A fair young form was nestled near me,
A dear, dear face looked fondly up,
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me
-There's no one now to share my cup.

I drink it as the Fates ordain it.

Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes :
Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it
In memory of dear old times.

Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is ;
And sit you down and say your grace
With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is.
-Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse !
William Makepeace Thackeray.

Old Veuve

THEY

HEY were known at the house of the turtle and the attractive Old Veuve: a champagne of a sobered sweetness, of a great year, a great age, counting up to the extremer maturity attained by wines of stilly depths; and their worthy comrade, despite the wanton sparkles, for the promoting of the state of reverential wonderment in rapture, which an ancient wine will lead to, well you wot. The silly-girly sugary crudity has given way to the womanly suavity, matronly composure, with yet the sparkles; they ascend; but hue and flavour tell of a soul that has come to a lodgement there. It conducts the youthful man

to temples of dusky thought; philosophers partaking of it are drawn by the arms of garlanded nympths about their necks into the fathomless of inquiries. It presents us with a sphere, for the pursuit of the thing we covet most. It bubbles over mellowness; it has, in the marriage with Time, extracted a spice of individuality from the saccharine: by miracle, one would say, were it not for our knowledge of the right noble issue of Time when he and good things unite. There should be somewhere legends of him—the wine-flask. There must be meanings to that effect in the Mythology, awaiting unravelment. For the subject opens to deeper than cellars, and is a tree with vast ramification of the roots and the spreading growth, whereon half if not all the Mythic Gods, Inferior and Superior, Infernal and Celestial, might be shown sitting in concord, performing in concert, harmoniously receiving sacrificial offerings of the black or the white; and the black not extinguishing the fairer fellow. Tell us of a certainty that Time has embraced the wine-flask, then may it be asserted (assuming the great year for the wine, i.e. combinations above) that a speck of the white within us who drink will conquer, to rise in main ascension over volumes of the black. It may, at a greater venture, but confidently, be said in plain speech, that the Bacchus of auspicious birth induces ever to the worship of the loftier deities.

George Meredith. ("One of our Conquerors.")

To R. A. M. S.

THE Spirit of Wine

Sang in my glass, and I listened

With love to his odorous music,
His flushed and magnificent song.

-"I am health, I am heart, I am life! For I give for the asking

The fire of my father the sun,

And the strength of my mother the earth,
Inspiration in essence,

I am wisdom and wit to the wise,

His visible muse to the poet,

The soul of desire to the lover,

The genius of laughter to all.

Come, lean on me, ye that are weary, Rise, ye faint-hearted and doubting, Haste, ye that lag by the way!

I am pride, the consoler ;

Valour and hope are my henchmen ;

I am the angel of rest.

“I am life, I am wealth, I am fame!
For I captain an army

Of shining and generous dreams;
And mine, too, all mine, are the keys
Of that secret spiritual shrine,

Where, his work-a-day soul put by,
Shut in with his saint of saints-

With his radiant and conquering self !—
Man worships, and talks, and is glad.

"Come, sit with me, ye that are lonely,
Ye that are paid with disdain,

Ye that are chained, and would soar !
I am beauty and love;

I am friendship, the comforter;

I am that which forgives and forgets."

The Spirit of Wine

Sang in my heart, and I triumphed
In the savour and scent of his music,
His magnetic and mastering song.
W. E. Henley.

Claret

I

LIKE Claret. Whenever I can have Claret I must drink it, 'tis the only palate affair that I am at all sensual in. For really 'tis so fine-it fills one's mouth with gushing freshness—then goes down cool and feverless-then you do not feel it quarrelling with your liver-no, it is rather a Peacemaker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape; then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal Part of it mounts

into the Brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments like a bully in a badhouse looking for his trull, and hurrying from door to door bouncing against the wainscot, but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace so gently that you do not feel his step. Other wines of a heavy and spiritous nature transform a man into a Silenus: this makes him a Hermes and gives a Woman the soul and immortality of an Ariadne, for whom Bacchus always kept a good cellar of claret--and even of that he could never persuade her to take above two cups. I said this same claret is the only palate-passion I have I forgot game-I must plead guilty to the breast of a partridge, the back of a hare, the backbone of a grouse, the wing and side of a pheasant, and a woodcock passim.

An Aged and a Great Wine

THE

John Keats.

'HE leisurely promenade up and down the lawn with ladies and deferential gentlemen, in anticipation of the dinner-bell, was Dr. Middleton's evening pleasure. He walked as one who had formerly danced (in Apollo's and the young god Cupid's) elastic on the muscles of the calf and foot, bearing his iron-grey head in grand elevation. The hard labour of the day approved the cooling exercise and the crowning refreshments of French cookery