district; but we cannot afford to add, as we might, to his information, since we must now pass the mountains with him. And when we do, it is to pass our unlimited condemnation on Spain and all its abominable wines, fitted only to deprive the drinker of them of his health, his senses, and his money. Xeres indeed bawls loudly for an exemption; and certainly, if Falstaff, and fashion, and brandy are to carry it, we must concede the point. Why will not the Spaniards make good wines when they have all the soils, and suns, and climates, of the universe in their own hands? Because they are lazy and dirty, and bigots, and slaves, and-but let them go.

We must praise Port, of course, else we should not be true Englishmen. We must praise it too because of the Methuen treaty. A treaty so fine, so clever, so profound, that the like was never made, that no parallel can be found to it in all Rymer, nor in all the "federa" that have ever been struck since that between Lot and Abraham. A treaty to poison a whole nation, for the sake of compelling another to buy from it what it could not have helped buying, what it would have thronged to buy. Sir Paul Methuen has much to answer for: the fate of Prometheus would have been but a retaliatory punishment. For thus our livers are consumed with brandy under the colour of Port. Who does not know that this compound is often half brandy, and who reflects that when he is drinking a bottle of it, he is drinking a pint of brandy? Yet so it is. But we must refer to the doctor for such further history of this manufacture as we have not room to give. That the wine might be good, we are ready to admit. But then it must be under a much smaller consumption. That consumption would be reduced by the admission of French wines; and thus the effect would be to improve two countries at one blow; and we may fairly add our cwn as the third. With the present demand for Port, it must inevitably be manufactured from the ordinary as well as the good, from Figueras as well as from Oporto, and what is worse than all, from Benicarlo and brandy. To say nothing of the home mixture, which Dr. Geddes has consecrated in his macaronic poem. We may parody Boniface feelingly; for of such trash we may safely say, "how should we be men that drink it?"

The characters, generally speaking, of the German and Hungarian wines are sufficiently familiar to us, though very few find their way to an English market. And their characters also are markedly distinct from those of the growth of France, and of all other countries. The wines of the Rhine are the best known; and that of Hochheim, or others which go by the

name of Hock, from their analogy, is familiar. This is a very singular wine in its chemical construction; weak, yet not subject to the diseases of weak wines, and hitherto baffling all our chemical knowledge. The doctor has attempted unsuccessfully to explain this peculiar phenomenon, and we are not prepared to give a better solution. The Johannisberger is known to be the best; but, as of all other good things in this world, the quantity is very limited. The Steinberg and the Graffenberg are the next; but those who cannot get them, must be content with a humbler produce, and even then will not always have cause to complain.

Of Tokay, the name is better known than the taste; since the produce is both scanty and high priced. We have always considered this as the chief merit of that wine. That it is made from half dried grapes, is pretty generally known. If Dr. Townson thinks it no better than the Spanish sweet wines, Grenatch and Malaga we suppose, we must however enter a dissent, though we should look twice on the fourteen sides of seven ducats before we gave them for a bottle, or even a gallon of it, like the ex-king of Holland.

Why are the Italian wines not better, when Italy is so delicious and fertile? Because the Italians are a dirty, obstinate people. That is not true however of their other farming, since, assuredly, in some departments, there are no better farmers in the world. Yet it is true, that to neglect we must attribute the badness of the common Italian wines, in which it is most difficult to say, out of the various qualities of weakness, dirtiness, sourness, and stench, which predominates. It is impossible but that the wines of Italy would equal those of France, were care bestowed on them. If volcanic soils are the most favourable to the vine, they ought even to exceed them; for France has comparatively but little of such land. But they neglect the culture of the plant, as they do the manufacture of its produce.

The Tuscan wines are the best, because the most care has been bestowed on them. Every one has heard of the Montepulciano. Every man, says a traveller, when he arrives at an inn where this wine is sold, goes to bed before he begins to drink it, because he knows full well that, after he has begun, that will be impossible. Has Dr. Henderson never heard this; and has he forgotten too, or never heard, the celebrated epitaph on the toper, over whom it was inscribed, "Est, est, est, propter nimium est." It was sufficient to denote that Montepulciano was sold by inscribing est over the door. This is xar oxy, to some purpose.

But there are other good wines in Italy, besides its muscadines and its lacrymæ, which Dr. Henderson does not seem to know of, and bearing promise of much better, provided that a foreign demand could be excited. What has he done with Lipari, which is among the best of the sweet wines. Has he forgotten also the wine of Nissa, a wine at least of promise. A freer trade would do much even for Italy in this matter; but as long as it is the system of commerce in all countries to exclude instead of encouraging the interchange of their several commodities, by avaricious and absurd duties which defeat the very ends and purposes of commerce, Italian wines will continue to stink and sour, and we shall go on drinking porter and small beer. That Sicily also is capable of making much better wines than it has ever yet produced even under its recent improvements, we have no manner of doubt. The wine of Marsala is a sufficient proof of this.

