The chief topic Mr. Tomes discusses is the manufacture of champagne wines; but his book is also descriptive of life in Rheims and the adjacent country, as he knew it during two years' residence in that ancient city. Indeed, it is only when the reader remembers his former ignorance of everything concerning champagne, excepting its pop and sparkle and flavor, that he realizes how thoroughly instructive Mr. Tomes's agreeable pages are. In them an intelligent sympathy follows the grape through all the processes of its change to wine;--through the vintage, when it is gathered by the yeomen of La Champagne, from their own land, and sold to the great champagne lords of Rheims; through the expression of its juice in presses obedient to the trained and sensitive touch of hands which give neither more nor less strength than is adequate to the extraction of the most delicate flavor; through the season of its first fermentation in casks, and its second in bottles; through its "marriage" with the kindred juices, whose united offspring is champagne; through the crisis when it is doctored with the cordial that bestows a life-long sweetness; through its final corking and sale in every civilized country. As Mr. Tomes's style is light and easy, and as he has a quick, unforced sense of humor, his information is as delightful as it is honest. He counts nothing alien to him that concerns champagne, and he sketches with a pleasant and graphic touch the champagne lords and their history, beginning with the great Clicquot (whose widow, after inheriting him so many years, died only the other day), and bringing down the list with the Heidsiecks, the Roederers, Moët and Chandon, the Mumms, and De St. Marceaux, last but not least of the great champagne houses. As appears from their names, most of these are Germans, and, according to Mr. Tomes, most of the business of Rheims is conducted by Germans, who far excel the French in capacity for commerce. They are the agents and chief clerks even in French houses; it is some German of enormous physique and iron constitution who is selected as _commis-voyageur_ to sell the wines and attract custom, by pouring them out and convivially drinking them wherever he goes. Mr. Tomes's conviction is, that this commercial traveller leads a difficult and precarious life, for he cannot eject the wine when once taken into the mouth, as is the custom of the more fortunate dealers in selling to buyers at the manufactories.