away the spirit or potency that torments the head of the drinker; and, this being removed, the wine is reduced to a state both mild, salubrious, and wholesome." These words, it should be remembered, are those of a writer on conviviality; and who, most probably, often mixed with the drinkers of his day, and yet he affirms that wines destitute of any strength or spirit were most esteemed; were indeed most valued, because they would not make a man drunk, or a fool.

It seems that the filtering, mentioned in the passages quoted above, was generally performed before the wine was allowed to ferment. Chimistry informs us that gluten is as essential to fermentation as sugar; hence we always use yeast, which is gluten, in fermenting malt liquor; in the juice of the grape, or apples, when not too sweet, gluten exists in a natural state. But gluten is a most insoluble body, and therefore the frequent filtering of the must would deprive it of this principle so essential to fermentation. On the words of Horace, "Liques vina," Car., lib. 1, ode 11, the Delphin notes contain the following explanation:"Be careful to prepare for yourself wine percolated and defœcated by the filter, and thus rendered sweet and more in accordance to nature and a female taste. Certainly the ancients strained and defœcated their must through the filter repeatedly before they could have fermented: and by this process, taking away the fœces that nourish and increase the strength of the wine, they rendered them more liquid, weaker, lighter, and sweeter, and more pleasant to drink." Theophrastus called such wine as had been " castratum," deprived of allits strength, "notkov," "moral wine." Indeed all these ancient writers, when speaking of the removal of the "vim, vi, vires,”. -the potency, or fermentable power, of their wine-use the words "eunuchum," " castratum, ""effæminatum," fructum," &c. and therefore show how completely they wished to deprive these liquors of everything that could intoxicate.

In confirmation of what has already been said, I think it important to add, in this place, a few quotations from Dr. Ure's Dictionary of the Arts, &c., and from which the reader will perceive the effect which either boiling or filtering the juice of the grape would have in preventing fermentation. Dr. Ure observes,

"The circumstances which promote and are necessary to the vinous fermentation are the following:

1. The pressure of a proper quantity of active yeast, and its proper distribution through the worts. If in the course of fermentation the yeast subsides to the bottom: the intestine motions cease entirely, but they may be excited anew by stirring up the ingredients, or "rousing the tun" as the brewers say.

"2. A certain degree of warmth which should not be less than 51° Fahrenheit nor more than 86; the temperature from 68 to 77 being the most propitious for the commencement and progress of fermentation. When other circumstances are the same, the rapidity of the fermentation is proportional to the temperature within certain limits, so that, by lowering it, the action may be moderated at pleasure.

“3. The fermentation proceeds the better and the more equally the greater the mass of fermenting liquor, probably on account of the uniformly high temperature, as well as the uniform distribution of the active particles of the yeast, by the greater energy ed of the intestine movements.

"4. The saccharine solution must be sufficiently diluted with water; when too much concentrated, it will not ferment; hence very sweet musts furnish wines containing very much undecomposed sugar. For a complete fermentive action, one part sugar should be dissolved in ten parts water."

He further remarks, respecting the circumstances that may modify or entirely prevent fermentation,

"Fermentation may be tempered or stopped

"1. By those means which render the yeast inoperative, particularly by the oils that contain sulphur, as oil of mustard; as also by the sulphurous and sulphuric acids. The operation of sulphurous acid in obstructing the fermentation of must consists partly, no doubt, in its absorbing oxygen, whereby the elimination of the yeasty particles is prevented. The sulphurous acid, moreover, acts more powerfully upon fermenting liquors that contain tartar, as grape-juice, than sulphuric acid. This acid decomposes the tartaric salts; combining with their bases, sets the vegetable acids free, which does not interfere with the fermentation, but the sulphurous acid operates directly upon the yeast."

"2. By the separation of the yeast, either by the filter or by subsidence.

"3. By lowering the temperature to 45° Fahrenheit. If the fermenting mass become clear at this temperature, and be drawn off from the subsided yeast, it will not ferment again, though it should be heated to the proper pitch.”—See Dr. Ure's Dictionary, article, "Fermentation."

