thinks, so very humble, while booming high in air in oft-repeated circles, wondering at our Tent, and at the flag that now unfolds its gaudy length like a burnished serpent, as if the smell of some far-off darling heather-bed had touched thy finest instinct-away fliest thou straight southward to that rich flower-store, unerringly as the carrierpigeon wafting to distant lands some love-message on its wings. Yet humble after all thou art! for 'tis thy chief-thy sole pastime

"To murmur for the hour in heatherbells,"

and making thy industry thy delight, and return at shut of day, cheerful even in thy weariness, to thy ground-cell, within the knoll, where, as Fancy dreams, the Fairies dwell-a Silent People in the Land of Peace.

'Tis a vast Glen. Not one single human dwelling anywhere speck-like on the river-winding plain, or nest-like among the brushwood knolls,-or rock-like among the fractured cliffs far up on the mountain region do our eyes behold, eager as they are to discover some symptom of life. Two houses we know to be in the solitude-aye, two-one of them near the head of the Loch, and the other near the head of the Glen-but both far distant from this our Tent, which is pitched between, in the very heart of the desart. We were

mistaken in saying that Dalness is invisible-for yonder it looms in a sullen light, and before we have finished the sentence, may have again sunk into the moor. Aye, it is gone for lights and shadows coming and going, we know not whence or whither, here travel all day long-the sole tenants-very ghostlike-and seemingly in their shiftings embued with a sort of dim uncertain life. How far off from our Tent may be the Loch? Some miles-and silently as snow are seen to break the waves along the shore, while beyond them hangs in an aerial haze, high up on the hori

zon, the gleam of the great blue water. How far off from our Tent may be the mountains at the head of the Glen? Some miles alsofor though that speck in the sky into which they upheave their mighty altitudes, be doubtless an eagle, we cannot hear his cry. What giants are these right opposite our Pyramid? Glenco-grim chieftain

and his Tail. What an assemblage of thunder-riven cliffs! This is what may be well called-Nature on a grand scale. And then, how simple! We begin to feel ourselves-in spite of all we can do to support our dignity by our pride

a mighty small and insignificant personage. We are about six feet high-and everybody around us about four thousand. Yes, that is the Four Thousand Feet Club! We had no idea that in any situation we could be such dwindled dwarfs, and such perfect pigmies. Our Tent is about as big as a fircone-and we an insect! But we can fly as well as creep-and swift

"As meditation or the wings of love," thought, on the battlements of this we are settled, in the spirit, a silent cloud-castle on the summit of Cruachan. What a prospect! Our cloud-castle rests upon a foundation of granite precipices; and down along their thousand chasms, from which the eye recoils, we look on Loch-Etive,

"Deeply, darkly, beautifully blue," and bearing on its bosom, stationary-so it seems in the sunshine— one snow-white sail! What brings the creature there-and on what errand may she be voyaging up the uninhabited sea-arm that stretches away into the uninhabited mountains? Some poet, perhaps, steers her-sitting at the helm in a dream, and allowing her to dance her own way, at her own will, up and down the green glens and hills of the foam-crested waves-a swell rolling in the beauty of light and music forever attendant on her, as the sea

FROM its very origin wine has found lovers and admirers, who have freely indulged in all the excesses into which it was calculated to lead them. Every luxury stands in a similar predicament; but in the fate of wine there has been something peculiar. No sooner was this exhilarating drink discovered, than there appeared people who made in some measure a profession of hating it. These persecutions render its history remarkable. Let us inquire from what source they flowed.

The Abbé Pluche, M. de la Mare, nay, even some of the fathers of the church, are of opinion that the vine was known anterior to the Deluge, but that Noah, after the Flood, took care to plant it anew, and expressed the juice from its fruit. Jablonsky conceives that the mortifying remembrance of Noah's inebriety excited in the Egyptians that hatred to wine of which we find the clearest traces. Professor Michaelis, however, has been more fortunate in his inquiries into the cause of this ancient antipathy, which he attributes to the native poverty of Egypt in vines. This poverty the Egyptians turned into a lesson of wisdom, stigmatizing the drinking of wine as impious, and dedicating it to Typhon. Jablonsky himself has proved that the philosophic antipathy to wine, in which certain heretics, the Gnostics, Severians, Encratites, and others, agree with the extremities of the East, the Bramins and the followers of Mohammed, had its origin in Egypt many centuries before their names were heard of, and, according to the testimony of Diodorus

Siculus, was prevalent in Arabia long before the time of Mohammed himself. This historian relates that the Nabathæans had a law which forbade them either to drink wine or to live in houses, which exactly corresponds with what the prophet Jeremiah says concerning the Rechabites, who were of Arabian origin.

