There lingers still the old love for this wine--it is, without doubt, the king of wines. I remember ten years ago, or thereabouts, dining with one--then my partner--now, alas! gathered to his fathers--at the Blue Posts, before that old inn was burned down. The room was a comfortable old-fashioned first floor, low of ceiling; with a great fire in an old-fashioned grate; set with four or five tables only, because not many frequented this most desirable of dining-places. We took with dinner a bottle of light claret; when we had got through the claret and the beef, the waiter, who had been hovering about uneasily, interposed. ‘Don’t drink any more of that wash,’ he said; ‘let me bring you something fit for gentlemen to sit over.’ He brought us, of course, a bottle of port. They say that the taste for port is reviving; but claret has got so firm a hold of our affections that I doubt it. As for the drinking of spirits, it was certainly much more common then than it is now. Among the lower classes gin was the favourite--the drink of the women as much as of the men. Do you know why they call it ‘blue ruin’? Some time ago I saw, going into a public-house, somewhere near the West India Docks, a tall lean man, apparently five-and-forty or thereabouts. He was in rags; his knees bent as he walked, his hands trembled, his eyes were eager. And, wonderful to relate, the face was perfectly blue--not indigo blue, or azure blue, but of a ghostly, ghastly, corpse-like kind of blue, which made one shudder. Said my companion to me, ‘That is gin.’ We opened the door of the public-house and looked in. He stood at the bar with a full glass in his hand. Then his eyes brightened, he gasped, straightened himself, and tossed it down his throat. Then he came out, and he sighed as one who has just had a glimpse of some earthly Paradise. Then he walked away with swift and resolute step, as if purposed to achieve something mighty. Only a few yards farther along the road, but across the way, there stood another public-house. The man walked straight to the door, entered, and took another glass, again with the quick grasp of anticipation, and again with that sigh, as of a hurried peep through the gates barred with the sword of fire. This man was a curious object of study. He went into twelve more public-houses, each time with greater determination on his lips and greater eagerness in his eyes. The last glass, I suppose, opened these gates for him and suffered him to enter, for his lips suddenly lost their resolution, his eyes lost their lustre, he became limp, his arms fell heavily--he was drunk, and his face was bluer than ever.