PORT
non propter hoc; and it has been said with truth that the chief, if not the sole, effect for good of that middle-class Magna Charta was the building of the Reform Club; for here at least are cellars stored with the wine of wines, and thereof some of Mr Gladstone’s starkest opposites counted it their especial privilege to drink. And thereafter Time hath marked his line of advance with halt after halt of noble vintages: even as our Royal Edward planted a cross at every resting-place of his Queen on her solemn march to Westminster. There is ’47, matchless, incomparable, rare and precious, as the sea-otter; there is ’51, honoured, as they say, though not drunk by the austere editor of Truth, which shows that in the radicalest of us lie the germs of nobility; there is ’58, whose dry humour is appreciated
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