To their meagre wines-pale of hue and devoid of body-the cunning artificer adds a large proportion of alum to heighten the colour: for the same purpose the inspissated juice of elderberries, and a strong decoction of logwood, are employed. To impart astringency and the flavour of age to new raw wine, oak sawdust, or some of the salts of copper, are added with a liberal hand: then, again, the oil of bitter almonds (a deadly poison), bunches of elderflowers, or pieces of orrice-root, supply the desiderated perfume.

A preponderance of acid is met by a large addition of lime, of potash, or of sugar of lead, in which latter case, indeed, the whole cask teems with the elements of paralysis and death. But very frequently the bottled fluids vended at many of the provincial hotels and inns contain not even one drop of the juice of the grape. Innumerable are the recipes in vogue among publicans of the lower class to enable them to defraud their too-confiding customers. The following is one, which, according to Mr. Mitchell, is in considerable use for producing a "fine fruity port!"-

Damson wine, eleven gallons; brandy, five gallons; cyder, thirty-six gallons; elder wine, eleven gallons.

In a little book entitled a "Treatise on Winemaking," under the suspicious heading, "Secrets belonging to vintners," will be found a vast number of directions, which, if adopted, must infallibly be attended with disastrous results. Fortunately for mankind the book is now scarce, though we fear it has, since its publication, been productive of incalculable mischief.+ The report just published of the Select Committee on the import duties of wines, gives some curious information on the subject of their manufacture. Take, for instance, the following interesting account of the mode in which that highly-prized but anomalous article, port wine, is made up for sale.‡

appearance of maturity being thus imparted to the mendacious bark. Surely the consumers may have good reason to long for the "dura messorum ilia."§

From the same source we give an instance of the ingenuity and rapidity with which these tricksters can imitate the choicest wines.

The late Prince of Wales, it seems, "had at one time a small quantity of remarkably fine wine, of which his household approved so highly, that they speedily drank it out, leaving but two bottles! Suddenly the Prince ordered some for his table. The royal butler in a moment stood aghast, but being a man of ready wit, he went immediately to a city merchant and stated his dilemma. The dealer quickly reassured him, observing, "Send me a bottle of what remains, and what I send must be drunk immediately: I can imitate it." The trick was successful, and was repeated whenever requisite.

Need we feel any surprise that, under such a system-the ramifications of which extend through every department of the trade, from the time when the pure juice is first pressed from the ripe grape, until it "sparkles on the board" of the defrauded consumer-a striking falling off should be each year perceptible in the importations from abroad, notwithstanding our vastly increasing wealth and numbers?

Those who are desirous of ascertaining to what extent their wine-merchant is undermining their pockets and their health, may arrive at tolerably satisfactory results from the subjoined tests :

The alcohol in wines may be ascertained thus:-Add one part of a concentrated solution of subacetate of lead to eight parts of the wine by measurement. A precipitate will then be formed. Shake the mixture for a minute or two, and pour the whole upon a filter, and then collect wine with some of the lead. Add by little and little to this fluid, warm, dry, and pure subcarbonate of potash (not the salt of tartar and subcarbonate of potash of commerce), which has been freed from water by heat. Do this until the last portion remains undissolved. The spirit contained in the fluid will then be separated, the potash abstracting all the water, and the spirit forming a stratum separating upon the salt. Make the experiment in a glass tube from half-an-inch to two inches in diameter, graduated into 100 parts, and the quantity of spirit per cent. may be read off at once.

the fluid. This fluid contains the spirit and water in the

To detect colouring matter in wine (red wine), acetate of lead with pure wine throws down a greenish-grey precipitate. If elderberries, bilberries, or logwood have wood, red sanders, and beet are thrown down red. When been used, this test will give a blue precipitate. Brazil

beet is used, wine loses its colour with lime-water. The French recommend liquid potash. The following are said to be its precipitates: Berries of Yebla Indian wood

Violet. Violet red. Violet.

Red.

Red.

Clear violet.

Lees of wine colour. Bluish.

