We have generally avoided the profane use of trade or professional jargon, too often the outcome of ignorance, pretence, and affectation, such as “full,” “fruity,” “smooth on palate,” “round in the mouth,” “full of body,” “wing,” “character,” etc.; nor have we touched, or desired to touch, on the influence of alcohol on man’s social or other well-being. Peter the Hermit is fully represented already, and we have no mission to call upon our fellow-countrymen to “rise to the dignity of manhood,” and never touch another glass of Madeira. The authors have followed the example of the illustrious Molière in taking their matter wherever they could find it. The information contained in this work is derived either from other books, oral information, or personal experience. “The sun robs the sea, the moon robs the sun, the sea robs the moon,” says Timon of Athens, repeating Anacreon, who adds that the earth robs them all. So preceding authors are indebted to one another, and the present volume to them all. It has been written, it is hoped, without bias or prejudice of any kind; but, as the drinks containing Alcohol are many more than those in which it is absent, more have been mentioned. That a full record of all drinks should appear, is impossible; nor could any critic expect it; but an attempt has been made to give a fairly full list, and to render it as pleasant reading as the subject admits. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE DRINKS OF ANTIQUITY. EGYPT: Method of Wine-Making—Early Wines—Names of Wines—Ladies and Wine—Beer, etc. ASSYRIA: List of Assur-ba-ni-pal’s Wines—Method of Drinking—Different Sorts of Wine. HITTITE: Two Ladies Drinking—Their Appreciation of Wine—The Hittite Bacchus. JUDEA: Mention of Wines in the Old Testament—Wine as an Article of Commerce—Mixed Wines—Wine Vessels. Has any man been bold enough to attempt to fix upon the discoverer of Wine? Not to our knowledge. Nor can a date be even hazarded as to its introduction. It was so good a thing, that we may be sure that men very soon came to know its revivifying effects. We do know this: that the oldest records of which we have any cognisance, those of the Egyptians (who were in a high state of civilization and culture when the Hebrews were semi-barbarous nomads), show us that they had wine, and used it in a most refined manner, as we see by the headpiece to this chapter. Here a father is nursing his child, who invites him to smell a lotus flower, another blossom of which his mother is showing him. An attendant proffers wine in bowls wreathed with flowers, and another is at hand with a bowl possibly of water, and a napkin. This wreathing the bowls with flowers shows how highly they esteemed the “good creature,” and, also, that they were then at least as civilized as the later Greeks and Romans, who followed the same practice.