“The Chineses,” we are further told, “are the least addicted to ebriety, delighting themselves in Coffee, Tea, and such like drinks, free from those stupifying qualities; yet are they not without their carouses; and those of the intoxicating drinks prepared of Rice, Coco’s, Sugar, Dates, etc., equalling in strength and spirit any liquors in the world.” With the “Chineses” must be of course included the gallant little Japaneses, with which nation English chroniclers had but a slight acquaintance three hundred years ago. Without enquiring too closely into the nature of Red Falernian, Coan, Massic, or any of the Roman vintages at the time of dear old Horatius Flaccus, let us take a glance over the wine-lists {27} of our own country, from the Saxon period. And the first thing which will naturally strike the observer is the heavy, loaded nature of their dinner drinks. A little later on, Sack did duty for the “inferior sherry” of the Victorian era, although a Sack-and-Angostura was not a frequent demand amongst the young bloods of the period. On the festive boards of the Saxons appeared, besides ale of the strongest and cider of the roughest, home-made wines, mead, morat, metheglin, and more or less odoriferous pigments. In case any enterprising ratepayer should elect to give his guests _Mead_, at his next house-warming, here is the ancient recipe. Take of spring-water what quantity you please, and make it more than blood-warm, and dissolve honey in it till ’tis strong enough to bear an egg, the breadth of a shilling; then boil it gently near an hour, taking of the scum as it rises; then put to about nine or ten gallons seven or eight large blades of mace, three nutmegs quartered, twenty cloves, three or four sticks of cinnamon, two or three roots of ginger, and a quarter of an ounce of Jamaica pepper; put these spices into the kettle to the honey and water, a whole lemon, with a sprig of sweet-briar and a sprig of rosemary; tie the briar and rosemary together, and when they have boiled a little while take them out and throw them away; but let your liquor stand on the spice in a clean earthen pot till the next day; then strain it into a vessel that is fit for it; put the spice in a bag, and hang it in the vessel, stop it, and at three months {28} draw it into bottles. Be sure that ’tis fine when ’tis bottled; after ’tis bottled six weeks ’tis fit to drink. Fancy drinking Mead with your soup! Morat was made of honey flavoured with mulberry juice; and Pigment—which might be drunk at the Royal Academy banquets—was a sweet and rich liquor evolved from highly-spiced wine flavoured with honey. _Metheglin_ was also called Hydromel and Oinomel. “The best Receipt whereof,” writes an authority, “that I have observed to be made by them is thus:—