The solicitude of the Egyptians to promote the interests of their country and nation by means of philosophy and religion probably induced them, when they perceived that Egypt did not produce wine. nearly sufficient for its population, to abstain from that beverage altogether rather than to purchase it of foreigners. To reconcile the people to this severe law, it was pretended that wine was dedicated to Typhon, that it was even the blood and gall of that deity, and consequently to be avoided by friend to virtue and wisdom. As on the other hand their country produced a superabundance of barley, they invented a beer, or as Herodotus terms it, a barley-wine, which they drank instead of grapewine. If the inhabitants of the northern regions, with whom the vine will not thrive, had adhered to this useful policy, they would not send such incredible sums of money abroad for wines, and would consequently be much richer. It is inconceivable what wealth Britain poured for a long series of years even into the lap of her mortal enemy for wines, and what she still continues to pay for the brandies of France. By prohibitions and punishments nothing is to be effected; under the pretext of mo

poses.

Of the antipathy to wine, founded on policy, delusion, and superstition, we find traces in the book of Moses, and even so early as the history of the patriarch Joseph. Those who abstained from wine had nevertheless no objection to eat grapes. This circumstance is adduced by St. Augustine as a singular absurdity in the Manichæans. What can be more inconsistent," says he, "than to consider wine as the gall of the prince of darkness, and yet to eat grapes ?"-Does not this agree with what we read of Pharaoh, who did not drink genuine wine, but who had only the grapes pressed into his cup? The chief butler of the Egyptian monarch, in relating his dream, says: "I took the grapes and pressed them into his cup, and gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand." Of course this kind of wine was given to such only as had an antipathy to wine properly so called, but thought it no harm to eat the grapes or drink their juice. This very distinction between the juice of the grape and fermented wine solves the difficulty, how Mohammed, who prohibited wine, could nevertheless regard the plant which yields it as the gift of God. Wine itself he considers as an invention of Satan, who is said to have first instructed men in the art of preparing it from innocent grapes. As, therefore, the abstinence from wine was evidently beneficial to the Egyptians, and their legislators had the wisdom to recommend what was not to be enforced by authority, so it behoved Moses, solicitous as he must have been to obstruct the return of his people into Egypt, to instil contrary notions into them, and this he actually accomplished. For, even in divine worship, in which, anterior to Psammetichus, no wine was offered by the Egyptians, he enjoined the use of wine, and likewise, as an accompaniment to meat and 28 ATHENEUM, VOL. 5, 3d series.

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might consider it as impure, or abhor it from a motive of religion : nay, he everywhere speaks very advantageously of wine, the principal production of the Land of Promise. Thus, though in the earliest ages of its existence, wine met with wise opponents, it found nevertheless still wiser advocates.

At Rome wine experienced a similar fate. In the time of Numa Pompilius it was still very rare, and Pliny observes, that the ancients cultivated the vine merely for the purpose of using the juice of its fruit as a strengthening beverage in sickness. In the year 634, in the consulship of Lucius Opimius, the city was abundantly supplied with excellent wine. The people were instigated by it to excesses, and intoxication made them riotous. Wine nevertheless continued unprohibited till the end of the first century of the Christian æra, when there was a most abundant year for grapes, and so much the greater a deficiency in the cornharvest. It was represented to the then Emperor Domitian, that the excessive increase of the vineyards occasioned a proportionate diminution in the quantity of corn-land; he therefore prohibited, by an edict, the planting of any new vineyards in Italy, and in other provinces he even ordered the vines to be grubbed up. The same policy that created an aversion to wine in Egypt instigated Domitian to issue this order, which he himself subsequently modified, as we are informed by Suetonius. Nearly 200 years later, this prohibition was repealed by Probus. Mankind, however, have not remained ever since that time in quiet possession of this beverage. Charles IX. of France was induced, by the same policy as Domitian, to lay restrictions in 1567 on the cultivation of the vine, in favor of other branches of agriculture; and still more rigorous measures were adopted with the same view by Louis XV.