LITMIR.BIZ

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I called for another, it was so excellent that the landlord had drank all himself. The stuff we had to drink was made by pouring water on the skins of grapes already pressed. After they had been well macerated in it, it was allowed to ferment and grow sour, then sold to us at the price of good liquor."

      "That accounts," said Lady Mabel, "for the provident care you lately showed, in laying in a stock of better liquor for your winter's use. Is it true that you sent a special agent to Xeres de la Frontera, to select the best sherry for the regimental mess?"

      "Not exactly a special agent," said the colonel, disclaiming it with a gentle wave of the hand; "but, finding a trusty person, and a capital judge, going thither, we did charge him with a little commission that way."

      "I was sorry to hear of your disappointment," added she, in a commiserating tone. "I am told that he found that the firm of Soult, Victor & Co., had already taken up all the oldest and best wine on credit, that is, without paying for it; and you had to put up with new and inferior brands, or go without any."

      "It is but too true," said the colonel, with a sigh. "Those rascally Frenchmen had drained the country of everything worth drinking; our agent, very wisely, under the circumstances, made no purchase there, and I am glad of it; for I have since learned, that the Amontillado, which had been recommended to us as the dryest of sherry wines, is made from a variety of grapes plucked before they are ripe."

      "How lucky," said Lady Mabel, in a congratulatory tone, "that you have since found out that this wine is made of sour grapes."

      A faint suspicion that she was laughing at him induced him to change the topic. "You were never abroad before, I believe. This part of the country has some drawbacks; but I think you will find it, during the winter, a very pleasant part of the world."

      "We will all endeavor to make it so to you, Lady Mabel," said Major Warren, who, impatient of his superior's monopoly, here tried to edge in a word. But the colonel cut him short with "That's a mere truism, Warren, a self-evident proposition. Let us have nothing more of that sort. One of the peculiarities of this climate, Lady Mabel, is that it has a double spring: one in February and another in April. Then we will see you take your appropriate place in the picture, representing the heyday of youth in the midst of spring, and beauty, surrounded by flowers."

      She bowed low, in suppressing a laugh at this elaborate compliment, and said, "Will spring be so soon upon us?"

      "In a fortnight you may gather the same flowers which at home you must wait for till May."

      "Not the same flowers," said she, quickly. "Portugal has a Flora peculiar to itself, embracing very few of our native British plants. I am on my strong ground on this topic, being a pupil of Dr. Graham, who relieves his graver studies by striving to rival King Solomon in the knowledge of plants, 'from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows on the wall.' I am pledged to carry home a vast hortus siccus for him."

      "Oh! a scientific young lady—perhaps a little of a blue-stocking, too," said the colonel to himself. "I must hash up a dish to suit her peculiar taste. Though no botanist," continued he aloud, "there is one plant that has strongly attracted my attention, and I recommend it to yours; though your hortus siccus will hardly contain a fair specimen of it."

      "What is that?" said she, on the qui vive to hear of some rare plant.

      "It is the cork-oak," said the colonel, solemnly. "Its rough exterior has led tourists and artists, and even naturalists, to treat it with neglect, while it is daily contributing to the comfort, delight, and civilization of the world."

      "It may, perhaps," said Lady Mabel, hesitating, "be said to do all that you attribute to it."

      "Does it not strike you as passing strange, Lady Mabel, (apropos to our subject, pray take a glass of wine with me,) that the Romans, who were, doubtless, a great and a wise people, should have been masters of Spain and Gaul, and of their forests of cork trees for centuries—that these Romans," continued he, growing eloquent on the subject, "who had the tree in their own country, though not, perhaps, in the full perfection of its cortical development, and did apply its bark to a number of useful purposes, including, occasionally, that of stoppers for vessels, should yet never have attained to the systematic use of it in corking their bottles!"

      "Strange, indeed," said Lady Mabel. "It was shutting their eyes against the light of nature; for, we may say, that the obvious final end of the cork tree is to provide corks for bottles."

      "A great truth well expressed," said the colonel. "Such an oversight has hardly a parallel; unless it be in their invention of printing and never using it. For we see, in the baker's name, stamped on the loaves found in Pompeii, and words impressed on their pottery and other articles, what amounts to stereotype printing; yet they never went on to separate the individual letters, and so become compositors and printers in the usual sense of the art. But they could certainly get on better without printing than without corks."

      "Undoubtedly. For the world may—indeed, has—become too full of books; while there is little fear of its becoming too full of bottles; they get emptied and broken so fast."

      "I wonder whether Horace," continued Colonel Bradshawe, with a thoughtful air, "when he opened a jar of Falernian, was obliged to finish it at a sitting, to prevent its growing sour? Wine out of a jar! Think of that. With a wooden or earthen stopper, made tight with pitch. Think of having your wine vinho-flavored with pitch! like the vinho verde of these Portuguese peasants, out of a pitchy goat-skin sack."

      Lady Mabel looked nauseated at the idea, and the colonel swallowed a glass of Madeira, to wash away the pitchy flavor. "Yes," said he, shaking his head gravely, "they must have often felt sadly the want of a cork. How would it be possible to confine champagne (I am sorry this cursed war prevents our getting any,) until it is set free with all its life and perfection of flavor, just at the moment of enjoyment! They had glass, too, and used glass, these Romans, yet persevered in keeping their wine in those abominable jars. It proves how little progress they had made in the beautiful art of glass-blowing; and, of course, (here the colonel took up a decanter of old Madeira and replenished his glass, after eyeing approvingly the amber-colored liquor,) they were ignorant that wines that attain perfection by keeping, ripen most speedy in light-colored bottles."

      "Indeed!" said Lady Mabel, "I did not know that. But I learn something new from you every moment."

      "And that," said he, nodding approvingly at her, "is something worth knowing. I doubt, after all, whether these Romans, with the world at their beck, really knew much of the elegant and refined pleasures of life. Setting aside their gladiatorial shows, and the custom of chaining the porter by the leg to the doorpost, that he might not be out of the way when friend or client called on his master, and similar rude habits, there is enough to convict them as a gross people. They put honey in their wine, too! What a proof of childish, or rather, savage taste! Lucullus' monstrous suppers, and Apicius' elaborate feasts, are better to read about than to partake of. Give me, rather, a quiet little dinner of a few well-chosen dishes and wines, and three or four knowing friends, not given to long stories, but spicy in talk, and I will enjoy myself better than 'the noblest Roman of them all.'"

      "But, Colonel Bradshawe, how did you become so familiar with Roman manners? Many of us know something of their public life, their wars, conquests, seditions and laws; but you seem to have put aside the curtain, and peered into the house, first floor, garret and cellar."

      "You overrate my learning, Lady Mabel; my tastes naturally lead me to inform myself on some points that may seem to lie out of the common road. Some people take the liberty of calling me an epicure. I admit it so far as this: I hold it to be our duty to enjoy ourselves wisely and well. Much as I esteem a knowing bon vivant, I despise an ignorant glutton, or undiscriminating sot. To know how to make the most of the good things given us, is, at once, a duty and a pleasure. This conviction has led me to heighten what are called our epicurean enjoyments, by investigating the history of cookery, the literature of the vineyard, and other cognate branches of learning."

      "You have devised a happy union of intellectual and sensual pleasure, well calculated to heighten both."

      "Why

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