rooms rather than cellars, and the whole
secret of cognac-making is explained to the
dullest apprehension. You see multiludes of
barrels of stout oakwood, quarter-casks and
hogsheads— two hogsheads making a
puncheon, and two puncheons constituting a tun
—you peep into a little circular room in
which iron-hoops are prepared on an anvil
to hold fast and steady. You gaze wistfully
at the closed doors of a little, mysterious,
sealed apartment, where, you are told,
is treasured up the most aucieut eavi-de-vie
de Coguac on the premises, numbering some
fifty summers and winters. You watch
workmen clarifying the eau-de-vie by passing
it through a jelly-bag, and you fancy they
must inhale so liberal an allowance of spirit at
every breath, that if they want to make brandy
and water in their stomachs, they have only
to go to the nearest pump. Your guide now
produces an authoritative bunch of keys,
unlocks the door of a special storehouse, and
gives you to taste from an enormous cask, a
glass of the burnt-sugar syrup, which brownifies
the brandy (English customers admiring a
gypsy complexion), and which syrup is not
nice at all; and also a glass of softening syrup,
made of one-fourth sugar and three-fourths
eau-de-vie, which sweetens and smooths the
cordial for lickerish lips, and which is so
delicious that you would not have the heart to
reproach your bitterest enemy if you caught
him indulging in a drop too much. You start
before an awful trap-door though which the
country eau-de-vie is run down into immense
tuns that stand firm on fixed pillars
painted white and black, each tun being
devoted to a peculiar quality of spirit. It
is here that they perform the all-important
operation, called the Coupe, by mixing several
sorts of eau-de-vie together to improve
them, with the addition of syrups according to
taste.

The stirring-up, or amalgamation, is a
long-continued and laborious operation which
has made many a stalwart fellow's arms ache.
They give you to taste a perfect sample,
drawn up from the middle of a cask by
means of a little sample-fetching phial, which
puts you in mind of the thimble and
thread by which caged and trained goldfinches,
vulgarly called draw-waters, are
taught to supply themselves with drink. It
is no thimbleful of brandy which is offered to
you, but a bumping wineglass. Sip and taste
as much as you please; but beware how you
swallow the whole, unless your head is as
hard and insensible as a cocoa-nut with the
outer rind on. You admire a collection of
choice bottles, ranged on shelves and screened
by a curtain, as if they were an invaluable
library of book rarities and illuminated
manuscripts. (By the way, some French authors
have the habit of calling a well-stored wine-
cellar a bibliotheque.) You march through the
Salle d'Expedition or expediting-room, whence
the most strongly exciting missives of the
world are sent off to stir the blood of Britons
and North Americans, principally. MM.R.
and Co. annually cause to emigrate from France
some five thousand volumes— bottles, I mean,
—bound, that is to say, packed, in wooden
one-dozen cases. And look ! there is the book-
binder at work on his boxes. He boasts that
he can make, at a stretch, from thirty to forty
cases a day. And there, in the next room,
is a high-crowned dame— whose cap. only
wants the slash of a sabre at the top to convert
it into a pontifical mitre— whose peaceful
occupation consists in braiding straw plaits
to prevent her touchy pupils, the brandy
bottles, from serious quarrels during their
voyage across the seas. She also, I believe,
decorates their ardent bosoms with gilt and
many coloured breastplates, on which are
imprinted the words OLD BRANDY on either
side of a perspective view of the establishment.
She likewise may have something
to do with the putting them to bed afterwards
in clean sheets of delicate paper. It
is pleasant to see, lying about, hygrometric
instruments, bearing the name of their maker,
who lives in that arcadian spot, the London
Poultry; pleasant also to say, "Boujour!" to
the English machine which cunningly cleans
bottles by the force of an oblique jet of water
that spins twisting round their empty stomachs,
and rinses them out.

The corking- machine is, apparently, a
cruel mode of forcibly stopping a vessel's
mouth; but they say fewer fractures are
made by it than by the more common and
tenderer mode, while the operator is in no
danger of being maimed by broken glass. A
Cognac inventor claims, and has patented, his
clever machine for capsuling the already
sated and gagged individual. The patient is
laid in a reclining position, a leaden night-
cap is slipped over his head, he is hitched
a little forward, exactly like a man presented
to the axe of the guillotine, the executioner
pulls a lever, which acts upon a set of wheels
and strings, and the imprisoned spirit is as
completely secured from breathing a breath
of the external air, as if it were buried in a
leaden coffin. In the little room where vessels
are branded, another Cognac invention claims
a laudatory word. The brands themselves
are not thrust into the fire, but are contrived to
receive, immediately behind their letters, a
red-hot cylindrical heater, which communicates
a sufficiency of caustic heat to mark
a sharp, deep, and durable impression on the
wood. The brand-fire, too, is economised, to
heat the water wherewith new puncheons are
scalded and purified.

If you walk through the premises of the
Société Vinicole, a company of brandy-
growers, who English themselves as The
United Vineyard Proprietors, you will only
see the same sights on a more gigantic
scale; and Cognac contains within its
limits four or five establishments of
equal magnitude. You will be introduced