I was told by a négociant, an intelligent man, not a wine-merchant, that it was the wish of the wine-growers of France, that wine imported into England should pay a duty _ad valorem_, on the price, not on the quantity. He did not expect that the English government should be content to receive a less amount of duty on the same quantity of wine, the mean quality supposed the same: but he asserted that wines of inferior quality, which could not be imported in the face of the duty per gallon, would then find their way; that the consumption of wine would be much increased; and the English government, as well as the French wine-dealer and proprietor of vineyards, would both be benefited. As fiscal regulations have spoiled our malt liquor, it would be but fair to allow to those who are now ruining their health with rum and water, the pleasure of drinking sometimes a bottle of small French wine. What? A bottle of Burgundy at a farmer's ordinary? Gentlemen travellers drinking claret? So much are men the slaves of habit, that the supposition appears extravagant; and, after a twelvemonth, the thing itself would be no more astonishing than it is now in France. The French, who have seen the atmosphere of smoke in which London is enveloped, and the sea-coal pouring its volumes of smoke up the chimney, have disseminated throughout France a certain horror of coal fires. There are, near Lyons, mines of coal of a quality superior to any I have yet seen, like the Wednesbury, but better. I had some difficulty in making the blacksmith comprehend what ought to be the form of such machines as grate, poker, fender. "Things by their name I call;" though to my blacksmith I was obliged to use every sort of periphrasis. _My_ poker was made with a hook at the end of it; the fender had a handle to it; the bars of the grate were too small and too near each other. The hook of the poker was soon straightened in the fire: of the fender handle I was contented to declare, "il n'y a pas de mal à cela:"[55] as the bars of my grate, though near, were not thick; they did not intercept more heat than usual.