From these laws of fermentation, we perceive the correctness of the observations of Pliny, and others, which are given above. "The juice was frequently filtered before it could have fermented." The words of Pliny also are very expressive. He says that, "Omnibus sacco veribus fractis," "all the power of the wine was broken by the filter." His other words are," Sacco Afragsmus vires ;"" et saccis castrari." "The vires, literally, the strengths, the fermentive powers of the juice, are broken by the filter ;"" the wines are castrated by filters." It is very striking that ancient practice and observation should, in this particular, so exactly accord with modern experiment and science, and that both history and chimistry should so entirely agree in proving, that the popular wines of antiquity were not fermented. In this particular, the taste of the drunkard, the opinion of the physician, and the declaration of Scripture, exactly harmonized. The drunkard, or hard drinker, sought a wine of which he might quaff large quantities without losing his senses or his reason, and therefore demanded a beverage whose fermentive powers had been broken by the filter. The physician declared that the "most useful wine, or the best wine, was that which had all its strength broken by the filter." And God, in his promises to Israel, announces that at the gospel feast there shall be "wines well refined," or rather "well filtered." On scarcely any other subject could evidence, collected from such independent and unconnected witnesses, be adduced. The drunkard, the medical physiologist, and the oracles of God, combine to prove that the most popular beverages of old were not fermented or alcoholic, and therefore altogether different from modern port or sherry. And what renders this argument the more conclusive is, that the chimical experiments of our own day demonstrate the scientific character of the means employed in the days of Pliny and of Isaiah to render wines perfectly innocuous.

In the facts given above, respecting fermentation, it is worthy, of remark that Dr.Ure affirms that, if " the sugar in the juice be concentrated," fermentation will not take place; now, both by placing their wines in fumaria or ovens, and by boiling them down, the wine-manufacturers of former days concentrated the saccharine matter of grape-juice, and rendered it unfermentable. By filtering, they abstracted the yeast; by ovens or boiling they concentrated the sugar, and therefore rendered fermentation absolutely impossible. Some further facts shall now be given to illustrate these observations.

We often read that, in former times, it was customary to give their wines a premature age. To accomplish this they used ovens and “fumaria ;" the latter was a room filled with smoke. Many highly esteemed those wines which had a smoky taste, so that, while the heat of the fumarium, by concentrating the sugar, sweetened the wine, the smoke that it contained was supposed to improve their flavor. If these wines had fermented, the heat of the fumaria, or ovens, would have caused all the alcohol to escape, and thus the means adopted to increase the age of their wines decreased their strength and rendered them harmless. A very small portion of alcohol indeed would remain in any fermented drink by the time it has been exposed to the heat of an oven or fumarium, and subjected, toties, "again and again," to the process of filtering. In those countries, the juice of the grape, under the most favorable circumstances, would have produced but a very weak wine by fermentation; how destitute of spirit then must it have been after it had been literally baked and filtered so often. There is reason to believe that their process of filtering was tedious, so that even fermented wines, which were "toties,” repeatedly exposed to the air, must have lost all their potency. We do not like to leave the bung out of a cask, the cork out of a bottle, or the stopper out of a decanter, for any length of time, because we know that, in such cases, the wine would lose its strength; the custom of frequently filtering the wines of antiquity, which at the most could have in them only a few degrees of spirit, must therefore have left but a very small portion of alcohol in the popular beverages of the olden times. And this loss would not be regretted by those

tipplers who wished to drink a large quantity without being intoxicated; nor would the absence of the alcohol be missed in the wines, which were more valued for their aromatic and artificial flavor than for their strength.

That the ancients delighted in drinking largely without becoming drunk, is evident from what has already been said. What else can Pliny mean when he says, "That we may be able to drink more wine, we deprive it of all its strength by the filter, and invent other incentives to thirst?" After having mentioned several of these "irritamenta," he says, in the same chapter, that "the glory of the Tricongius was much renowned. This practice consisted in drinking three gallons of wine under the following circumstances: the speech was not to falter, nor was the stomach to be lightened by vomiting, or in any other way; after he had drunk it, he was to be able to perform the duties of the morning watch. A large quantity was to be drunk at one draught, and a large quantity at several smaller draughts, without stopping to take breath between; the drinker was not to expectorate once, nor was a single drop of wine to be left, or wasted on the floor." Tiberius is reported to have been a spectator of this miracle, (as they termed it,) when he was an old man. Cicero's son is said to have attempted this feat, that he might avenge his father's death, by taking from Mark Antony the honor of being the greatest drinker in the empire. The Emperor Maximius could drink six gallons without` inebriety. Alexander is known to have been drinking for two days and two nights successively; he then called for the cup of Hercules, which held six bottles, and was in the act of emptying it a second time, when the angel of death arrested him. He was rather drenched with liquor, than drunk in the modern acceptation of the word.

These facts show, that to drink an immense quantity without being intoxicated, rather than to take liquor for the sake of inebriation, was the custom of the people of old, and therefore it was as much an object of desire with them to obtain a weak wine, "omnibus sacco viribus fractis," “with all its strength taken away by the filter," as it is with the moderns to procure drinks highly intoxicating. Consequently the wines were differ