were to be drunk within the year, and which were probably no better than the present trash of Italy and France, which no man in his senses would drink if he could obtain small beer. What are we to think of wines that became thick with age, and that became bitter by keeping. What are we to think of the Opimian wine? If it was the "Comet wine" of that day, we will stick by our own comet yet; since when it was of most value, it was as thick as honey, and could be used only for mixing with other wines, or with water.

But what is Homer's wine, the Maroween wine, which was mixed with twenty times its bulk of water to make it drinkable, according to the poet, and with eight, according to Pliny, when it had degenerated from the celestial qualities which it had possessed in the days of Ulysses. Dr. Henderson has left us to explain this as well as we can. It was syrup, not wine; and the antient taste in this case seems to have been, not for strong drink, but for "eau sucree," or sherbet. We do not think that the Cyclops, or his wife either, could have "got" very drunk upon this drink. As to the Pramnian wine, it was so harsh that it shrivelled the features in drinking, (no great praise ;) but the Corinthian exceeded all, since to drink it was absolute torture." But men will drink any thing that makes them drunk, and praise it too when they write verses; or else Cornwall and Devonshire would not yet glory in what they call cider, and which, to organs not Danmonian, emulates a mixture of vinegar and sand. Give us a good can of flip, or a bowl of bishop, and we will not seek for Pramnian and Corinthian wines. How would Homer have sung, and what would he have said, had he drank of lime punch at Glasgow.

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But as we have remarked already, all the favourite wines of Greece were sweet, and it is probable that they were the very same as those of our own day. Chios, Samos, Tenedos, Cyprus, and so on. Those wines were in fact the produce of the Ionian and Egean islands; of Lesbos, Chios, Thasos, Corcyra, Cyprus, Crete, Cnidos, Rhodes, and more. And yet the Lesbian wine was salt, as Pliny affirms. The Mendean was so weak that it bore only three parts of water. If a weak wine was limited to three waters, how did the Greeks make themselves drunk, or even merry with drinking, unless they had emulated in capacity of fluid the tuns out of which they drank. What is even our own Madeira, which it is probable they never reached with three waters. Falstaff would have thought this worse than putting lime into his sack.

But we must pass from Greece to Rome.

It is likely enough that the barbarous savages of early Rome

But what reason

drank no wine, or rather cultivated none. has the doctor to hesitate in supposing that " Hetruria," agricultural Etruria, the country which "sic fortis crevit" cultivated the vine, and taught that, with all its other arts, with all such arts at least as such savages could learn, to the fierce barbarians by which she was overwhelmed and despoiled.

But, to pass from that, the Ictine wine was the favoured of Augustus, who seems to have delighted in thin potations. The Cecuban, on the other hand, was the favourite of his adulator and poet, as more given to inspire that eloquence which he praises as its effect. The Fundanum, similarly, appears to have been a strong heady wine; and Dr. Henderson, without sufficient evidence perhaps, supposes these to have been red and sweet wines. If so, the tastes of Homer and Horace do not appear to have been quite so different as their poetry.

Of the Falernian, all have read, and some may fancy they have drank. Whether it be as immortal as Martial prophesied, and whether we are now actually drinking of the same cup, is a question not easily answered. It was strong and rough, and also durable, so that it was stored for many years before it was drunk, or drinkable. It was kept even to forty years, or far longer; but the taste of Cicero differed from that of Horace, inasmuch as he preferred it newer. Whether it resembled Sherry and Madeira, as the Doctor seems to have settled, is a question in which we shall not interfere. Certainly, the wines of Italy that may be supposed to be heirs of the "ardens Falernus" are neither Madeira nor Sherry. When Tiberius calls the Surrentine wines "generous vinegar," it is probable that he was not far wrong and as to the Nomentanum, the Venafranum, and the Sabinum, we cannot very well understand what are" their table wines" which " attained their maturity only after six or seven years.” That is not the character of their table wines now, at least. The criticism here is not very considerate.

The Romans also imported wines from Sicily and from Gaul, as they did from Spain: and, even in these days, the French wines appear to have been distinguished for their flavour, as the Spanish were for their strength.

But we must pass from a branch of the subject on which we really cannot find that any additional light has been thrown, however we may be indebted to the author for bringing together in an English work what was scattered through various books of not very easy access.

The seventh and eighth chapters treat of some practices of the antients relating to drinking. On this subject the author

does not seem to have consulted Stuckius, or if he has, it is without acknowledgment. That laborious collector has left little for his successors to glean.

The use of hot drinks seems to have been as considerable at a certain period of Rome, as that of Mr. Hunt's radical coffee is now. Ice was also the same article of luxury that it is to the modern Italians. The women were forbidden the use of wine at the festive meetings of the Romans, when present; but Dr. Henderson has not remarked that their introduction of females was rare, and confined to a particular period of Rome.

If there were no "made dishes and no poultry," as he remarks, in the Homeric age, it was because that age was, literally, a barbarous one, an age similar to that of our Teutonic and Saxon ancestry. It is too common to confound refined Greece with Homeric Greece, because we read Homer on one day, and Xenophon on another. The Athens of Aristophanes was as little like to any town or race in Homer, as modern London is to the Augusta Trinobantum of Julius Cæsar's day. But this whole essay, we willingly pass over, to enter on the "History of Modern Wines," which occupies the second part of this book.

