If a butt of sherry is too high in colour, take a quart of warm sheep or lamb's blood, mix it with the wine, and when thoroughly fine draw it off, when you will find the wine as pale as necessary.

To colour Claret.-Take as many as you please of damascenes, or black sloes, and stew them with some dark coloured wine, and as much sugar as will make it into a sirup. This will colour either claret or port.

Frenchmen have been known to purchase large quantities of Herefordshire cider, and manufacture it into fine sparkling champagne.

Bitter almonds are used to give a nutty flavour to wine,--sweet briar, orris-root, clary, cherry laurel water, and elder flowers, form the bouquet of high flavoured wines; alum renders meagre wine bright;—brazil wood, cake of pressed elder berries, and bilberries render pale faint coloured port of a deep purple: oak saw dust, and husks of filberts, give additional astringency to unripe red wines ;—the crust of port wines, which is supposed to be an unquestionable evidence of age, is often produced by a saturated solution of cream of tartar, coloured with brazil wood or cochineal.

The following table of the exports of wine from Oporto to the Channel Islands, and of imports from the Channel Islands to London, may give the reader some idea of the extent to which the manufacture of wine is carried:

According to the Custom-House books of Oporto, for the year 1812, 135 pipes and 20 hogsheads were shipped for Guernsey: in the same year there were landed at the London Docks, 2,545 pipes and 162 hogsheads, from that Island reported to be port wine.

If the reader should require more facts upon this subject, he may find an abundance in Bacchus, on the adulteration of wines; and as he reads them, he must blush for those Christians who dare insinuate that the deadly wines of modern times are the same as those referred to in the Sacred Volume. "The wine that cheereth the heart of man," that our Lord made at the marriage of Cana, or that he used at the first sacrament, could not have

been charged with 24 per cent. of alcohol, because distilled spirits was then unknown; nor can we believe that it was made out of cider, logwood or lead; and the wines being different, the argument from Scripture can have no weight with any reflecting mind.

Thus on whatever aspect or side we look at this question, we see the reasonableness, propriety, advantage and duty of total abstinence. The nourishment of malt liquor is a delusion; numbers of medical men have set their faces against its use. I know a physician, who, with strange inconsistency, recommends weak brandy and water, but who, most unequivocally condemns beer and cider. Brewers hardly ever drink even their own good ales. Several spirit merchants tremble to drink their own gin, and many wine sellers know that there is death in their wines. In the evidence before the House of Commons, it was stated that medical men have, in several cases, destroyed and ruined their patients by recommending them to drink spirits. Let the nation then awake from the lethargy into which it has been thrown, by these infatuating and maddening drinks, let science, let religion do their duty, then the accursed spell will be broken, and Britain shall be as prosperous, as happy, as enlightened and moral, as the high privileges and blessings she can command declare that she ought to be.

Some persons who have adopted total abstinence have immediately begun to eat a great deal more than they did formerly, to make up for the beer and wine that they have abandoned, and in a short time have become ill, and thus have said, that total abstinence did not agree with them. And of course it did not under these circumstances, because they exchanged drinking for gluttony, and soon began to suffer from plethora or indigestion. Now it is found from much observation, that a tee-totaller can live on less food than a moderate drinker. He suffers less from absorption and exhaustion, what he eats is better digested, and therefore his system does not demand so much nutriment, and if he eat more because he drinks less, he will suffer in some way or other; those who by drunkenness have lost all appetite for food will, on becoming teetotallers, have a good appetite return in a short time, but those who felt the cravings which moderate drinking occasions will, on practising total abstinence, find that they can do with less food than formerly.

CHAPTER V.

