"It ascends me into the brain," says the fat
knight, glowing with his recent victory over
unsuspecting Sir Coleville of the Dale (one of
the Derbyshire Colevilles, no doubt) "dries
me there all the foolish, and dull, and crudy
vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive,
quick, forgitive, full of nimble, fiery,
and delectable shapes, which delivered o'er to
the voice the tongue, which is their birth,
becomes excellent art. The second operation
of your excellent sherris is the warming of the
blood, which before cold and settled, left the
liver white and pale, which is the badge of
pusillanimity and. cowardice; but the sherris
warms it, and makes it course from the inwards
to the past extreme; it illuminates the
face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all
the rest of the little kingdom man, to arm, and
then the vital commoner, and inland petty
spirits muster me to their captain, the heart,
who, great and puffed up with this retinue,
doth any deed of courage, and this valour
comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon
is nothing without sack, for that sets it a
work, and learning a mere hoard of gold kept
by a devil, till sack commences and sets it in
act and use."

What a deluge of fancy poured over the
simple fact that sherry warms the blood and
quickens the action of the brain! The lines,
too, so fanciful and witty, are full of the medical
learning of the day, when the skull was thought
a sort of alembic, when melancholy was attributed
to ill vapours, and when the liver was
held to be the seat of courage. It will be
remembered that in Macbeth Shakespeare calls a
coward " a lily livered boy."

The Canaries only produce Teneriffe, Vidonia,
and Malvasia, or Malvoisie. Vidonia is a green
wine of good body. Teneriffe, a rich sweet wine.
As one of the best species of Malaga wine is
said to have originally come from the Rhine,
and the Chasoselas of Fontainebleau from a
Cyprus grape, the Canary vines are said to
have come from Germany in the reign of Charles
the Fifth. That pleasant letter-writer, Howell,
who visited Spain in the reign of Charles the
First, declares canary to be " the richest, most
firm, best bodied, and lastingest wine, and the
most defecated from all earthy grossness." We
wish he could taste real Hamburgh sherry
prepared by a German Jew wine-merchant in
that honest city, after his second bankruptcy.
The poor Indian, of untutored mind, never tasted
"the real fire-water of the white man" who
never tasted that.

Howell (who was perhaps thinking of leaving
his glass house and going into the wine business),
gets quite excited as he continues to sip
and write. " French wines," he says, " may
be said to pickle meat in the stomach, but this
is the wine that digests and doth not only breed
good blood, but it nutrifieth also, being a glutinous
substantial liquor." (Then he gets quite
chirpy). " Of this wine if of any other may be
verified, that merry induction that good wine
maketh good blood; good blood causeth good
humours; good humours cause good thoughts;
good thoughts bring forth good works; good
works help to carry a man to heaven. If this
be true, surely more English go to heaven in
this way than any other, for I think there is
more canary brought into England than all the
world besides."

This shows that, even in the seventeenth
century, Madeira was too strong for the French
or Spanish taste, and was chiefly sent to England.
There is no doubt that our war with
France in the reign of Charles the First, led
us to rely more on Spain and the Canaries.
Sherry is made of both red and white grapes
dried in the sun for two or three days before
they are pressed. The various shades of colour
are owing to the different proportions of boiled
grape syrup with which it is mixed——we all
know what it ought to be. If Amontillado, pale,
brilliant and with that indescribable flavour that
comes accidentally in certain butts at Xeres,
and is by some considered a disease. If Vino
de Pasto, delicate and high flavoured, not so
dry as the aristocratic Amontillado, but still
aunque moro hijo d'algo. If Manzanilla, of a
delicate straw-colour, with that strange tonic
camomile flavour that many people like because
it proclaims little alcohol and no acid. If a
pure fine sherry, of a rich topaz colour shading
into amber, the flavour dry and not sweet, but
delicate, soft, and with a calm inner warmth
that does not scorch the palate.

But what do we get now, short of sixty shillings
the dozen, with the price looking upward
ever since the vine disease of 1852, but a fiery,
highly brandied wine flavoured with fine sherry,
but darkened and enriched with boiled juice, and
made piquant with Montilla, Manzanilla, or
second-rate Amontillado. That is the doctor's
stuff that generates heartburn, it is " hot
and sickly sweet." It is a detestable thieving
concoction flavoured with the new ethers,
and perhaps sent by those Jew German robbers
to Cadiz to be re-exported to England.
There are instances in which Hamburgh sherry,
when examined at the Customs, is found to
contain no grape juice at all. Such is the
miserable apothecaries' draught, that the poorer
middle class in England, who must have
their wine cheap, insist on drinking because
sherry is an old conventionality, and they will not
learn to like claret, hock, or Burgundy, which
(as yet) it is worth no one's while to adulterate.

That excellent authority, Dr. Druitt, from
careful statistics shows that there is no
hope for the man with moderate income ever
to get good sherry again in our lifetimes.
In 1850, the quantity shipped from Cadiz to
Great Britain was three million eight hundred
and twenty-six thousand seven hundred
and sixty-four gallons; and in 1864, seven
million eighty-one thousand and thirty-three,
the consumption having latterly increased a
the rate of about twelve per cent, per annum.
The greater the demand, the more the new
unfermented wines that can't travel without