step is easier than the last. Increase the
amount to be borrowed, and the power of
borrowing increases in an equal ratio. Under
certain conditions, you shall find more
difficulty in procuring half-a-crown than fifty
thousand pounds; although the security
offered in both cases may bear an equal
value in relation to the loan required; but
having obtained possession of one fifty thousand
pounds, you may command a second and a
third with ever-increasing ease, rolling your
borrowed capital over and over like a ball of
snow, and causing more loans to stick to it
wherever it moves. Bear in mind, that in
the great world of debt, the small debtor is
governed by his creditor; the large creditor
is governed by his debtor. Large creditors
are quiet and tractable, like dancing
elephants; small creditors are spiteful and
uncertain, like wasps—wasps with a sting.

WINE, NO MYSTERY.

THIS is the age of revelations. Every
mystery, whether of science or of manufacture,
which we used to believe could only be
obtained by special grace and gift of insight, is
now thrown open to the world. The Isis of
the manufactories is uncovering not her feet
alone but her hands and her head, and soon
there will be no such things as trade secrets.
Before the appearance of certain articles in
the eleventh and twelfth volumes of Household
Words, which described the composition and
manufacture of French wines, I had always
held this wine-making to be, of all secret and
exoteric manufactures extant, the chief and
head. Its mysteries were second only to
the Eleusinian: mysteries to which none but
the choicest of the few could be admitted.
Professor Mulder has also entered the gaps
in the thick cellar walls which we broke
through; and now any one who will, may
learn as much about vines and wines as the
craftiest "doctor" in the world.

No plant is more dependent on external
circumstances than the vine, and in none is
there more variety. When Chaptal was
Minister of the Interior, he planted in the
Luxembourg gardens one thousand four
hundred varieties of vine grown in France alone;
and the same law holds good wherever the
plant is found. Light, heat, and the fertilisation
of the soil affect the vine more perhaps
than any other plant, all-powerful as they
necessarily are in the growth and development
of the vegetable world. The chemical
and illuminating rays ripen and sweeten
better, though later, than the calorific; thus,
white grapes are the sweetest, owing to the
easier passage of light through their skins,
by which a larger formation of sugar is
obtained: while the purple grape absorbs the
most heat, and does not in general come out
so fine-flavoured or so delicate as the white.
As for fertilisation, our Professor repudiates
all organic substances which putrefy quickly,
holding only to the leaves and cuttings of the
vine which contain a large per-centage of the
alkali so needful to the plant, and to inodorous
substances of slow decomposition, such as
wood, horn, and bone black, "which conduce
very much to its fragrance." But inorganic
manures, and especially alkali, are of primary
importance; for, as all wines contain cream
of tartar (tartaric acid and potash), their
quality is greatly determined by the amount
of potash in the ground, this being the
vineyard's "staff of life." Varieties of soil,
though exerting a marked influence on the
kind of wine produced, do not by this
diversity necessarily exert a deteriorating
influence. "Wine of very good quality, but
of dissimilar bouquet, may be obtained from
very different soils. The best Burgundy comes
from a clayey lime soil; Champagne from a
more thorough lime soil; Hermitage from a
granite; and Châteauneuf from a sandy soil.
A slaty soil produces Vin de la Gaude; a
sandy one Grâves and Médoc; and a slaty
one the wine of Lamalgue, near Toulon."

Quantity and quality of grape juice are
strangely divorced in the vineyard. Some
seasons which have produced the largest
quantity of wine have also produced the worst
kinds; in others, when the supply has been,
scanty, the quality has been supreme. In the
south of France, where the grapes are allowed
to grow sometimes to the height of six and a
half feet from the ground, the quantity of
juice obtained is much greater than from
the short vines of the same district: but the
wine is infinitely inferior, forming in fact the
base of that vile adulteration, the "piquette"
of the guinguettes outside the barriers. The
advantage of the short vine-stalk, as well as
of the practice of stripping off the leaves
common in France, is to allow the radiation
from the heated earth during night to
continue the process of ripening without check
or delay. In Italy, where the sun is hotter,
the vines are festooned in high and leafy
arbours,—the grapes being, there, protected
from excess of heat and light.

Another reason for diversity of quality is
diversity of kind. To mix together several
kinds of grape would spoil the vintage; so
would the admission of decayed, unripe, or
spoiled bunches into the fermenting vat; so
would the mingling of white or purple grapes
together—in part because the purple ripen
ten or twelve days earlier than the white, so
that their union would be an anachronism
which every well-educated palate would
repudiate. Care also should be taken to fill
the vat at once, so that fermentation should
be carried throughout the whole mass at the
same moment. If there be not enough for
this, well-washed river sand or clay may be
used as a succedaneum.

The finest wines are made of the same kind
of grape, scrupulously separated from every
decayed, unripe, or spoiled cluster. Le pineau
noir or noirien makes the best Burgundy,