But it is true, as the author remarks, that among other impediments to this improvement is the English taste for strong wines, and the necessity thus imposed on the growers, to mix all the produce intended for that market, with brandy. Here, unquestionably, this English taste is one of the radical causes of the evil, but it is not the sole one. Let it bear no more blame than its due. If the Englishman is to pay a high price for every wine that he buys, because there is but one duty, and that a high one, for all wines, he must demand a strong article. The object of wine is to make a man drunk, more or less, and he cannot afford to pay more than four or five shillings for this object. Give him two bottles at the price which he now pays for one, and we shall soon see his taste improve, as he discovers that it is somewhat more pleasant to have plenty of drink, as well as drunkenness, for his money, than to be condemned to the drunkenness without the enjoyment of a long drink. Then will other wines besides those of Sicily be improved also.

Dr. Henderson has entirely forgotten the Balearic wines. Did he not know of them? There are many of them which are worthy of his notice. The Alba flora of Majorca is a very respectable white wine; though we must not take our estimate of it from the brandied and fiery drink sold by that name in London. In nothing throughout this trade is the bad effect of brandy so sensible, as when it is attempted to raise a weak wine to the English standard of strength: in the naturally strong ones, the mixture is far less offensive. Hence the vile qualities, not only of the London Alba flora, but of the trash called Lisbon and Calcavella. The Carcavelos wine is naturally far from bad, and the best qualities are really good. But what is

use of wine in England, and on the importation of wines into it; but we have already occupied so much room, that we cannot make any abstract of it, and must refer to the original.

That which follows is what we already desired to have seen interwoven with that to which it belongs, since it relates to the chemistry, and not to the history of wines. But we cannot allow Dr. Henderson to insinuate that he has explained any thing respecting the secondary fermentation of wines, which had been" but imperfectly investigated by others." We have not discovered a single original thought or suggestion on this subject throughout the whole work; nor does he always allow, though professing to do it, the merit to those from whom he has obviously borrowed.

There is an appendix displaying some useful tables, but we should have desired to see also some account of the quantity of the produce of the best French wines, which might easily have been procured, and which, in the case of Claret at least, is peculiarly interesting, as tending to shew, what we stated before, the real paucity of the good wines which can, by any possibility find their way to our market.

As we cannot pretend to supply all the deficiencies of this book, we shall merely give a few numbers on this particular part of the subject. Our readers will thus see how many are likely to drink of the first growths of Claret.

Consisting of twenty-one farms, which we will not enumerate for fear of occupying too much room, and the total produce being

1061

4me Cru.

Consisting of twenty farms, and the produce being

825

Thus it appears, that in this particular district the first, second, third, and fourth growths are, respectively, 230, 425, 1061, and 825 tons; whence it is abundantly plain, as we formerly said, not only that the best wines cannot be generally drank, but that, what is the fact, the inferior are substituted, or the different kinds so mixed as to produce averages of consumable Claret.

Of the other matters in this appendix, we can only say what we already did of the arrangement of the book, that they ought to have been amalgamated with the places to which they belong, since the author cannot plead the excuse of haste.

We must not however conclude without giving a specimen of the work itself, of which the style is agreeable, and sufficiently faultless. We will extract the passage that relates to sack, partly on account of the subject, and partly because it is from a part of the book which we found it necessary to pass over.

"It seems, indeed, to be admitted, on all hands, that the term Sack was originally applied to certain growths of Spain. Minshew defines it to be a wine that cometh out of Spain,' vinum siccum, vin sec, vino seco, q. d. propter magnam siccandi humores facultatem. Skinner however thinks this explanation unsatisfactory, and inclines to the opinion of Mandelslo, a German traveller, who published an account of his travels to the East Indies in 1645, and who derives the name from Xeque, a town in Morocco, whence the plant that yields this species of wine is said to have been carried to the Canary islands. But in all the catalogues of vines which I have had the opportunity of consulting there is no mention of any such species. Besides it was not from the Canaries, but from Spain that Sack was first brought to us.

66

This sur

According to Neumann, Sack signifies properly a wine made from half-dried grapes, which may be so far true; but as a similar mode of treating the vintage was common in all those countries from which the choicest wines were obtained, this interpretation of the term will not account for its being more particularly applied to the growth of Spain. Sachs again is of opinion, that the appellation has a reference to the bags or skins, in which the Spaniards preserve their wines. mise, however, is opposed by the fact, that the word saco in Spanish, as well as the original Latin, saccus, usually denotes a bag made of linen or canvas; while, in the one language, uter, and in the other, borracha, or bota, are the terms by which wine-skins are designated. Nor is there any proof that Spanish wines were ever imported in such receptacles. The common wines of the country may be so kept, but all the finer kinds are preserved in the wood; and in our older statutes, we have seen constant mention of pipes or butts, as the vessels in

VOL. II. NO. IV.

E