THE PRAISES OF WINE.

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Wine, like love, has ever been a fertile and favourite subject for poets. The earliest allusion to it which I can discover, is:

'Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard. And he drank of the wine, and was drunken.'

A Latin poet has ingeniously and beautifully represented wine as a gift from the gods, to console mankind for the miseries entailed upon them by the Deluge:

Omnia vastatis ergo quum cerneret arvis
Desolata Deus, nobis felicia vini

Dona dedit, tristes hominum quo munere fovit
Reliquias, mundi solatus vite ruinam.

Ovid gives the following prudent advice:
I own, I think of wine the moderate use
More suits the sex and sooner finds excuse.
It warms the blood, adds lustre to the eyes,
And Wine and Love have ever been allies;
But carefully from all intemperance keep,
Nor drink till you see double, lisp, or sleep.

In another, we find :

More fruitful than the accumulated board,
Of pain and misery; for, the subtile draught
Faster and surer swells the vital tide,
And with more active poison fills our frame.
Ah, sly deceiver ! branded o'er and o'er,
Yet still believed! exulting o'er the wreck
Of sober vows.

Another sings in a similar strain :

Three cups of wine a prudent man may take:
The first of them for constitution sake;
The second, to the girl he loves the best;
The third and last, to lull him to his rest-

Then home to bed. But, if a fourth he pours,
That is the cup of folly, and not ours.

Loud noisy talking on the fifth attends;

The sixth breeds feuds, and falling out of friends;
Seven beget blows, and faces stained with gore;
Eight, and the watch patrole breaks ope' the door;
Mad with the ninth, another cup goes round,

And the swilled sot drops senseless on the ground.

6

As the size of these cups' is not stated, we must suppose that they were very capacious; otherwise three of them would be a small allowance for the author of the following ingenious piece of logic:

Good wine makes good blood,
Good blood causeth good humours,
Good humours cause good thoughts,
Good thoughts bring forth good works,
Good works carry a man to heaven.

Ergo,

Good wine carrieth a man to heaven.

He is borne out by what the Frenchman says:

Qui ne sait d'une heureuse ivresse,

Qui ne sait les heureux effets?

Elle prodigue la sagesse,

Elle révèle les secrets;
Des chimères de l'espérance

Elle sait nous faire jouir.
C'est dans la coupe du plaisir
Que l'ignorant boit la science;

Au lâche, elle rend la vaillance;

Au fourbe, la sincérité;

Et dans le sein de l'indigence
Fait trouver la félicité.

Gaieté, franchise, confiance,
Talents, vous êtes ses bienfaits;

Eh! quel buveur manqua jamais,
Ou de courage, ou d'éloquence !

Cowley, in his imitation of Anacreon, rises to this

pitch of extravagance :

BACON'S OPINION.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks and gapes for drink again ;
The plants suck in the earth, and are,
With constant drinking, fresh and fair;
The sea itself (which one would think,
Should have but little need of drink)
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,
So filled that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun (and one would guess
By 's drunken, fiery face, no less)
Drinks up the sea; and, when he's done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun.
They drink and dance by their own light;
They drink and revel all the night.

Nothing in nature's sober found,
But an eternal health
goes round.

Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there; for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?

121

Even the learned Bacon does not consider it beneath him to declare:

The use of wine in dry and consumed bodies is hurtful; in moist and full bodies it is good. The cause is, for that the spirits of the wine do prey upon the dew, or radical moisture of the body, and so deceive the animal spirits; but where there is moisture enough, or superfluous, there wine helpeth to digest and to dessicate the moisture.

These being the sentiments of the author of the ‘Novum Organum,' I shall not presume to say more of them than that they do not appear to me to be very wise; neither does Plato's interdict against the use of wine by all under twenty years of age. Aristotle approved of it for all except children and

nurses.'

Seneca writes:

Too much fatigue exhausts the animal spirits, as too much food blunts the finer faculties, and an occasional slight inebriation is beneficial.

There is not much difficulty in guessing that the following lines are from Anacreon :—

Let us drain the nectar'd bowl,

Let us raise the song of soul

To him, the god who loves so well
The nectar'd bowl, the choral swell;
The god who taught the sons of earth
To thrid the tangled dance of mirth;
Him, who was nurs'd with infant Love,
And cradled in the Paphian grove;
Him, that the snowy Queen of Charms
So oft has fondled in her arms.
Oh 'tis from him the transport flows,
Which sweet intoxication knows;
With him, the brow forgets its gloom,
And brilliant graces learn to bloom.

Behold! -my boys a goblet bear,
Whose sparkling foam lights up the air.
Where are now the tear, the sigh?
To the winds they fly, they fly!

OPORTO.

123

CHAPTER II.

PORT-OPORTO-UPPER DOURO, ETC.

The Foz-The Douro-Vigo-Minho-Oporto-Alto Douro Company -Baron Forrester-To make Port-Wine Tasters-ElderberriesCroft's Pamphlet--Jeropiga-Rise in Prices-The future of Port -Rates of Duty since 1671-Methuen Treaty-White PortLisbons-Tom's Coffee House-Lyne Stephens-Letter from Lisbon, 1798—The Port Trade Artificial-Difficulty of giving just Views-Head of the Wine Trade-Bottle-stink-Dining Hours -Horse Shoe-Gronow's Reminiscences-Old Port in Lancashire -Monopoly-Alto Douro Company's Tasters-Old and Present Prices Few Shippers formerly-Crusts-Racking and FiningMr. Ballantyne's Letter-Mr. Gassiot's Description-Estimates of Cost-Rua Ingleza-Prison of Oporto-Siege-To Fight and be Fighted-Steamer Signalled-Man and Wife-Escape-Consumption and Percentage since 1831-Statistics.

PORTO may be reached by landing from the

OPORTO

steamer, which stops, when the weather permits, opposite the fort or Foz. The powerful mail-boat, with a crew of twenty men, crossing the dangerous bar at the mouth of the Douro, is a fine sight; and the walk to the town along the high banks of the river is very beautiful. On On my second visit, in 1844, I disembarked there; but would advise every lover of scenery to leave the steamer at Vigo and ride to Oporto.

From the hill on the brow of which Vigo is built the view is very extensive and splendid, and so it