It is in accordance with the eternal Unfitness of Things that Sparkling Champagne—that river on whose foaming stream, to the accompaniment of whose gallant laughter, two centuries of blades and Cyprians have floated bravely down into the gay backward abysm of Time—should have taken its rise in a Benedictine abbey. Yet in 1670, at Haut-Villers, one Dom Pérignon scored history with a thicker line than ever was drawn by William of Orange in 1688 of blessed memory. It took an Act of Settlement effectually and finally to abolish Divine Right; but in 1680 the dynasty of Still Champagne was quietly wiped
