minds; teaches the arts. Whom have not
flowing cups made eloquent? Whom have they
not made free and happy under pinching
poverty?"

But if the vine was among the most active
causes of Roman greatness, it became, at a
later period, by the whirl of Fortune's wheel,
the cause of its decay, exercising an invincible
attraction on the people of the North, the
Gauls, the Cimbri, the Lombards, the Suevi, the
Goths, and all their hordes who marched to the
conquest of the Italian vineyards. Happily for
the rest of the world they did not destroy in this
instance, but if they drank hard and paid no
score, such of them as returned to their native
lands—the Gauls and the Goths, for instance—
took with them the civilising vine and planted
it beside their pleasant ravines. Gaul, however,
from the earliest period of its history, was no
stranger to the vine, the Phocæan colony that
founded Massilia (Marseilles) having planted
it on the banks of the Rhône. But its cultivation
did not extend far from the Mediterranean
shore, and the warlike inhabitants of remoter
Gaul scented the vineyards of Italy from afar,
and poured through the passes of the Alps to
gratify their desire. To this cause Livy
directly ascribes their irruption. "Attracted by
the savour of our fruits, and principally of our
wine, which was for them a pleasure before
unknown, they crossed the dividing mountains."
When Cæsar conquered Gaul he found vineyards
in various parts of the country, and has recorded
it as his opinion that the wine of Narbonne
(whence we get fictitious port) was inferior to
some of the growths of either Greece or Italy.
The vine, indeed, made such rapid progress in
Gaul, that, under the pretext that there were too
many, and that it hindered the production of
corn, Domitian, the fly-killer, in one of his
wayward fits, ordered all the vines in Gaul to be
rooted up; a proof, if any were wanting, of the
low degree of his intelligence, just able to
comprehend the spirit of resistance to tyranny that
abides in the juice of the grape. It was
reserved for Probus, a man of genius and refinement,
to restore, after two centuries, the
desolation caused by Domitian, and once more the
vine found its congenial home in Gaul. In A.D.
316, Saint Martin, the patron saint of Tours,
introduced it, with the Gospel, into the valley of
the Loire; and, in 330, the Emperor Julian
caused it to be cultivated in the neighbourhood
of Paris. But it had already taken root on the
banks of the Gironde, for Ausonius, who wrote
about the middle of the fourth century, praising
the oysters left by the sea, on the shore of
Médoc, says of them that they were "as much
esteemed on the tables of the emperors as the
excellent wines which they obtained from
Bordeaux." "Thus, in the fourth century," says
Dr. Arthaud, " the vine flourished, then as now,
in the geological basins of the Rhone, the
Garonne, the Loire, the Seine, and the Saône. The
people prepared by the use of wine to understand
the truth, became rapid converts to
Christianity." The Franks, who next became masters
of the soil, drawn thither by the irresistible
attraction of the vine, neglected nothing
towards its improvement. They carried their
regard for it so far as to give to the enclosures
in which it was cultivated the name of "vigne
noble," whence by corruption came the word
"vignoble" (vineyard); and the month of
October was called in their language "the month
of wine." "And no sooner," observes Dr.
Arthaud, "had these conquerors raised the
enchanted cup to their lips than they demanded
baptism of the Church of Gaul."

Four elements, continues Doctor Arthaud,
"govern the early history of France: the people,
the Gallican Church, the kings of Frankish race,
and wine. The people cast aside their resentment
against the foreign princes whom their
Church had, in some sort, nationalised by
baptism, and who gave evidence of a lively
sympathy in that species of cultivation which was
most popular. Wine was the intermediate power
between the other three, and for more than a
thousand years these elements presided in union
over the destinies of France. This union lasted
till the year 1567, a fatal period, when that
sickly prince, Charles the Ninth, sprung from a
mésalliance between the noble race of France and
the crafty house of Medicis, led astray by
perfidious counsels, sought to extinguish the moral
activity of the French, in order to favour the
usurpations of the court of Rome to the detriment
of the liberties of the Gallican Church,
and of the rights of the people. This king of
St. Bartholomew, who, like Domitian, massacred
his own Christian subjects, issued an edict for
the destruction of the largest vineyards in
France, and limited the quantity of ground which
every proprietor gave to the culture of the
wine. Henry the Third, the king of the League,
also issued letters patent, in 1578, 'for rooting
up the vineyards in the neighbourhood of
Bordeaux,' a decree which was ruthlessly carried
into execution. Under Henry the Fourth and
Louis the Thirteenth, and during the reign of
Louis the Fourteenth, until that monarch
became the slave of Madame de Maintenon and
the Jesuits, a better administration, which
knew the value of the wine, left to each individual
the right of cultivating the soil in the
manner which, in his judgment, most conduced
to his private interests." This liberality,
however, was lost sight of when Louis the Fifteenth
came of age. He signalised that event by a
decree dated June 5th, 1731, condemning every
proprietor to a fine of three thousand francs
who planted vines without royal permission.
"This act," says Dr. Arthaud, "sounded the
death-knell of the French monarchy." Some
other acts had their share in this catastrophe;
but the good doctor is so much in earnest with
his subject, that it would be cruel not to let
him have it all his own way. Observe, then,
what he concludes from the decadence of vine
culture.

As long as wine was held in honour by all
classes of society, the brilliant qualities of the
French people rendered them the first of modern