Here also we have an introductory chapter that ought to have been amalgamated with the first one, and with the terminal chapters; as the attention is distracted by this remote position of subjects which are mutually connected and dependent. We are surprised that so obvious a plan was not adopted.

The wines of France very properly occupy the first place, and the treatises of Chaptal, Rosier, and others, have furnished ample materials. That even the wines of France are not however what they might be, is most justly remarked. But whatever other causes may be assigned, the chief are the poverty of the wine farmers, arising from the minute division of farms and property, and the want of a sufficient market, from the absurd, and almost prohibitory duties, which nearly exclude from that market the most opulent and most willing purchaser. If the laws of France respecting property descending are not altered, this effect must increase, with many other and greater evils, of which the progress is daily too sensible. The absurd duties which exclude from a British market all French wines but those of the highest qualities, deprive the cultivators of such wines of that stimulus towards their improvement which would speedily follow a demand. The material is a drug; and it is indifferent how that article is manufactured for which there is no price:

The wines of Champagne are among the most familiar and the most esteemed in this country. If there be prejudices against them, they are unfounded; as we are convinced that while they are among the most exhilarating and agreeable, they are equally the least pernicious. It is no argument, on the other hand, that a glass of Champagne may produce a fit of gout; as the same rule holds respecting all other idiosyncracies. This is the talk of those who understand physic without knowing one of its principles; a numerous class. If the object of wine be to raise the spirits in society, or even to make us drunk for a time, this is done by Champagne, sweetly, speedily, and effectually; and if it be an object also not to be drunk to-morrow as well as to-night, it is by Champagne alone that we can secure this. That the quiet wines, and those of Sillery are the best, needs any one be told; except those, who know nothing of Champagne but its frothing and its sweetness, and who are content if it dances in the glass and pleases" the ladies." This is the wine too that will not turn into ditch water in our hands; and we know that it will keep even for thirty years, while the more fashionable kinds of London are often dead and gone in as many days.

But as we cannot follow out all the wines of France in this way, we must pass on to Burgundy. Burgundy talked of in England, rather than known, where all kinds of half-sour and flavourless trash is commonly exhibited under this name at high prices. The fact is, that the wines of this district are very numerous, and extremely various and unequal; while the produce of the best kinds, the Romanèe Conti, Chambertin, St. George, and others, is so small that little comes into the hands of the foreign consumer. As to the white wines, they are far inferior to the red in flavour; and this is so generally true of every race and country where white and red wines are produced, that it is plain much more flavour depends on the husk than the writers on this subject have chosen to see, and that its sole use is not, as is commonly said, to give colour. For our own part, with the exception of the Moselle of the best qualities, and of Champagne, we should care little if the whole race of the white wines of France were abolished, provided that we could replace them with the reds of the same districts. Of course, we except the finer sweet wines, of which no man drinks more than a glass.

The wines of the Hermitage and the Cote rotie are the best known in England of those that belong to Dauphiny and the Lyonnais, and are not esteemed more than they deserve, though the finest kinds seldom reach our market. The character of

the produce of the vine is here considerably changed from what it is in the northern parts of France, and the change becomes still more striking as we approach the Spanish border, where the wines come to partake of the extraordinary strength which characterizes the produce of that country. Some of the red wines of Languedoc and Roussilon appear to us much preferable to our own Port, however Dr. Henderson may despise them. We doubt indeed if he is acquainted with these wines, and with the "Vins de Cote." As to the white, the Frontignan, and most particularly the Rivesalters, is unquestionably the first sweet wine in the universe; leaving few behind the produce of Greece, Italy, and Spain, and even, in our own estimation, rivalling, if not excelling, the far-famed Tokay.

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But, after all, the king, queen, and emperor of wines is the red wine of the Bordelais. This is THE WINE par excellence and if Homer and his Cyclops had known of it, heaven only knows what quintuple Greek word he would have compounded to praise it. But we drink Claret, and we fancy that we are drinking THE WINE. There are a thousand wines of this class, and the total produce of the true wines does not exceed four hundred tons. It is the trade of the merchants to adulterate the good with the bad, to bring the latter to a marketable state by means of the former, and to prevent the good from telling the tale, by keeping it out of sight; while by aid also of Alicant and Barcelona, of the fire and blackness of vile Beniraclo, they are all rendered potent enough for the true English drinker, who cries out for body, body, careless of the soul, and to whom the great merit of wine is to make him drunk, and to feel hot in his mouth.

To enumerate all these wines is beyond our limits; but every one knows that Haut Brion, Lafitte, Latour, and Chateau Margaux, are the names at least of the best wines, whatever they may know of the wines themselves. That the whole world cannot drink itself drunk by means of four hundred tons annually of these wines, is very certain; yet we wish that those who govern our part of the world at least, would allow us to drink of common Graves and ordinary Medocs, of Bernauld, and Pontet, and St. Pierre, and Mandavit, and hundreds worse, without paying ninety pounds a ton duty for them, and that the merchants would permit us to drink them without the dose of so many "pintes" per "velte" of black strap. Shall we ever see this consummation; shall we ever see an exchequer and a custom-house that have wit enough to contrive a duty "ad valorem."

The doctor has been culpably brief on the wines of this