With the natural colour of the wine the precipitate is

green.

lead, or carbonate of copper, adds to the already poisonous nature of the water with which it is combined. His bread, if he reside in London, is certainly adulterated with alum,* not improbably with plaster of Paris or sand. His beer with cocculus indicus, grains of paradise, quassia, &c.t

Those girkins, of emerald hue, that appear so innocent, and consequently so tempting in their prismatic jar, owe their seductive beauty to one of the deadliest poisons in all the range of chemistry. The verdant apricots in that tart are attractive from the same baneful cause. The anchovy-paste produced contemporaneously with the cheese, if analysed, would be found to consist of an amalgam of decayed sprats, venetjan red, and red lead; nay, that double Gloucester itself is not free from contamination: its colour is due to annatto, and that annatto has been compounded of red lead, chrome, and ochre. The oil in that salad has possibly come from Paris, where incredible quantities are manufactured at the knacker's yard! Whole carcases of horses being there boiled down, the fat is resolved into its component stearine and elaine; the former being converted into candles, and the latter into olive oil.

The cloth is removed; the dessert and children are introduced; the more juvenile and clamorous are appeased with the coveted ornaments from the central cake. As well almost might the fond parent give them dirks or loaded pistols for toys. The brilliant colours they prize so highly derive their charm from gypsum, salts of lead, mercury, and arsenic, and can hardly fail to lay the foundation of future sickness, and, not improbably, of long-protracted misery.

That treacherous wine may contain, not only salts of lead and copper, but even sulphuric and prussic acids, and still more hurtful ingredients. In short, to such an extent is the fraudulent adulteration of all kinds of provisions carried by tradesmen of every denomination, that the system calls for legislative interference in order to stay the further dissemination of disease. Their knavery, like the spectre in Anastasius, is "ever present at the festive board, and hands us whatever we would attempt to reach; but whatever it presents is blasted by the touch. To our wine it gives the taste of blood; to our bread the rank flavour of death!"

On assuming the important functions they

*In a penny bun lately were found three grains of alm and ten of chalk.

Whatever the purity of the beer sent out from the brewery, it is almost invariably found in a highly sophisticated state on the premises of the publican.

have since so ably discharged, the Commissioners of the "Lancet" had in view three objects-To record the results of actual analyses of samples of the various solids and fluids consumed in the metropolis, as well as those sold in the chief provincial cities and towns; and then to extend their investigations to every description of medicine and drug.

It will be seen at once that their field of inquiry was tolerably extensive, and that their researches must already have involved great labour and a considerable outlay.

During the first year of their operations the Commissioners were occupied only with the first of the objects above enumerated, and even this has scarcely yet been brought to completion. The analysts, however, have gone over many of the most important articles of consumption, as sugar, tea, coffee, chicory, cocoa, chocolate, mustard, pepper, bread, flour, arrow-root, farrinaceous foods, including the compounds ervalenta and revalenta, oatmeal, isinglass, water, and milk.

Deep and extensive systems of adulteration have been detected; often commencing with the manufacturer, and terminating with the petty shopkeeper.

They have proved to demonstration "that in purchasing any article of food or drink, the rule is, that you obtain an adulterated one, the genuine commodity being the exception."

Further, that the articles used for adulteration are always of inferior quality, often worthless, frequently positively injurious, and not uncommonly poisonous.

The labours of the Analytical Sanitary Commission are characterized by three very distinct

WHEN Mr. D'Israeli, in one of his novels, sneered at Mr. Alison as "the great Mr. Wordy, who had written a history of Europe in twenty volumes," he manifested a very just appreciation of the merits of that gentleman as an historian perhaps, also, he betrayed the jealousy of a litterateur who saw a brother writer making a great deal of money with very little merit. When the same Mr. D'Israeli inaugurated the return of the Tory party to power, by conferring upon Mr. Alison the title of baronet, he proclaimed the poverty of his party in literary talent, and their gratitude for very small favours. He shewed that the Tories had the courage to bestow, for a few articles in "Blackwood," a reward that was thought sufficient for Scott; and he contrasted, in the strongest possible manner, the appreciation of literary services by the Whigs and the Tories, when he conferred on Alison what successive Whig Cabinets had deemed unearned by Hallam or Macaulay.

