THROUGH A GLASS LIGHTLY
said Voltaire; yet he told but a half truth, after all, for his countrymen for the most part drink it at this present heavy and sweet to an accompaniment of marrons glacés and such-like cloying cates. Happily our own habit is different; and herein shines forth the ancient insular superiority. Scarce has the fish, bull-headed cod or blushing mullet, swum into our ken, ere the cork leaps forth with a cloop of joy, and straightway, as on the approach of spring, the sap stirs and the buds of speech burst into life, and talk, reluctant and hidebound no more, bursts into many-coloured bloom. No longer in middle-class houses is the wine doled out like drops of blood, as in those ugly parties which Original Walker satirised. At this, the tail-end of our century, it
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