MR. REDDING ON FRENCH WINES.*

WHATEVER divergence of opinion may exist as to the financial merits and political wisdom of the commercial treaty with France, there are few among our readers, we fancy, who will object to that clause referring to the reduction of the wine duties. It has been a necessity felt for many years; in fact, ever since the three-bottle gentry went out of date. Drinking is no longer fashionable, and persons have wisely resolved on the use and not the abuse of one of the most glorious gifts nature has bestowed on us. But there was this difficulty connected with the heavy wine duties with the best will in the world to drink French wines, the middle classes were unable to do so, owing to the high prices they fetched. Their choice was limited, in great measure, to acid sherry and muddy port, and these were found to interfere so considerably with the digestive process, that their use grew more and more limited. The death-blow to the wine consumption was, however, dealt by the introduction of South African into the market, which, not only bad itself, was employed fearfully for the purposes of adulteration. No one who tasted it once had the courage to venture on it again, and it became the legitimate prey of the burlesque writers, nobody, save the importers, regretting its well-merited downfal.

Wine, then, was threatening to become a myth in middle-class English households, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer hit on the bold scheme of reducing the duty in the face of increased estimates. The result of the partial reduction is, that a very large amount of claret has been already imported into the country, and its consumption is gradually, though slowly, spreading. It is marvellous, however, what ignorance Englishmen, as a rule, are in as to the comparative merits of French wines.

Considerations of this nature have induced Mr. Redding to write the valuable little treatise we have now under notice. As good wine needs. no bush, so we need not recommend to our readers a work by the recognised authority in the matter of wines. We may say, however, that it contains much novel and valuable information which no other English author could supply, and it bears the marks of conscientious investigation and thorough knowledge of the subject on every page. The work commences with a history of the vine since its introduction into France, and a description of the varieties employed.

Mr. Redding repudiates very decidedly the notion that the poverty noticeable by the tourist in many of the French wine districts is owing to the culture of the vine, as has been asserted. Bad management-the result of defective education-and grinding taxation are, in his opinion, the final causes of this impoverishment. It is to be hoped that with the increased demand for wine these evils will be removed. It is evident, from the description he gives of the cultivation of the grape, that capital is required to produce a profitable, because marketable, vintage; and

* French Wines and Vineyards, and the Way to find Them. By Cyrus Redding. London: Houlston and Wright.

doubtlessly land will pass into fewer hands, and thus remove one of the great evils from which the rural population of France suffers.

The chapter devoted to the vintage contains much interesting detail. Unceasing care must be devoted to the state of the grapes, or the labours of a year may be thrown away. The exact time to gather the fruit depends on the weather, and the season naturally differs in nearly every part of wine-growing France. Much, too, depends on the attention the labourers pay to their task, for the flavour of the wine is irremediably injured by the slightest careless or improper treatment. Hence, we find that around Perpignan the farm-servants are far better off than the corresponding class in England. Even the wood of which the casks are made must be carefully examined, lest it should impart some unfavourable taste to the contents. The result attained by careful manipulation is, that the wines of France surpass those of all other countries in delicacy, aroma, and fine mellow flavour. The red wines are superior to the white, for they carry a finer perfume or bouquet, and, whether dark red or light ruby in colour, are finer flavoured, and will keep their virtues a considerable time-such as those of Roussillon for above a century.

It would be manifestly impossible for us to exhaust, in our scanty limits, the information this volume imparts. While stating, therefore, that it furnishes a full account of every wine grown in France, the average value of the vintage, and the modes of exporting the wine most conveniently, we will conclude our paper by giving some account of the mode of preparing champagne.

Champagne is made of any coloured grapes, but they are gathered with great care. Every grape is excluded which is in the slightest degree injured, and they are carried to the press with due precautions to prevent any crushing. The must is not immediately placed in the casks, but left in a vat for some twelve hours, until the grosser lees are deposited. The must is then placed to ferment in tuns. About Christmas the fermentation is over, and the wine is racked; then again racked, and fined at the end of a month. Some wines are racked thrice and fined twice. Wines intended to become mousseux are bottled in March and April. Nothing is so fickle as the commencement of the effervescence; some wines become mousseux in a fortnight, others require twelve months. Another evil is the repeated flying of the bottles and the consequent loss of the wine. The quantity M. Moët had under treatment prior to the oïdium was from five to six hundred thousand bottles. From these facts it will be seen that champagne will never become a cheap wine, and those who purchase such with their eyes open may rest assured that they have bought rhubarb champagne. To such of our readers as are unacquainted with the delicious wines produced on the banks of the Rhône, we recommend the St. Peray grand Mousseux of M. L. Giraud.