History of Inebriating and of Unfermented Drinks. 1. Various kinds of Intoxicating Substances. 2. Obstructions to Fermentation in Hot Countries. 3. Boiling of Wines mentioned by Pliny, Columella, Mr. Buckingham, and others. 4. Drugs mixed with the Juice of the Grape, shown by quotations from Columella, Pliny, Homer, Louth, &c. 5. Different kinds of Wine, innumerable, proved from Virgil, Pliny, Columella, &c. 6. Various meanings of the word Wine. 7. Receipts for making Unfermented Wine, from Columella and Pliny. 8. "Vinum Lixivum," " Semper Dulce," "Aigleuces," &c. 9. Testimony of Aristotle concerning Wines that would not Intoxicate; of Polybius, Pliny, Horace, and Plutarch. 10. Dilution of Wines. 11. Grecian Wines. 12. Roman Wines; Opimian, Falernian the only Wine that would burn. 13. Inerticulum, or Amethystos, Sober Wine; Cato's Family Wine, &c. 14. Pliny and Dr. Ure on Filtering Wines, and thereby preventing Fer15. "Utilissimum Vinum" of Pliny. 16. Plutarch on Wines that would not Intoxicate. 17. Theophrastus, Delphin notes on Horace. 18. Unintoxicating Wines the most popular. Ancient idea of the term Drunkard, Tricongius. 20. On the terms Wine, Port, Sherry, &c.; Gleucos, Hepsema, Siræum, Passum, Defrutum, Sapa, Protropum, Mustum, Stum, &c. 21. Wormwood Wine, Wine drunk by Noah, Lot, Pharaoh. 22. Grapes eaten; Chaldeans, Assyrians, Persians. 23. Wines of Homer, Alexander, and Androcydes. 24. Romans, Ancient Britons. 25. Testimonies of the Ancients respecting the injurious effects of intoxicating Wines; Aristotle, Pliny, especially Philo-Judæus.

mentation.

19.

BEFORE we enter on the history of inebriat ing liquors, it may be proper to mention a few of those substances which either possess an intoxicating quality, or have been rendered so by fermentation.

Milk, the most nutritious of all beverages, -and which contains in itself both food and drink, and therefore, without exception, the most perfect of all liquors-milk, by some nations, has been converted into an inebriating beverage. The Tartars and Calmucks distil mares' or cows' milk, and obtain about six ounces of strong spirit from twenty-one pounds of milk! They are almost as wise and economical as we are in making beer from barley.

Most persons are aware of the extent to which opium is used among the Turks, and the listless idleness and sensuality that it pruduces. The Koran forbids them the use of wine, and, as a substitute, they have recourse to opium. This pestiferous drug has been imported into China in very large quantities, and so extensive has been its use, and so demoralising its influence on the Chinese, that the government of that country has taken alarm, and refuses to trade with us in tea, unless we cease to import into their country this baneful narcotic. It

is a lamentable fact, that some of our own countrymen and fair countrywomen have adopted the use of this poison. Poor Coleridge deeply bewailed his folly in using so pernicious a drug. "The dreams of an opium eater" appear not to have been fabulous. Paralysis, lowness of spirits, aliena

tion of mind, convulsions, madness, apoplexy and death, are among the natural effects of the use of this poison. It was stated to the committee of the House of Commons, that in some parts of the north of England beer-drinking has brought on the vile practice of eating opium. Some of the poor women there are in the habit of taking it very largely. In the book of Genesis we twice read of "myrrh :" in each place the Hebrew word is 2, Lot. The Arabic term for the same gum is ledum, or ladanum, whence we have also the Greek ληδον and ληδανον, the Latin ladanum, and the English laudanum. All these words are evidently derived from the same root, and refer to the same substance. Wine mingled with myrrh was offered to our Lord at his passion; but he would not drink it. This was a stupifying draught-wine mixed with opium, or some preparation of that drug, resembling laudanum, was administered to criminals for the purpose of lessening their sense of pain. And we shall presently have occasion to show that ancient eastern wines owed their chief intoxicating quality to stupifying and poisonous ingredients.

The

The plant called wild hemp is used as an inebrient in some parts of the East. people manufacture its leaves into a ball, which they call "bang," and which they swallow. It produces tranquillity of mind, makes them laugh and sing involuntarily, and, like opium, it is said to stimulate courage and excite sensual propensities. It seems that the common flax plant possesses similar properties, and we know that flaxseed is used to give a greater intoxicating power to beer.

In some of the South Sea Islands they make an intoxicating liquor from a root called "kava,' species of pepper. The mode of preparing it is filthy in the extreme. The servants are employed to chew it, and spit it, when well chewed, into a bowl, and after enough is prepared, water is poured upon it to make it of a sufficient strength; after being well mixed and strained, about a quarter of a pint is drunk. It is disagreeable to the taste, produces stupefaction, and in time reduces those who drink it to skeletons. Filthy as this liquor appears, could the English tippler tell all that has been put into his beer, wine, gin, &c., to make them sufficiently potent, he would be little disposed to revile the beastly taste of the South Sea islanders, or to pique himself on his own more refined appetite.

In Java and Savu the nations make wine, which they call "tuac," from the fan-palm. On cutting the buds a juice exudes, some of which is partly converted into sugar, and partly into wine, by fermentation. This liquor, in its unfermented state, is the common drink of the natives.

