"How sad, and bad, and mad it was,-- And oh! how it was sweet!" Nowadays, we are told, more champagne is drunk in Russia than is grown in France. And the "foaming grape," which Tennyson glorified, is so copiously diluted that it ranks only immediately above small beer in the scale of alcoholic strength. Mr. Finching, the wine-merchant in "Little Dorrit," thought it "weak but palatable," and Lord St. Jerome in "Lothair" was esteemed by the young men a "patriot," "because he always gave his best champagne at his ball suppers." Such patriotism as that, at any rate, is not the refuge of a scoundrel. _Wine and Water._ I return to my beginnings, and, as I ponder the innocuous theme, all sorts of apt citations come crowding on the Ear of Memory. Bards of every age and clime have sung the praises of wine, but songs in praise of water are more difficult to find. Once on a time, when a Maid of Honour had performed a rather mild air on the piano, Queen Victoria asked her what it was called. "A German Drinking-Song, ma'am." "Drinking-Song! One couldn't drink a cup of tea to it." A kindred feebleness seems to have beset all the poets who have tried to hymn the praises of water; nor was it overcome till some quite recent singer, who had not forgotten his Pindar, thus improved on the immortal _Ariston men hudor_:-- "Pure water is the best of gifts That man to man can bring; But what am I, that I should have The best of anything? "Let Princes revel at the Pump, Let Peers enjoy their tea;[8] But whisky, beer, or even wine Is good enough for me." [8] Some commentators read--"Peers with the pond make free." XXI DINNER "We may live without poetry, music, and art; We may live without conscience and live without heart; We may live without friends; we may live without books; But civilized man cannot live without Cooks. "He may live without lore--what is knowledge but grieving? He may live without hope--what is hope but deceiving? He may live without love--what is passion but pining? But where is the man that can live without dining?"