ties, were appointed to be present when the tomb was opened: among these was the celebrated German painter, Overbeck, one of the worthiest of Raphael's followers; and to him we are indebted for some details, in a letter addressed to Director Veit, of Frankfort, in September, 1833. Passavant gives the letter entire, and completes the account from other sources equally authentic. Overbeck's feelings on the first opening of the tomb, and on seeing the actual remains of the object of his homage exposed to view, are expressed in a striking manner; but he soon after remarks, that, alas! the spirit of the great artist remains buried far deeper than his bones.'

ART. II.-A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of the Grape Vine on Open Walls. By Clement Hoare. London. 12mo.

1837.

IN

N this age of socialism, chartism, teetotalism, et omne quod exit in ism, when abstinence, not temperance, is preached by the apostles of order and disorder, agitation and peace, it may seem rather venturous to offer a few words in favour of the little volume before us.

Of a dissertation on wines we shall be guiltless; although books, ancient and modern, in many languages, lie open to tempt us; some as bright and sparkling as the best vintages of brilliant France; others as sound and substantial as those of Portugal, Spain, and Madeira; and others, again, as flat, stale, and unprofitable as the Vin du Surène, of which the proverb goes, that there must be three persons to drink one glass of it, to wit, the unfortunate patient, one friend to support him, and another to hold his nose during the operation. But our business now is with Ampelus rather than

'Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape Crush'd the sweet poison of misused wine;' and we pray forbearance for a sketch-it shall be no more-of the history of the Vine.

From the time that Noah planted his vineyard, every heathen nation seems to have contended for the honour of claiming, as its own, the distributor of the vine and its benefits, and deifying him accordingly. The Egyptian gave the palm to Osiris; the ancient Italian to Saturn; whilst the Greek shouted for his Bacchus,

as they had been long in possession of a skull supposed to be that of Raphael, and which had been the admiration of the followers of Gall and Spurzheim. The reputation of this relic naturally fell with its change of name, the more irretrievably as it proved to have belonged to an individual of no celebrity.

who

who brought the goodly plant from Arabia the Happy, commemorating and softening the triumph of his arms by leaving it as a legacy to the conquered.

Still it will be asked of what country was the vine originally a native? The question is more easily put than answered. The contention among the cities for Homer sinks into insignificance compared with the struggle for precedence in this honour among entire countries. Chaptal, whose attention was long directed to the inquiry, names Asia, the fertile farm and garden from which the cultivated grasses, vegetables, and fruits, were poured into Europe as from the horn of plenty, together with civilization and the arts. So far so good; but Asia is a large place. The preference is claimed for Syria by some. Michaux found the vine in the woods of Mazanderan; and Olivier beheld it gracing the mountains of Koordistan. Pallas saw it near the Caspian and Black Seas, growing with no aid but from the hand of nature. The kishmish, a peculiar stoneless variety of the grape, is considered by some to be a native of that part of Persia lying on the Gulf. In Belochistan, still farther to the east, the vine clings with its tendrils to the northern shores of the Arabian Sea. The feet of the Paropamisan Mountains are rich with it, blending its clusters with the olive and fig; and it extends to Caubulistan, where it associates with the apricot and peach. The forests of Anatolia and Karamania enshrine it; and Armenia, where Noah may have found it, abounds with the vine. In a word, there is strong evidence to make the vine a native of Persia, in which locality it is not likely to be neglected; for Khuzzelbash does not seem inclined to lose the privilege of possessing it by non user, and beats your Englishman-who, according to Othello's Ancient, throws your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander' into the shade-in his capacity for continued imbibition, the wine not seeming to have much more effect upon that child of the sun than upon any other vessel in his house.

Dr. Sickler traces the gradual migration of the vine into Egypt, Sicily, &c.; and it is highly probable that the Phoenicians introduced its culture into the Grecian Archipelago, Greece, Italy, Provence, and Marseilles.

The ancient Roman, in his political infancy, had other and sterner duties to attend to than the training of the vine; and the libations of milk ordained by Romulus, who forbade the use of wine for those purposes, necessarily discouraged such culture. The nymph Egeria seems to have given Numa a hint that a little wine would be no bad addition to a tête à tête; for though he also forbade the use of wine at funerals, he permitted libations to be made to the gods, of wine made from well-pruned vines, thus directing

VOL. LXVI. NO. CXXXI.

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directing the attention of the people to the care of the plant. But wine must have been for a long time scarce in Rome; and if ancient story be true, a single draught only was allowed during a repast, in the early part of the life of Lucullus!

Britain owes the presence of the vine, in all probability, to the Romans. It does not appear to have existed here in the time of Agricola; but the subsequent intercourse could hardly fail of introducing it. There is extant an edict of Probus, allowing omnibus Gallis et Britannis ut vineas habeant et vinum confieiant.' Bede notices several vineyards; and Winchester was long supposed-though in uncritical days we allow-to have received its name from the vines for which it certainly was noted. The Norman called the Isle of Ely the Isle of Vines;' and its bishop, soon after the conquest, appears to have received tithe of wine, to the amount of three or four tuns annually, from his diocese. Vineyards are frequently mentioned in Domesday Book. The Sussex vineyard belonging to the Duke of Norfolk, from whose produce many pipes of good Burgundy wine were made, shows to what extent the cultivation was carried. Drayton singsGloster in times past her selfe did highly prize,

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When in her pride of strength she nourish't goodly vines,
And oft her cares represt with her delicious wines.