We do not grudge Mr. Alison his baronetcy. He has given the true English pledge of merithe has made money in his calling: he has quite as much right to be made a baronet for his quickly-selling books, as a London citizen has for his success in the sale of candles, or as a banker has to be made a peer for his operations in the money-market-à tous seigneurs tous hon

neurs.

That money should reward the shrewdness which produces a useful article, fit for general consumption, is one of those ordinary sequences whereof none has a right to complain: that the acquisition of such substantial and evident success should lead to honour and much respect, is the common course of events among a matter-of-fact commercial people. When Mr. Smith became Lord Carrington, and when Mr. Jones Lloyd became Lord Overstone, who did not look upon it as the most natural circumstance in the world? If Chatterton or Otway had been made baronets, what respecter of our ancient institutions would not have been deeply scandalized?

But it is a very different thing to allow a man to walk in proud precedence with rich Lord Mayors, and to exalt him to the rank of Clarendon, Gibbon, Hume, Robertson, and Hallam. If this be claimed, we must have some better passport than Mr. D'Israeli's pa

philosophy. He is no more like Tacitus than a woolpack is like a diamond; no more like Macaulay than the Pavilion at Brighton is like St. Mark's at Venice. He is verbose, and yet obscure, grandiloquent and common-place; † ambitious in words and mean in ideas; confused in arrangement, dogmatical without wisdom, and positive without knowledge. He criticises the campaign of Waterloo with more than the confidence of a great military leader, and exposes the faults and oversights of Wellington with an easy superiority that allows us no alternative but to admire him as a great master of strategics, or to get vexed with him, and perhaps call him a coxcomb or a presumptuous and shallow pedant-an impropriety which

Take the following beautiful bit of bathos (p. 567): "As the Congress (at Aix la Chapelle) was expected to be short, there was not the same brilliant concourse of strangers which had met at Vienna in 1814; but still enough to throw an air of splendour over the august assembly. The princess Lieven, and Lady Castlereagh, shone pre-eminent among the female diplomatists *** The splendid diamonds of the latter were the object of general admiration *** Madame Catalani appeared there with the magnificent diamond brooch which had been given her by the the Emperor Alexander." "Punch's" friend "Jenkins' at the Morning Post has surely mistaken his vocation. He should have writteen a History of England.

We have heard old military men vent many pishes and pshaws, and even other less mistakeable monosyllables, when we have read to them some passages from the 376th page of the nineteenth volume of Mr. Alison's veritable history.

"In the first place, it is evident, whatever the English writers may say to the contrary, that both Blucher and the Duke of Wellington were unexpectedly assailed by Napoleon's invasion of Belgium on the 15th June, and nigh proved a decisive, advantage by that circumstance.” that he gained in the outset a great, and, what had well

The "historian" disposes promptly, as we have often delighted to observe to our irate military friends, of all objections as to shutting Napoleon out from the road to tulate himself on his campaign," triumphantly replies Brussels. "He would have had little reason to congraPhormio of Ephesus-we mean Sir Archibald Alison of Edinburgh, "if he had passed the allies and occupied Brussels, if they had passed him and-taken Paris!" If Wellington had only acted as Mr. Alison would have done under similar circumstances, "the campaign would have been secured, and Napoleon overthrown in the very first encounter, without risk to either party;"!!! but as it happened, the victory was nothing but "the result of misinformation on the part of one general, and heroic but imprudent valour on the other" (p. 382). In fact, "but for the extraordinary circumstance which was not to be reckoned on-of D'Erlon's corps, 24,000 strong, being marched and countermarched the whole of the 16th, withleon would have gained, on the very first day of the camout firing a shot either at Quatre Bras or Ligny-Napopaign, a victory over both the English and Prussian forces" (p. 379). It is "quite evident," therefore, as we took the liberty of remarking to General Bulletriddled of the fighting third division, that either Sir A. Alison ought to be looked upon as a foolish bore, who talks nonsense over a subject he knows nothing about, or else that the defence of England, in case of an invasion, ought at