In some parts of India wine is prepared

strong alcoholic cider out of very sweet apples, and for the same reason it is impossible to obtain strong wines from very sweet grapes. But the grapes of Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, &c., were exceedingly sweet. If in France, where the saccharine qualities of the grape are most favourable to perfect fermentation, the wines, when unmixed with alcohol are weak; if the strongest wine that the pure juice of the grape yields, does not contain more than eight per cent. of spirit, then how weak the wines must have been in those climates whose high temperature gave to the fruits an excess of saccharine matter; and consequently the wines of Palestine and other hot climates, if allowed to ferment previous to the invention of stills and distillation, must have had in them a very small portion of alcohol, and for want of more spirit would immediately have turned sour.

2. The heat of eastern countries must have been very injurious to the vinous fermentation of their very saccharine, and consequently, weak wines. We are told on the best scientific authority, that at a temperature of 75 degrees, the acetous fermentation of such liquors will commence. In England we have often witnessed the effects of a less degree of heat than is here mentioned in turning beer and cider sour, and which has arisen solely from the increase of temperature producing the acetous fermentation. I have known a cellar of the finest beer, and casks of the most beautiful cider, become almost as acid as vinegar in consequence of a little increase of heat. On this account it is that we prefer brewing in spring or autumn-that we keep our fermented drinks in cellars-and carefully regulate the temperature by the thermometer. Now the beer and cider of England are far stronger than the fermented wines of hot countries could be. How difficult, then, must it have been, in very warm climates, to have prevented the acetous fermentation of liquors that contained in them so small a portion of alcohol; and especially so, seeing they had no pure spirit to add to them, nor but little of our scientific knowledge or arts, to direct them in regulating the heat, or in constructing suitable repositories for these liquors. None of our countrymen think of brewing, or of making cider from apples in India; yet this is quite as possible as to make fermented wines from the sweet grapes of those warm climates. Among the Greeks we learn that the same room constituted the wardrobe, the armory and the wine-cellar. It is also well ascertained that the sweeter any wine is, the smaller must be the proportion of alcohol it contains, because the sugar has not been decomposed, and therefore the more readily will it pass into the acetous fermentation. But all the wines of hot coun

tries must have been exceedingly sweet and proportionably weak, and consequently always in danger of becoming acetous and if very sweet, they must have been almost or entirely destitute of spirit; and if they became sour, they were equally weak, because the acetous fermentation does not

produce alcohol. In some vinegar, before it is distilled, there may be one per cent. of spirit, but this arises from the imperfect process of the transition of the liquor into an acid. In such cases the whole of the alcohol has not been oxygenised. Thus

the sweetness of the fruits and of the juices, together with the high temperature of the climate must have been fatal to the existence of strong alcoholic wines. Dr. Shaw's testimony respecting Palm wine-the sakar, or strong drink of Scripture—contains an historical fact which exactly accords with the observations of science. "This liquor," says he," which has a more luscious sweetness than honey, is of the consistence of a thin sirup but quickly grows tart and ropy." His further observation, that a spirit called "araky" could be distilled from it, is in exact accordance with the fact that a small portion of spirit can be obtained from vinegar by distillation; but as distilling was unknown in ancient days, this poison was not obtained from tart or ropy wines; and therefore it became an important object in those climates to prevent fermentation. their wines fermented they were for the most part lost; for, if tart and ropy, they were unpalatable, and as they knew not how to obtain spirit from them by distillation, the juice of the grape was as completely spoiled as our beer or cider would be if manufactured in a hot summer and kept in very warm rooms.

If

3. We have seen that distillation was not practised until the 9th century, nor did ardent spirit come into general use until the latter part of the 16th, consequently there was, previous to this period, no alcohol to mix with wines and give them a potency which they did not naturally possess. In modern times you may make a sweet wine as strong as you please by the addition of brandy, as you may make gin and water as sweet as you please by the addition of sugar; but before the discovery of spirits of wine all fermented liquors must have contained in them only as much alcohol as there was of the sugar converted into that poison, and therefore, if the wines were sweet, the vinous fermentation, if it had taken place at all, must have been very imperfect; and if they were sour, their acidity proved that the acetous fermentation had neutralised the vinous, which had previously taken place. In each instance these artificial beverages must have been far from potent, and in most cases were entirely destitute of alcohol.

