in the air, which makes you feel instinctively
conscious of your neighbourhood to the
Peninsula. Though the side streets start off
so suddenly, they do not succeed in making
their final escape, but are caught by the
Cours (whatever title it may bear, whether
St. Jean, De Tournay, or Du Jardin Public),
which forms one of the stiltified legs of
the aforesaid Asses' Bridge. Bordeaux is
the torment of corny toes. Both the narrow
streets, the airy quays, and the aristocratic
courses are so roughly paved, that far
better mosaic work is to be found in the
Camp of Honvault, where soldiers amuse
themselves by fetching pebbles from the
beach in the short intervals of drill and
drum practice. If you want to see vast bath
establishments for men and women, —twin
and similar, but separate temples raised to
the Genius of Hygienic personal purity,—go
to Bordeaux, and cleanse the outside of your
platter; also, if it be your pleasure to behold
gipsy-like women wearing extraordinary
head-dresses, composed of a sort of shawl-
handkerchief, folded in a way to defy all
fraud, forgery, or imitation whatever. No
need to ticket them with "Beware of counterfeits."
No need to apply to the vice-chancellor
for an injunction to prevent plagiarism
in the present case. The head-gear is as
perfect a puzzle as the napkin-folding mysteries
of certain steamboat-stewards and
restaurants, or the paper-folding feats of
ambulant street conjurors. Other features
of the town which strike you, are the numerous
glazed galleries, or passages, like those
of Paris. For fear the shops on your right or
your left should not attract your notice sufficiently,
as you go past them, they contrive to
meet you, by proxy, face to face. The names,
wares, numbers, and merits of countless
tradesmen are painted on canvas in large
letters, and stretched across the streets from
house to house. If Pegasus were trained to
perform at Astley's (some say he has been
reduced to worse shifts than that) these
serial advertisements would exactly serve
him as garters and balloons, to jump over
and through. As it is, prosaic pedestrians
and carriage-people walk or drive under
a series of sail-cloth triumphal arches, raised
in honour of the goddess of shopkeeping
commerce. Finally, Bordeaux will make
you open your eyes at the splendour of
the ladies' out-door dresses. You pursue
in your mind the following train of logic;
if the open-air toilettes are so gorgeous
and rich, what must be the dazzling brilliancy
of the dinner- party and ball-room
costumes.

The word finally was used unadvisedly,
because no allusion has yet been made to the
effect produced on you by the wines of
Bordeaux. Burgundy, Champagne, and Guienne
(where we now are) are the three provinces
of France which produce wines of cosmopolitan
celebrity. Good Burgundy needs no
bush, here. I cannot forget the touching couplet,

Pomard, et Meulceaux,
Et Volynay, qui est plus haut;

implying that while Pomard and Meulceaux
are excellent, Volnay, higher up the hill, is
also better, in short, at the top of the tree.
I would even be content with a bottle of
Moulin-à-vent, or Windmill Burgundy, for
next Sunday's dessert. But let me not
wantonly set your mouths a-watering. While
the gods grant us a wholesome sufficiency, it
is a sin to be hankering after dainty drinks;
and the Bordeaux wines are a boon to mankind.

The claret climate, that is to say the climate
of the Department of the Gironde, is moister,
evidently, than that of the Cóte-d'Or, where
the best Burgundy wines are produced, to a
considerable hygrometric degree.
Unmistakeable signs are, moss, lichens, and ferns, on
the stems and branches of trees, grasses
growing on roofs and walls, and other slight
but sure symptoms. The causes are manifest
in its westerly position, skirting the vast
Bay of Biscay, and in the influx and the
confluence of two such rivers as the Dordogne
and the Garonne, which not only supply an
incalculable quantity of aqueous vapours,
both visible and invisible, from their heaving
bosoms, but also, by wide-spread inundations,
fill the atmosphere with moisture at
periods of no great interval.

If the Burgundian climate could be suspended
over the face of the Bourdelais by
confining it in some solid translucent celestial
vault, like a vast bell-glass, claret wines
might perhaps become the best in the
world; but they could not be poured out in
that mighty flood-tide with which they now
irrigate, like their own full-flowing streams,
the thirsty throats of the wine-drinking
world. On the other hand, if the humid
mists of the Gironde were constantly to
bathe the slopes of the Cóte-d'Or, the quantity
of its golden nectar might be enormously
increased, the precarious fickleness of the
supply might be greatly diminished by the
moderating influence of the tempering vapour
during sudden and sharp spring-frosts; but
the colour might fade to a fainter ruby, the
perfume might lose something of its exquisite
delicacy, and the beverage be robbed of part
of its latent fire. As it is, all seems to be for
the best; of course I mean when all goes
right with each respective vintage. Generous
burgundy still remains to impart strength,
taste, and spirit to the infirm and old; while
noble-hearted, open-handed claret supplies
the drink of nations, supporting the energies
of laborious manhood, and sustaining without
over-stimulating his active powers.

Were some cunning workman to carve for
me two statues emblematic of burgundy and
claret. neither of them should appear in
female guise. Feminine forms would be