period, and to give them an agreeable flavour, it was not unusual to mix honey and spices with them. Thus compounded, they passed under the generic name of piments, probably because they were originally prepared by the pigmentarii, or apothecaries; and they were used much in the same manner as the liqueurs of modern times. 'Our poets of the thirteenth century,' says LE GRAND, never speak of them but with rapture, and as an exquisite luxury. They considered as the masterpiece of art, to be able to combine, in one liquor, the strength and flavour of wine, with the sweetness of honey, and the perfume of the most costly aromatics. A banquet at which no piment was served, would have been thought wanting in the most essential article. The archives of the cathedral of Paris show, that, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Deans of Chateaufort were obliged to provide a regular supply of piment for the canons, at the feast of Assumption. It was even allowed to the monks in the monasteries, on particular days of the year. But it was so voluptuous a beverage, and was deemed so unsuitable to the members of a profession which had forsworn all the pleasures of life, that the Council of Aixla-Chapelle, held in the year 817, forbade the use of it to the regular clergy, except on the days of solemn festivals. "The varieties of piment most frequently mentioned are the Hippocras and Clarry. The former was made with either white or red wine, in which different aromatic ingre |