"Talking of the Duke," he went on, "I was with the Duchess at the opera the other night, and somebody rushed in in morning dress saying he had come to see Orpheus, so I said, And Eurydice' (and you-rid-I-see). Ha! ha! Why, there is Lady Willow!"

"That's from Horace Walpole," said Granville.

"Thank God," we both exclaimed as Morris left us, having told us two Joe Millers, the numbers and pages of which we both knew.

We had hardly gone a hundred yards further before I ran against Sir Alfred Laurell. “Ah, how do you do? Everybody here. What have I been in Paris for? Why, you see I am publishing a little volume of poems (you have my last), and I thought a little jeu d'esprit about the Exhibition might be happy. I have just hit upon what I think I may venture to call a very felicitous idea. Here is the couplet

Si Paridem palmam Veneri tribuisse refertur ;

Nunc Paridi summum dat Venus ipsa decus.'

You see the alliteration in the first line: my great difficulty was the rendering of Paris. Lutetia would

not do; I thought, therefore, Paris might combine everything: pretty, isn't it? I am going to send it to the Emperor."

"Will there be anything besides that?" asked Granville.

66

Well, not much," said Sir Alfred; "I think voluminous publications a mistake; perhaps a sonnet or two-one in which I compare the Prince Imperial to the Exhibition-happy? Yes, and another to the shade of Rabelais -quite novel. The first begins Quare puer.''

66

Surely," said Granville, "the e is long."

"Of course-of course, my writing is so bad. 'Quare ver,' it should be. We shall meet again. Goodbye."

Lady Willow saw us as we were leaving the station and said, "Why did you not come to my party last night at Paris?"

"We were not asked," said Granville.

"What a mistake! I will speak to my cook about it." "Besides," I said, we were not in Paris."

66

"Oh! I thought I saw you yesterday morning."

A little further on was Lord Fryston.

"Well," said Granville, "I hear you had Cora Pearl, the Emperor, Montalembert, and Swinburne to breakfast yesterday."

"No, the day before," he answered.

And this was the result of our leaving England to avoid our fellow-countrymen !

Of course the sea was moving about uneasily, and we saw from the appearance of the steamer which had just come in that we were going to have a rough passage. Granville, however, had rushed off and engaged a deck cabin, where at any rate we could escape from our acquaintances, and "seigneurifier" ourselves. There is nothing more amusing than to see the impertinent manner in

which passengers walk up and down the deck while the steamer is quite close to the railway-station, and at least half a mile from the nearest wave. Everybody looked pleased, with the exception of a woman dressed in a black velvet gown covered with bugles, who perhaps felt that the choice she had made of a dress was hardly a judicious one, unless she was a very good sailor. Granville had

already taken up a very comfortable position upon one of the sofas in our cabin, and was tranquilly reading about the physiology of the stomach. I looked over his shoulder, and marvelled at the imperturbability with which he looked upon such representations as these,* and at the astounding strength of his digestion. I could only revenge myself by quoting Greek. So when he said how nice the land looked, I replied,

“ Ὅταν δὲ θάλασσα

Κυρτὸν ἐπαφρίζῃ τὰ δὲ κύματα μακρὰ μετ μήνῃ

Ἐς χθόνα παπταίνω καὶ δένδρεα, τὰν δ ̓ ἅλα φεύγω.”

I only wished that I could; but my quotation had the desired effect, for Granville dislikes Greek as much as the House of Commons, partly owing to the fact that his know ledge of that language is not quite what it used to be.

2 P. M. An impertinent man comes into our cabin, and hangs his coat upon a peg. He looks like a relation of Morris. The boat is just beginning to move, upon which three women immediately go to the cabin. The woman in black velvet groans. Three sailors cover her with long black things with bits of rope running up and down them. They all ask for money. She sends them to her husband. They all look for him, and can't find him, and then come back to her. She does not look happy.

2.15.-Only six men are walking about. The impertinent man is smoking. Lady Willow has sent

for the steward, and wants to know how long it will be before we are at Dover. He says, "It won't be long first." Lady Willow looks happier.

