us, or we to Portugal—the same of Spain—
that we should give either of them the
slightest preference, to the disparagement of
a neighbour whose loyalty and hearty good-fellowship
we are daily acknowledging with
uproarious shouts? "Defend us (in commerce)
from our friends!" the French may
fairly say; "a plague on such protection!"
In spite of the specious sophisms put forth
by red-tape writers—such as, that beer
and wine are one and the same, consumed by
identically the same class of persons, and
thirsted after under exactly the same bodily
conditions, and therefore replaceable one by
the other; a slight symptom has unmistakably
betrayed what the French themselves think
of the enormous tax which we lay on their
wines. The subject of one of the large semi-circular
transparencies which decorate each
end of the Palace of Industry is, Equity
presiding at the regulation of exchanges. It
is a broad hint, that if we prohibit wine, our
own staples must be prohibited in return.

"But," say the British knights of the Red-Tape
Garter, "you can't want wine, when you
have beer and porter; you can't require claret,
so long as you have abundance of whiskey
and gin. If I let you have claret cheap, you
will never more touch a drop of either beer,
porter, whiskey, or gin!"

If that be true, O second Solomon, why
do you ask your doctor for quinine, when
he offers you Epsom salts? Why do you
tease him for poppy-heads, while he would
give you plenty of cayenne pepper? Why
do you urge him to mix a sedative for
your stomach, when he has prepared you a
nice caustic gargle, which will cure, or give
you, a bad sore throat? What is the wretched
doctor to do, if you leave salts, pepper, and
fiery gargle, like mere drugs in the market,
on his hands? He will be obliged to shut
up shop: what happens to you is of no consequence.
Such, O Solomon, is your argument
about the admission of French wines
into England at a drinkable price for the
vulgar herd.

I have described the palatial cellars of
champagne—claret is housed, as well as
reared and educated, in a quite different
style. In the first place, its residence is not
called a "cave," or underground cellar, but a
"chai"—the local term for an above-ground
cellar, if such an expression be permissible.
The chais are all alike, differing only in
size and in the value of their contents.
There is a striking family likeness between
them, whether you visit the cellars of M.
Wustenbirg, peer of France, or peep into
those of a mere commoner. Their principle
is that of burrows contrived by rabbits
who have an objection to dwelling in subterranean
holes. In a chai, you might fancy
yourself in the clay-covered way or level
passage made by gigantic termites, to lead
from one mountainous ant-hill to another.
Though you are in the dark, breathing a
close, musty atmosphere, you feel instinctively
that you have not descended towards
the bowels of the earth, but are still taking
your walks upon its surface. From the Quai
(suppose des Chartrons), you enter a naked
mysterious-looking passage, whose open
mouth shelters beneath its shadow three or
four lounging guards or workmen. You walk
through continuations of this long, long
passage till you reach a sort of a cooper's
shop, where men are hammering and scraping
away at hollow-sounding purple-stained casks.
From the cooper's shop, a wooden railway
leads down to a dark yawning hole, rather
than a door. The venerable gates of this
temple of Bacchus, especially the internal
ones, are completely covered with dingy
mouldiness, as if they were made of fine old
Stilton cheese. Amidst the tubs, over which
you tumble as you approach the sanctuary,
are strong wooden boxes for packing the
bottled wine in. Some of these boxes hold
fifty bottles each; others, for England, hold
thirty-six, in compliance with the British
mode of calculation by dozens. A lighted
candle on the end of a stick is put into your
hand, and you enter the actual chai itself.
There you behold pyramids of "futailles," or
wine casks piled, stratum over stratum, in
four or five stories. The cellars leading out
of this chai are arched with solid stonework,
and altogether contain the modest assemblage
of some two thousand casks of claret; more
ambitious treasuries of wine collect as many
as from four to five thousand tubs. Here,
'fifty-one claret is the oldest they have in
wood, as five years is the utmost time it remains
in that state. 'Forty-four wine is the
oldest in bottle; for connoisseurs pay the
stock the compliment of clearing it off rapidly.
Three years is the shortest continuance
in wood—that is, of wine that deserves
to be called wine. Ordinary wines are looked
upon as merely ephemeral and plebeian
drinks. Claret improves much in bottle;
but—and the but is everything—it is of great
importance who puts it into bottle, and how.
There is a great deal of good wine spoiled in
France by carelessness in bottling, and by
false economy in the article of corks. You
have often the vexation to find respectable
liquor acidified and tainted by the trumpery
pegs with which it is stopped. It is a penny-wise
pound-foolish saving. A few extra
pence bestowed on long velvety corks, and a
shilling or two more on the employment of a
practised bottler, will be found to be money
well laid out by whoever has a hogshead of
wine in store.

Air is considered injurious to the claret,
and therefore our chai is well ceiled with
wood. Luxuriant mouldiness is the sign of a
good cellar, and there is nothing to complain
of here in that line. Mr. Berkeley might
give a famous clinical lecture to a class of
mycological students. The mouldiness on
the casks envelopes them, like a coating of