Cider is, I believe, still drunk at Oxford; and memory retains grateful recollections of Cider-cup beautiful as a liquid topaz, with a cluster of blue flowers floating on its breast. But the Cider-Cellars of London--places of, I fear, ill-regulated conviviality--have, as far as I know, long since closed their doors. Yet they, too, have their secure place in literature. The "Young Lion" of the _Daily Telegraph_, who looked forward to succeeding Dr. W. H. Russell as War Correspondent of the _Times_, thrilled with excitement at the prospect of inoculating the Leading Journal with "the divine madness of our new style--the style we have formed upon Sala. It blends the airy epicureanism of the _salons_ of Augustus with the full-bodied gaiety of our English Cider Cellar." But that was written in 1870, and the style and the Cellars alike are things of the past. The official historian of Cider excels in that "dry light" which is the grace of history, and gravely tells us that "Cider (_Zider_, German) when first made in England was called wine." With a proper reluctance to commit himself to what is antecedently incredible, he adds that "the Earl of Manchester, when Ambassador in France (1699), _is said_ to have passed off Cider for Wine." It is more plausibly stated that in later days the innocuous apple has been artfully mingled with the "foaming grape of Eastern France," and has been drunk in England as Champagne. The Hock-cup at Buckingham Palace is justly vaunted as one of the chief glories of our ancient polity. It is certainly the most delectable drink that ever refreshed a thirsty soul; and the art of concocting it is a State-Secret of the most awful solemnity. But there never was a secret which did not sooner or later elude its guardians; and I have heard that a Royal cellarer, in an expansive moment, once revealed the spell. German Wine and English Cider together constitute the Kingly Cup, "And, blended, form, with artful strife, The strength and harmony of life." XXX THE GARTER "Breathes there a man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said----