OUR SOCIAL PROGRESSION.

SOME of the Germans who pass their lives in theorising or conjuring up phantoms which they vainly attempt to embody, some of these prolific generators of shadows, maintain that all the progress made under modern civilisation is but a renewal or repetition of that which had a prior existence. They uphold this opinion upon grounds by no means satisfactory to those who are not content with deductions from assumed premises. That to which the mind has an involuntary bias it is reluctant to reject, and is apt to pass by demonstration in its eagerness to support favourite theories. The notion that our present high state of civilisation is no more than a "regeneration" is a vague sentiment, arising from the want of a more extended view of the progress of society, and the confinement of the field of vision to a limited circumference. The achievements of the past time, though great to the actors and era when they occurred, and thus in no way diminishing their merit in proportion to their means, were only a miniature of the present. From the earliest records of history, and the wild uncertain tales of tradition, we can find nothing to disprove the continuous movement of some portion of mankind, with more or less rapidity, towards a better and more enlarged state of things than had previously existed. A higher destiny is to be given to the world. Thus we justly confide in the slow but steady advance of humanity towards some point far more elevated than the present, though its remoteness should be extended beyond the conceivable bounds of our limited existences or those of many generations to come after our own. Why we are thus moved, and to what conclusion all may lead, is an impenetrable secret to living men.

In the examination of such a topic recourse must be had to history, the earlier records of which attach to that of the Jews, commencing with Abraham. Secondly, to those of Greece, for unhappily the nation older than either has left only its laborious and gigantic works to testify its antiquity. These marvels of Egypt, for we allude to that wonderful country, speak only to the vision in the ruin of temple and pyramid, and in a roll of kingly names, from which we learn that eighteen dynasties of its monarchs had passed away fifteen hundred years before Christ, when the first Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty began his reign! To what a remote period, therefore, must be ascribed the primary developments of human intelligence when even then it was sufficiently mature to erect such edifices as those of Karnac and Medinet Abou, two thousand years before the Augustan age, as Heeren, with justice, infers from a severe examination of the existing authorities. The remnants of the gigantic temple of Ammon (Isis and Osiris were no doubt subsidiary deities of later origin), while they seem to indicate extraordinary mechanical aid in their construction, were more probably the result of accumulated manual power, such as may be seen acting in the sculptures from Nineveh now in the British Museum. These sculptures exhibit a much ruder state of the arts than those in Egypt, but still show a great

advance beyond those of the South Sea Islanders, for example, or the works of the native Mexicans, where man, more uncultivated, is still more rudely displayed in the arts. We know too little of the age of Brahma, which preceded the Christian era many centuries, to state anything certain regarding it. If we turn to China, the age of Confucius, about five hundred and fifty years before Christ, only exhibits through his works the philosophical opinions which Greece, in a more lucid mode to Europeans, has left clearly defined. It was the remarkable advancement of mind in Greece, and a tendency from nature to cherish the poetical and imaginative, which out of the coarser models of Egyptian sculpture drew the rough outlines that, hallowed by the genius which bathed in beauty all which the Greeks attempted with the pen or chisel, made that people immortal in sculpture and architecture. Yet when Homer wrote we discover existing only the manners and customs of a young people compared to the subsequent progress of Greece at a more mature period of its history. The siege of Troy is carried on in description as it would be by a people of few resources but animal courage and strength of arm. The stratagem of the wooden horse even in Virgil's verse speaks little for the penetration of those entrapped by it, and much for their simple credulity. The heroes invested in the grandeur of conception of two great poets, display rude life in their personal conduct, and often in the sentiments they express. They remind us of Cæsar's description of the ancient inhabitants of England when he landed in Kent nineteen hundred years ago, and the Britons painted their bodies, going half naked, and divided into little coteries for their family arrangements, each having its wives in common. Nor was their Druidism any improvement upon the mythology of the old poets of Greece; it was more degrading, while that of the Greeks was surrounded with the halo of beauty which inspiration had kindled, and Grecian art embodied in brass and marble; representations of spiritual essences, beautiful beings strangers to our mortality.