These statements, which are borne out by the most credible scientific authorities and experiments, may account for the ancient mode of manufacturing wine. In Greece, Rome, and Palestine it was customary to boil down their wines into a kind of sirup. Mr. Buckingham tells us that the "wines of Helbon" and "wine of Lebanon" mentioned in Scripture, and which exist in the Holy Land at this very day, are boiled wines, and consequently are thick, sweet, and sirupy. Columella, Pliny, and other Roman writers tell us, that in Italy and Greece it was common to boil their wines. The "sapa and defrutum" of the Latins, and the Epnua and Zigator of the Greeks, which Pliny calls "siræum and hepsema," and adds that they answered to the sapa and defrutum of the Latins,* were boiled wines. In making "sapa" the juice of the grape was boiled down to one half, and in "defrutum" to one third, so that in the former case one half of the water was evaporated, and in the latter two thirds. These liquors must have been sirups, and every chemist knows that if they were thick sirups they could not have undergone the vinous fermentation. The practice of evaporating the juice of the grape must have been adopted in Palestine as a wise precaution against the heat of the country; for by this operation a considerable portion of the water was boiled away, the solid and saccharine substances of the grape were brought into a thicker consistence, and the acetous fermentation prevented. This historical fact respecting the boiling of grape juice furnishes us with four incontrovertible proofs that the wines of Palestine were not alcoholic, or did not obtain their inebriating power from vinous fermentation.

For,

1. As the water was evaporated by boiling, the quantity of saccharine matter must have borne a greater proportion to the liquid that was left, this was therefore equal to an increase of sugar. But we have seen that in hot countries, the excess of sugar, naturally found in the grape, is unfavourable to the vinous fermentation; but if a portion of the liquid be evaporated, the remaining juice must be still more saccharine, and therefore fermentation would be prevented.

2. It is stated on the highest chemical authority, that juices which are thick or sirupy are not of a consistence sufficiently liquid to admit of vinous fermentation; and therefore boiling down the juice of the fruit to one third or one half of its original quantity, must have produced a sirup, or a liquid too thick to ferment.

3. We have the most unquestionable evidence that the wines of the ancients were thick and sweet, or, in other words, were sirups, but you cannot make a sirup out of a fermented wine. The sugar has been de * Pliny, B. 14, c. 9.

| composed, part of it has escaped in the form of carbonic acid, and the other part remains in the form of alcohol; and, therefore, you cannot condense the carbonic acid, for that is gone; you cannot condense the alcohol which remains in the wine, for that will begin to escape before the liquor boils; and you cannot condense the water, for that will fly off in the form of steam; and the small residuum that remains will not be a sirup, but a substance which, when thoroughly dried, more resembles cinders than sugar, and probably consists chiefly of carbon or charcoal, or some other hard indigestible substance. I have boiled the juice of the grape before it has fermented, and by so doing have obtained a rich sirup, or rather a beautiful aromatic honey, and this when diluted with water, formed a most delicious drink. The thickness of the sirup, of course, depended on the length of time that it boiled or the evaporation that had taken place. But I never could condense a fermented wine. In some cases, the liquor has become so sour as to defy my power to sweeten it; but, in every case, the spirit has first escaped, then the water or steam, and the residuum from a pint of wine has been very small indeed, and very unlike a sirup. Let any wine drinker attempt to inspissate his port, sherry, or claret, and he will labour in vain. You cannot by boiling thicken or produce a sirup from any modern fermented wines, and hence you have a proof equal to any demonstration of Euclid, that if the ancient wines were thick and sweet, they were not fermented. And as they were ignorant of distillation, they had no pure alcohol to put into their wines; if, therefore, their thick, sweet, wines were inebriating, they were made so by drugs, but were not stupifying from spirit obtained by fermentation, and consequently altogether unlike our modern intoxicating beverages.

4. We know that at the heat of 170 degrees, and therefore long before boiling, alcohol begins to depart: if, then, the wines had undergone the vinous fermentation, still all the alcohol would have been boiled out of them in the process of decoction. Hence science allows us to conclude that in hot countries boiled wines could not contain alcohol. I have said in "hot countries," because in those climates the fruits in their natural state are too sweet for perfect vinous fermentation; but in colder countries, in whose fruits there may be a deficiency of sugar and an excess of water, boiling the juice of the grape may evaporate the redundant water, and leave the juice sufficiently saccharine for the production of alcohol. But the effect of decoction which, to a certain extent, would be favourable to fermentation in a cold climate, would be fatal to it in such warm countries as Palestine, Syria, Egypt, or even Greece, in which the