But now th' all-cheering sun the colder soyle deceaves,

And us (heere tow'rds the pole) still falling south-ward leaves:
So that the sullen earth th' effect thereof doth prove;

According to their books, who hold that he doth move
From his first zenith's point.'

The goodly vines' were gone, therefore, in his time, and superseded :

'For of her Vines depriv'd, now Gloster learns to plant

The Peare-tree every where: whose fruit she strains for juce,
That her pur'st Pery is, which first she did produce
From Worstershire, and there is common as the fields ;
Which naturally that soyle in most aboundance yields.'

Descending from his Pegasus, Drayton introduces a long and dry enough note on the various conjectures which had then been put forth as to the reason of the gradual abandonment of our English vineyards. But this topic we may omit. Is it not one of the reasons of the change, at least, that the soil of England gives a bountiful return of corn where the vine would starve, or hardly ever ripen its fruit in perfection? There are no spots in Britain of which it can be said, in an agricultural sense,

'Illic veniunt felicius uvæ.'

As well might the Laplander turn his attention to growing corn under glass (as they raised lang kale in the parish of Dreepdaily)

as

as the English agriculturist attempt to compete with the CôteRotie. But though we must leave the wine-press, to any available extent, to our neighbours, there is no reason why the vine should not be cultivated in the open air in the southern counties of England at least, and there bear rich and well-ripened fruit for the table; and this is the real subject of Mr. Hoare's essay.* He has given us a modest volume of some 200 pages filled with plain practical directions, disfigured by no grandiloquent passages, nor chilling the reader with scientific terms; for he is not one of those modern philosophers who

'Allium call their onions and their leeks."

'Vines,' says our author, are now cultivated in this country only against walls, upon the roofs of buildings, and under glass. The expense attending the growing of grapes under glass, is such, however, as obviously to place that method out of the reach of the mass of the people; and vineyard culture, now that it has fallen into disuse, is perhaps considered so much in the light of a commercial speculation, that those who possess the means of practising it are deterred from employing them, from an apprehension that the risk and uncertainty attending it would prove more than sufficient to counterbalance its advantages. But the cultivation of vines on open walls being free from these and all other objections, presents an advantageous method of producing grapes which may be embraced by every person who has at his command a few square feet of the surface of a wall.'—p. 5.

The labouring poor of this country are too often driven to the beer-shop as the only resource after the toils of the day. One by one their legitimate and invigorating amusements have been wrested from them. Their cricket-grounds have been taken away; their commons have been in great measure inclosed. Forlorn, and without the means of relaxation-for in many places the cottage-garden has also vanished-the baleful haunts, where 'ten thousand casks,

For ever dribbling forth their base contents,

Bleed gold for ministers to sport away'

gape for them, and the peasantry become besotted, demoralised, brutalised. It is matter of notoriety that such houses were the hot-beds of the late insurrection in South Wales. One who knows the country well, informed us that there a man without property or character would borrow some five or ten pounds, and set up a beer-shop. In order to get custom it became necessary that he should convert his house into a chartist lodge, and so he did. In the beer-shops, for the most part, were the absurd but

Mr. Hoare does not at all enter upon the treatment of the vine under glass; those who wish for information on that subject will find ample materials in Speechly's work, and the various papers and treatises since published in the Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London.

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truculent

truculent plans of that ragged regiment of rebels concocted; and throughout the agricultural districts they are the very foci of crime.

But fortunately there are yet peaceful villages, where chartism and beer-shops are alike unknown, and where, while the chime of the Sabbath bells sounds musically through the summer air, the ancient light-blue straight-cut coat, bordered with its constellation of broad round silver buttons of the first magnitude, is still to be seen in the chequered shade of the churchyard, about the hour of prayer. In the button-hole of that coat is secured a small phial of limpid water, wherein are refreshed the stems of some three or four choice pinks, or two or three bright bizarres of carnations cherished for the occasion, on which the wearer looks with fond pride, and whose fair blossoms form a sort of order of Flora upon a bosom that many a courtier might envy. This same coat is never without a magnificent Old Brompton stock on the club-day; and you shall find its owner's humble home a happy one-as happy as the happiest in Goldsmith's Village,' before it was deserted. Cleanliness and comfort are everywhere; and his garden-not without bees-is a perfect picture. The fumes of the beer-shop, reeking with tobaccosmoke, and the company of the poacher, the thief, and the burglar, would have no charms for him, even if the hamlet were cursed with one.

Now, the hut must be poor indeed which is without some coign of vantage; and we earnestly pray the attention of benevolent landlords to the fact that there are few cottagers in South Britain who might not materially aid their resources and add to their comforts by the culture of the vine as recommended by Mr. Hoare:

It is not too much to assert that the surface of the walls of every cottage of a medium size that is applicable to the training of vines is capable of producing annually as many grapes as would be worth half the amount of its rental. Every square foot of the surface of a wall may, in a short space of time, be covered with bearing wood, sufficient to produce, on an average, a pound weight of grapes, and I have frequently grown double that quantity on a similar extent of surface.

Nor must it be supposed that a single vine requires for its training a large portion of walling. That very common notion has, no doubt, arisen from the universally defective method of pruning and managing; whereby the wood is suffered, and, indeed, encouraged, to extend itself most disproportionately beyond the capability of its fruit-bearing powers. I scarcely ever allot more than from forty to fifty square feet of surface for one vine; and, unless the soil and situation be very superior indeed, a single vine will require a space of time, not less than twenty years at least, before it will possess a sufficient degree of strength to enable it to mature annually a greater quantity of grapes than can be trained on the last-mentioned