The Jews, under a faith which dictated the devotional poetry of David and the proverbial philosophy of his son, were not a people of manners much more refined than their neighbours. David fought with a sling, and had been a shepherd-boy. They seem never to have much advanced in the practice of that wisdom of which Solomon gave them such beautiful and instructive lessons. This monarch carried on a considerable commerce, but it could not long have outlived himself, and terminated no doubt before the captivity.

Of the Assyrians, or rather their conquerors the Medes, and their intellectual advance beyond what brute power could effect, we have no records. The hanging gardens of Babylon, and the walls of that celebrated city, appear to have been the results of physical rather than intellectual power as compared with the works of Greece, easily accomplished under a despotism in a well-peopled country.

The Romans were imitators of the Greeks, whom they excelled in the art of war for conquest's sake. The philosophy of Rome was founded on that of Greece, from which and Rome the moderns alone can be supposed to have learned anything which has tended to their onward progress, and the debt must be honourably acknowledged. They were idolators; but the philosophers, both of Greece and Rome, gave little credit to the sup

pro

posed efficacy of images in religion, treating them as mere representations. Whether polytheism preceded or followed theism in the order of time is unknown. Some writers make theism the older worship, while many, it must be admitted, are of a contrary opinion. The religion of Brahma, for example, before India fell into the worship of a hundred misshapen deities, it is presumed was a pure theism, in an era of eastern history, which indicated a degree of civilisation and power far superior to its present condition. It is probable that idolatry grew out of the ignorance of the multitude, and thus the corruption of a purer worship followed. The multitude, "ever in the wrong," could not imagine an invisible tector. It was too great an effort for the vulgar mind to adore what was not present to the sense. The priest, therefore, satisfied the common desire, as Aaron did gratifying the Israelites with the golden calf. The Romans worshipped no visible images until a hundred and seventy years after the foundation of their city. There are now tribes of North American Indians who worship the "Great Spirit," and have no idols among them. Under Augustus the Romans were idolators, Rome being then at its highest pitch of glory. It was not so with her more illustrious and enlightened men, as just observed. They placed no faith in idols.* It was the same with many of the more eminent philosophers of Greece.

There are only two nations with which modern progress in a point or two can be satisfactorily compared. Our asserted "regeneration" must arise from Greece or Rome; and yet, if this be the case, we can only resemble those celebrated nations in trivialities. In a more important sense our "regeneration" took place about four hundred and fifty years ago, when the papal establishment was so deeply wounded by the Reformation and by the invention of printing. It is not easy to trace a resemblance to those two events in anything which occurred in antiquity. From the fall of imperial Rome, after the fourth century, to the above period, about a thousand years, the world of intellect and high art had fallen asleep. A triple-crowned impostor occupied the seat of the Cæsars, in influence if not openly, down to the middle of the eighth century, when Pope Stephen II. assumed temporal power, and redoubled vices in the heads of the Church commenced. Kings and people were treated with the same hauteur during all the papal millennium and its superstition, intellect and art being both stifled under the most degrading influences, and an empiricism the most insolent and impudent the world ever saw. Surely the present enlightened era cannot be deemed a revival of those times of God's self-styled vicegerent at Rome? The revival of the arts was almost coincident with the Reformation, which is singular, because the artists were mostly Catholic devotees, in profession at least. In fact, their faith imparted to some of them an enthusiasm, which, if not genius, fully supplied its place, and rekindled a love of art like that which warmed the statuary of Phidias, and infused colour and life into the works of Praxiteles and Xeuxis.

But if we do not progress, and our generations pass away only to complete a circle, it is singular we have no evidence handed down to us of the time when the Atlantic was navigated to the westward of the Pillars of

See Cicero de Legibus, lib. ii.; also De Natura Deorum; and Seneca. Nat. Quest., lib. ii. c. xlv.