3 P.M.-The impertinent man has come for his coat. He has put away his cigar. The steward brings us two china basins. Everybody else has tin ones. I ask Granville whether the difference of composition has any effect upon the stomach. He does not answer. Lady Willow has sent again for the steward, and asks whether he can see Dover, and how soon we shall be there. He says he "could see Dover if it was clear, and that we shall be there directly."

3.45.-The impertinent man is as helpless as a baby. He has lost his hat, and the steward is asking him for his ticket. His answer is inaudible. Finally, he says he is going to die. The steward disbelieves him, for he again asks for his ticket. Granville has read a page and a half from the place where the pictures were. I ask him what the causes of sickness are and what particular part of the body is first acted upon? but he does not answer.

4 P.M.-Everybody is quite quiet. Lady Willow believes that by some mistake she is in a boat which goes straight to America.

4.15 P.M.-Two hundred people are amusing themselves on the pier by watching us land, and I endeavour in vain to give them the impression that I have enjoyed my passage exceedingly.

Mr Middlesex, M. P.-"You have just come, Mr Granville, from Luxemburg. What is the impression there about affairs in the present crisis?"

Granville." It is very difficult to give any correct impression of what is the real bias of the inhabitants. I naturally gave a good deal of attention to the subject

when we were there (Lord Surrey and three other M.P.'s join us); and although you see, for the most part, French names written up over the shops, the inclination is on the other side, I conceive. The town itself, I need not say (the four M.P.'s look as if it was unnecessary to give them any information), is simply interesting in a strategical point of view. You know its position" (nobody answers). Granville sees that nobody has been there, and launches forth into a detailed account of the site.

"Is it an important place in the event of a war?"

"No," said Granville. "I have no doubt it would not be attacked. The enemy would pass by it, and it would simply render useless a body of some thousand men ; and as France has already two fortresses, by means of which she could threaten the German frontier, I own I do not see the importance of the question."

A blue woman, who came up,

that they may not prepare for themselves a triste vieillesse.'"

"Precisely so. I want a new sensation. I have only two in reserve-that of being abused is the first."

"And the other?"

"The one the prince experienced who complained to his wife of having never been able to shiver-' a basin of cold water full of little fishes poured over one in bed.'"

"Blagueur! at any rate say that I have nothing whatever to do with it."

"Certainly. By the by, I forgot to tell you Marie comes to town next week."

FOR thousands of years it has been the general belief of the most civilised nations of the world that wine was one of the noblest gifts of Heaven to the human race-a gift, like all others, to be temperately enjoyed and gratefully acknowledged. The races of men that lived in southern climates, which produced the grape in sufficient abundance and excellence for conversion into wine, drank the good liquor with sobriety and thankfulness, and with no more idea of wrong-doing than they had when eating their daily bread. Nations less favourably situated, inhabiting colder northern climes, unadapted to the growth of the grape, discovered a substitute in beer, and they also enjoyed the blessing, and did not, as a rule, indulge in excess any more than their wine-drinking contemporaries. Of late years, and more especially in Great Britain and America-wine being too expensive for the bulk of the people, and unknown to them for the most part except by hearsay, and good beer being non-existent in America and heavily taxed, and greatly adulterated in Great Britain-a taste for alcoholic drinks has unfortunately arisen, and produced an excessive indulgence, which in its turn has produced many social evils which all wise men deplore. To remedy these evils, a sect of fanatics has sprung up on both sides of the Atlantic, whose principle is, that because some men drink too much whisky, no man, if they can prevent it, shall be allowed to drink any whisky-and, most tyrannical and unreasonable prohibition of all, any wine or beer.

To rob a poor man of his beer, or a rich man of his wine, will not, however, be found an easy task. The public opinion of the European races is clearly against the attempt. The temperance of the people in

the wine countries is a fact that is alone worth all the arguments against the use of wine which the temperance intolerants have ever yet brought forward.

