Some of us, kind old Pagans, watch with dread the shadows falling
on the age: how the unconquerable worm invades the sunny terraces
of France, and Bordeaux is no more, and the Rhone a mere Arabia
Petraea. Chateau Neuf is dead, and I have never tasted it;
Hermitage--a hermitage indeed from all life's sorrows--lies
expiring by the river. And in the place of these imperial elixirs,
beautiful to every sense, gem-hued, flower-scented, dream-
compellers:- behold upon the quays at Cette the chemicals arrayed;
behold the analyst at Marseilles, raising hands in obsecration,
attesting god Lyoeus, and the vats staved in, and the dishonest
wines poured forth among the sea. It is not Pan only; Bacchus,
too, is dead.
If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the
white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all
fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly, and storing
reminiscences--for a bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines
ever in the retrospect--if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old
Jack! Now we begin to have compunctions, and look back at the
brave bottles squandered upon dinner-parties, where the guests
drank grossly, discussing politics the while, and even the
schoolboy "took his whack," like liquorice water. And at the same
time, we look timidly forward, with a spark of hope, to where the
new lands, already weary of producing gold, begin to green with
vineyards.
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