Changes of custom in one of the two nations, which have had the effect of separating it still further from the other, may be traced in several minor habits that are now considered especially and characteristically English. I can remember the time when the middle classes of England hardly knew the taste of French wine. Port and sherry were the wines of the middle class. The upper classes, in those days, offered French red wines at dessert under the general name of “claret,” without distinguishing between Bordeaux and Burgundy, and consequently without mentioning vineyards, unless the host happened to be, or pretended to be, a connoisseur. The taxes on French wines were afterwards reduced, and just before the reduction the kind of middle-class people who prided themselves on being especially national often declared that John Bull would never take to those light French wines, implying that he was a personage of more manly tastes, and writers in the press quoted a dignitary of the Anglican Church who had declared that “claret would be port, if it could,” which is like saying that port is anxious to become brandy. These good middle-class people, who made it a part of John Bull’s character to despise their French wines, seem to have been perfectly unaware that their ancestors, not less English than themselves, had for centuries been hearty appreciators of French wines, and that, in old times, casks of Bordeaux or Burgundy were to be found not only in the cellars of the rich, but in country hostelries. This may be a trifling matter, but to have the same taste in wines is not altogether unimportant as an aid to good-fellowship. A Frenchman looks upon an incapacity to appreciate the best wines--by which, of course, he always means the best French wines--as the sign of the outer barbarian. What he most likes in the Belgians is the just value they attach to the produce of “_les meilleurs crûs_” and their excellent, well-filled cellars. [Sidenote: Tea.] [Sidenote: Englishwomen in France.] [Sidenote: Novelty of Tea-drinking in England.]