and no wonder, for the spectacle is grand
and terrific in the extreme. What a contrast
it was as we turned our backs on the flames
and rattled down the mountain! The moon,
which had been a nullity all night, began to
assert her power; softly and faintly her beams
fell on the sea beneath us, bringing into a
spectral kind of life the beautiful coast, and
the islands looming up coldly in the distance.
The day was beginning to dawn, Portici was
reached, and we approached the Carmine.
Here and there an early caffe had opened its
doors, and slipshod, uncombed, unshaven men
were serving out the precious cup of black
coffee to sleepy customers. The sambuca and
spirit boys were also in movement—why should
they not dispense their liquid fires as well as
the mountain? Just in the gray of the morning,
too, were perceptible the small white sails
bringing in the fish for the morning's market;
and so, one after another, woke up every component
part of the vast mass of human life.

STRICTLY FINANCIAL.

FOR more than two years we have been
indulging in a hope of relief from the
high duties on the produce of foreign vineyards.
Ever since we waded through the
ponderous blue volumes containing the evidence
given before the wine committee in
eighteen hundred and fifty-two, a portion of
which we embodied in an article* at the
time, we have lived in the expectation of a
one-shilling duty from the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
* Really a Temperance Question. No. 142.

We confess that, although not picturing
John Smith of London suddenly abandoning
brown stout for Romanée Conti
or Clos Vougeot, Hollands for Chateau
Lafitte, or three-and-fourpenny mixed for
sparkling Moselle at the breakfast-table, we
certainly did indulge in dreams of shrimps
and Sauterne at Gravesend, of water-cresses
and Frontignac at Hampton Court, and of
cooling libations of Pomys Medoc on a hot
August afternoon at Herne Bay. These
pleasant imaginings have been scattered to
the winds by Sir Emerson Tennent, of the
Board of Trade, who, in a book† just published,
has shown how little hope there is
left for us on this score.
† Wine, its Use and Taxation. Madden.

Like Sancho Panza at the memorable banquet,
we have been sitting down to the anticipated
enjoyment of a long array of good
things, only to see them one by one borne
away at the inexorable fiat of our Board of
Trade physician. Casting our eyes on a
bottle of exquisite Tokay, and mentally inquiring
if it be really a luxury, or, as
some maintain, only a necessary, our relentless
guardian waves his thin volume of azure
blue, repeats the cabalistic words Pitt and
Huskisson, and the coveted beverage disappears
across the British Channel. We
regard a flagon of brilliant Rousillon with
the eyes of a thirsty man, and fancy it is
already ours, when, lo! Sir Emerson mutters
something about popular prejudice and national
taste, and the vessel melts into thin air.
We turn to a flask of the veritable Xeres,
from Spain; but, as we stretch forth our
hand to seize it, hear the same voice exclaim,
" Malt-duty and hops," and we are
again disappointed. We make a last desperate
effort for a bottle of light Italian
wine, with a bright luscious look and a soft
liquid name; but, once more, our physician
interposes with the fatal words, British and
colonial spirit duties, and we are left in
despair. It is in vain that we protest against
this scurvy treatment, and insist that the
whole thing is purely a temperance and social
question. Our political physician replies that
it is a strictly financial question.

We have been endeavouring to fight
against this terrible conclusion, but find the
facts and arguments ranged against us by
Sir Emerson are overwhelming; and for
the present we confess to being beaten. In
other words, whilst the great desirableness of
admitting foreign wines for consumption in
this country at the almost nominal duty of
one shilling per gallon in place of the present
duty of five shillings and ninepence, is
not denied, it is shown clearly enough that
the step cannot be taken without dealing
with other taxes of a similar nature; that if
we confer a boon on the British consumer
and the foreign wine-grower, we cannot do
so without a proportionate concession to the
British and colonial distillers, the brewers,
the maltsters, and the hop-growers. And,
inasmuch as the present revenue derived
from all these sources amounts to nineteen
millions sterling, it will be manifestly impossible
for some time to come to interfere with
so large a portion of the national income.
Here we feel at once the financial evils of
war—be it ever so just or needful. While
war lasts dear wine will last also.

We state this with no little reluctance and
considerable disappointment. The perusal
of Doctor Hassell's book on Food and its
Adulterations has materially quickened our
vinous predilections. Coffee, that was once
our pride—tea, that was our solace—
stout, in which once upon a time we placed
such implicit faith, have become suspected
abominations—embodiments of vile drugs
and insidious chemicals. We turned from
the contemplation of green vitriol, gypsum,
arseniate of copper, black lead, catechu and
cocculus indicus, to a mental survey of the
sunny slopes of Burgundy, the green, warm
banks of the Rhone, the vine-clad heights of
the Alto Douro, rich in all that can gladden
the heart and invigorate the frame of man.
We had hoped that all this was within our
reach on greatly reduced terms, but find that
it cannot be so for reasons strictly financial.