in the evening sky, that had spread and
increased, and saddened the fierce glory of the
sunset. Farmers in simple homesteads looked
out from under the thirsty eaves and blessed
Heaven for the relief of the parched fields.
Was there no one to pray that that other cloud
which was growing and darkening within Lady
Humphrey's secret ken, might also come to
earth in timely tears of refreshment and
benediction?

But Hester, tripping along the wet lawns,
through those whispering showers, and all the
fragrant breathing of the newly awakened
perfumes, felt only that some echo of her childish
raptures had come back to her for the hour.

LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE.

A GLASS OF CLARET AND A BUMPER OF
                      BURGUNDY.

IN this burning August weather, when the
hot air is tingling and quivering over the dry
cany stubbles, and the speckled partridges,
happy in their ignorance of the rapid approach
of September, are cowering down under the
green parasol leaves of the turnips, it is pleasant
to think of the fast coming French vintage, when
the pure fresh cool perfumed juice of the Claret
grape will be gushing forth in purple floods
into the broad deep vats of Château Margaux
and Château Lafitte – when the presses of
Latour and Haut Brion will be growing crimson
with the vine's blood, when the noisy blouses
will be trampling down the clusters of La Rose
and St. Estephe, and the reddened fingers of
the laughing French girls will be toiling all day
in the vineyards of Langon and St. Julien.

Gascony, the province our Black Prince once
trampled over, he and his mailed horsemen, will
soon rejoice in its vintage. The pure light fresh
harmless Claret wine, its colour borrowed from
the ruby and the amethyst, its perfume from the
raspberry and the violet – the wine so delicate
and fine in flavour, will come pouring from a
thousand casks, scenting the air and refreshing
the hearts of the honest workers.

Gascon wine may be thin, and what the port
wine drinker of former days would call "sour,"
and it may deserve even more offensive epithets,
but it is harmless; and it has this great advantage
over the fuller toned and more generous
Burgundy, that it is better fermented, and bears a
sea voyage better: the best Burgundy being
indeed scarcely transportable across the water,
except in bottles, while even the lower class
of the Bourdeaux wines improve by a sea voyage.

The mere common Médoc, or vin ordinaire, is
not a wine of much body. Nobody will say it
is. It is acid, mawkish, and unsatisfying – it
takes a great deal of it to exhilarate even the
liveliest Mercutio. Upset a glass of it on a
clean tablecloth, as an experiment; it will leave
a broad stain of a purple colour, getting
paler and paler to the edge, until it ends in
an almost colourless margin, not darker than the
dye left by plain water. Our theory is, that
that centre core of darker purple represents
pure wine, and the paler selvage adulterating
water, which has never thoroughly combined
with the juice of the Bourdeaux grapes. One
would have thought that the villanous adulterator
who poisons all our food would have
disdained to lay his hand on the poor meek
Médoc; but, the more's the pity, he has taken
Médoc under his special patronage. Dr.
Gaubert, a French author on wines, says that a
wholesale dealer in Paris, in the banlieue, can
make a barrel of wine to pass for Bourdeaux,
which he can sell at ninety-three francs – the
price of the genuine wine being one hundred
and fifteen francs for the same quantity. He
can introduce it into Paris, duty included, for
one hundred and twenty-nine francs, and adding
one-seventh of water, can clear sixteen francs
forty centimes by the sale. This compound is
made of Bourdeaux, Sologne, Sarnnois,
Narbonne, and water. M. Lebeuf, in his work,
Amélioration des Vins, gives the well-known
trade recipe for imitation Bourdeaux:

     Ordinary red wine ... 70 litres
     Narbonne .................25  "
     Malaga ...................... 5  "
                                    100  "
     Extract of Bourdeaux one flacon.

Cette, Bourdeaux, Marseilles, and Montpelier
are famous for manufacturing wine. In the
Moniteur Vinicole there are constantly advertised
preparations to give bouquet and flavour
to Bourdeaux, such as:

Alcoolat de Framboises, parfumé.

Extrait de Bordeaux, or Séve de Médoc, un
flacon suffi pour donner le bouquet des vins de
Médoc.

Séve de Médoc (dite Saint Julien) pour
donner du parfum aux vins, augmenter leur
bouquet.

Teinte Bordelaise, pour colorer et conserver
les vins.

For the most part, as M. Lebeuf confesses,
Bourdeaux wine is a brewed, mixed, coloured,
alcoholised, perfumed, and artificial product.

The vintage will soon begin on the flinty
hills of Médoc; the flinty-hearted vineyard
proprietors are, no doubt, already planning
their adulterations. Well, it cannot be denied
that the pure fresh Claret of the Gironde does
get its unwholesome doctoring purposely to fit
it for the British palate. We might bear with
the natural infusion of waggon loads of weavils,
green caterpillars, red ants, money spiders, and
such inferior denizens of Gascony; but is it not
hard that the heavenly juice, ripened in those
little purple skins by the soft sunshine of the
sun of France – that juice so cool, so pure, so
fresh, so harmless – should be chemically
poisoned for us by the shuffling merchants of Cette
and Bourdeaux?

We groan as we confess the fact that there
is no doubt that the ordinary Claret sold in
England is a mixed, spurious, fired, corrupt
beverage. We begin with the simplest proof.
Look out Cette, the great fortified sea-port in