There is a little German anacreontic which well expresses the fancy and feeling of the Continental nations on this subject. It tells that an angel, visiting the earth some time after the subsidence of the Deluge, discovered Father Noah sitting at noon in the shadow of a figtree looking very disconsolate. The angel inquired the cause of his grief. Noah replied that the noon-time heats were oppressive, and that he was thirsty and had nothing to drink. drink. "Nothing to drink!" said the angel. "Look around! Do not the rains fall, and the rivers run; and is there not a spring of water bubbling up at thy cottage door?"-"It is true," answered Noah, smiting his breast, "that there is abundance of water in which thy servant can bathe; but, alas! when I think of the multitudes of strong men, of beautiful women, and of innocent children, and the countless host of animals that were drowned in the Flood, the idea of water becomes distasteful, and my lips refuse to drink."-"There is reason in what thou sayest," replied the angel, and, spreading his snowwhite wings, he flew up to heaven, swift as a lightning-flash, and while the eyes of Noah were still dazzled by the brightness of his presence returned with some stocks of the vine, which he taught the grateful patriarch how to plant and tend, and, when the fruit was ripe, how to press into wine. This, says the song, was the source of all the beneficent and benevolent drinks which the world owes to the grape. The idea enshrined in this German legend of the divine origin of wine, prevails in every country where the grape is cultivated. We know what

the Greeks thought upon the matter, and how they deified Bacchus, whom they imagined to have been the first to teach ignorant mankind the arts of the vintager. To the imagination of the temperate Greeks Bacchus was indeed divine, and represented the moderate enjoyment of the bounties of nature. It was left to the intemperate Romans to vulgarise the godlike Bacchus, and to represent him somewhat after the fashion in which the Greeks represented Silenus, who was the visible type of excess, bestiality, and drunkenness, with a form only half human. In France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Greece, and all modern countries where wine is made, the vice of intemperance is exceedingly rare. The French are proverbially sober, though the peasant can purchase a litre of good wine at a price lower than that at which the English farm-labourer is compelled to buy the villanous swipes which dishonest publicans drug and dole out to him. The peasantry of Spain, Portugal, and Italy are equally temperate, though wine is a daily article of their diet, and is cheap enough to be at the command of the poorest. Up to within the last fifty or sixty years, scarcely any one either in England or America ever thought of opposing his individual judgment in this respect against that of all antiquity and all modern experience. But the meddlesomeness which is one of the most palpable and disagreeable vices of our Anglo-Saxon civilisation, and which always breaks out when we are not engaged in some all-engrossing foreign war, has begun to invade the private liberty of the citizen in this matter, as it might with as much reason invade it in the matter of what he should eat. Moses and Mohammed forbade pork. Pythagoras forbade beans; while the English and American oinophobists set Moses and Mohammed at defiance, laugh Pythagoras to scorn, and not only eat pork and beans them

VOL. CII.-NO. DCXXII.

selves, but graciously allow every one else the same privilege. But when their countrymen partake of the dish that is a favourite in both hemispheres, and would wash it down with beer, as is customary among the poor, or with wine, as the rich prefer, they launch their anathemas against one half of the feast, and denounce the partakers thereof as bad citizens, who ought to be punished and restrained.

This class of zealots, wise in their own conceit, but ignorant and ty rannical, have lately "erupted," as our American friends would say, with more than their usual virulence, both in America and in England. Negro slavery being dead and buried, a large class of agitators have been left without a grievance. To be without a grievance is in their case to be powerless and insignificant; to be without a trumpet to blow a blast upon is to be miserable; to have nothing with which to make a noise in the world is to have nothing worth living for. So they have taken up the liquor question, and resolved, if they can, to make us all abstainers by Act of Parliament and of Congress.

These people are as intolerant as inquisitors. They stand upon the fundamental principle that even the smallest quantity of beer, wine, or spirits is poisonous; that to prevent people from drinking these poisons is to prevent them from committing self-slaughter, and that such prevention is a virtuous act. They allege, moreover, that the majority of men are such fools and slaves to their appetites, that if they are allowed to take a little of what is not good for them, they are certain to take too much; and that the taking of too much leads to idiocy, lunacy, pauperism, and crime. They bring a large array of indisputable facts and incontrovertible arguments to prove the evils of excess; but they adduce no facts to show that wine and beer, and, to a minor extent, spirituous