When one views this goodly enumeration of items, it must be admitted that the burthen of the old song does not appear overcharged: “One glass of drink, I got by chance, ’Twas claret when it was in France, But now from it moche wider; I think a man might make as good With green crabbes, boil’d in Brazil-wood, And half a pinte of cyder.” And it gives us cause to be satisfied of the truth of Milton’s remark:— “Of deaths, many are the ways that lead To his grim cave—all dismal.” O ye gulled Jacky Bulls, who revel in bibbing “costly French wines,” how angry you will be with me when I tell you that while you think you are sipping “Genuine Sparkling Champagne,” you are titillating your exquisite gullets with merely plain home-made English gooseberry wine; or, what may be more alarming to you, with worthless Champagne wine of very dangerous and deleterious quality and tendency; whose effervescence or sparkling is produced by disengaging the carbonic acid of the wine by the agency of sugar. To gain this end, the solid sugar is corked up in the bottle, so that the disengaged gas is retained under the pressure of the cork, ready to fly out whenever it is removed. The agency of litharge of lead, in its worst form, is often invoked in the manufacture of Champagne, as well as of other white wines, in order to correct and render bright such wines as have turned vapid, foul, or ropy, or to prevent the progress of any ascescent quality that they may have acquired. The least pernicious mode of manufacture of this wine is by adding to the spoiled Champagnes, a portion of the low, or “third quality” wines from the indifferent vineyards, and occasioning the admixture to undergo a fresh fermentation, by the action of strong chemical agents; and then it is vended as “_prime_ still Champagne.” Some estimate may be formed of the extent of the adulteration of this costly wine by the following notice in Dr. Reece’s Monthly Gazette of Health for 1829.—“A company of Frenchmen,” says that honest abominator of roguery and quackery of all kinds, “have contracted with some farmers in Herefordshire for a considerable quantity of the fresh juice of certain pears, which is to be sent to them in London, immediately after it has been expressed, or before fermentation has commenced. With the recently expressed juice they made last year an excellent brisk wine resembling the finest sparkling Champagne; and we are told that the speculation was so productive, that they have resolved to extend their manufactory.” To this account I can, from a knowledge of the concern, perfectly assent, except that the Anglo-French manufacture does not exactly represent the first quality of Champagne wine, as it is quite impossible for any imitative preparation to represent that quality of wine.