The faculty are agreed that fine dry champagnes are among the safest wines that can be partaken of. Any intoxicating effects are rapid but exceedingly transient, and arise from the alcohol suspended in the carbonic acid being applied rapidly and extensively to the surface of the stomach. “Champagne,” said Curran, “simply gives a runaway rap at a man’s head.” Dr. Druitt, equally distinguished by his studies upon wine and his standing as a physician, pronounces good champagne to be “a true stimulant to body and mind alike, rapid, volatile, transitory, and harmless. Amongst the maladies which are benefited by it,” remarks he, “is the true neuralgia, intermitting fits of excruciating pain running along certain nerves, without inflammation of the affected part, often a consequence of malaria, or of some other low and exhausting causes. To enumerate the cases in which champagne is of service would be to give a whole nosology. Who does not know the misery, the helplessness of that abominable ailment, influenza, whether a severe cold or the genuine epidemic? Let the faculty dispute about the best remedy if they please; but a sensible man with a bottle of champagne will beat them all. Moreover, whenever there is pain, with exhaustion and lowness, then Dr. Champagne should be had up. There is something excitant in the wine; doubly so in the sparkling wine, which the moment it touches the lips sends an electric telegram of comfort to every remote nerve. Nothing comforts and rests the stomach better, or is a greater antidote to nausea.” Champagne of fine quality should never be mixed with ice or iced water; neither should it be iced to the extent champagnes ordinarily are, for, in the first place, the natural lightness of the wine is such as not to admit of its being diluted without utterly spoiling it, and in the next, excessive cold destroys alike the fragrant bouquet of the wine and its delicate vinous flavour. Really good champagne should not be iced below a temperature of 50° Fahr., whereas exceedingly sweet wines will bear icing down almost to freezing point, and be rendered more palatable by the process. The above remarks apply to all kinds of sparkling wine. In the Champagne what may be termed a really grand vintage commonly occurs only once, and never more than twice, in ten years. During the same period, however, there will generally be one or two other tolerably good vintages. In grand years the crop, besides being of superior quality, is usually abundant, and as a consequence the price of the raw wine is scarcely higher than usual. Apparently from this circumstance the sparkling wine of grand vintages does not command an enhanced value, as is the case with other fine wines. It is only when speculators recklessly outbid each other for the grapes or the _vin brut_, or when stocks are low and the _vin brut_ is really scarce, that the price of champagne appears to rise.