"I am coming," be called back; "I am
coming as fast as I can!" He turned to me.
"There is an urgent case waiting for me at the
village yonder; I ought to have been there
half an hour since——I must attend to it at once.
Give me two hours from this time, and call at
Mr. Candy's again——and I will engage to be
ready for you."

"How am I to wait!" I exclaimed impatiently.
"Can't you quiet my mind by a word
of explanation before we part?"

"This is far too serious a matter to be
explained in a hurry, Mr. Blake. I am not
wilfully trying your patience——I should only be
adding to your suspense, if I attempted to
relieve it as things are now. At Frizinghall,
sir, in two hours' time!"

The man on the high road hailed him again.
He hurried away, and left me.

LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE.

RED AND WHITE.

VERY few people know when port wine was
first introduced into England. It began to be
imported about 1675, when the conquest of
Franche Comtè while Turenne's dragoons were
trampling down tbe Palatinate, rendered our
shrewd wine merchants afraid of a general war,
and a speedy failure in their supplies. The red
wine began to pour in faster about 1679——the
year of the battle of Bothwell Brig. The war
with France in 1689 also gave an impetus to
the new trade. The Methuen Treaty of 1703,
and the gradual increase of vexatious double
duties on the wines of Bordeaux and Lyons
completed the transformation, and the drinker
of Burgundy and claret became a port wine
drinker thenceforward. Let any painter who
wants to produce a great allegorical fresco for
the cellars of the London Docks, represent Gout
and Rheumatism (a grisly pair) sitting together
on the chalk-stone cliffs of Dover, smiling a
bitter welcome at the arrival of the first vessel
laden with port. The date of the last arrival
of real port we have found impossible to ascertain.

Pure port is really a sort of Burgundy,
pure, fresh, and with a fine bouquet; it is
sometimes rose, sometimes purple in colour,
perfectly transparent, improving with age. It
is excellent mulled (we have performed
elaborate experiments on it, and can testify to
the fact), but the port sent to England is,
as every Portuguese merchant knows,
coloured with elderberry juice, and three times
mixed with bad brandy——once when half
fermenting, to check further fermentation and
retain the sweetness; secondly, after racking;
lastly, as a farewell dose before shipment.
It has been computed by great authorities that
a glass of our modern black, sweet, strong port
wine contains as much alcohol as two-fifths of a
glass of brandy. The natural dark purple,
rough, astringent sweet wine, deriving its roughness
and sharpness from the husk and seeds of the
grape, requires several years ascetic
seclusion in the fostering wood to remove its
sweetness and coarseness; and some time
in bottle to develop its aroma. It ought to
be richly tinted as a black ruby, soft, fruity,
generous, free from sweetness, and not too
astringent. Such was the wine that made Pitt
eloquent, that lent wings to the honest words of
Fox, and gave fire to the. lightning flashes of
Sheridan; but who could be witty after a
heartburn from modern port?

It is said that the bad port of London
taverns can be imitated with any red or white
wine, a little Roussillon, elder, or other fruit
essence, logwood and spirit, blended with
impudence, and vended by rascality. No wine
can be so easily adulterated as port, and there
is no wine (the best judges say) in which
adulteration can be so little detected: new
port being naturally coarse, sweet, and rough.
Historical wine merchants tell us that this
adulteration began about 1720, and increased
in 1754. In 1756 a monopoly was granted to
the Chartered Royal Wine Company, of Oporto,
in order to restrain this abominable practice;
but the company soon grew worse than the
rogues they had combined to check.

At present, port wine is not merely the juice of
the best Alto Douro grapes, grown on the hills
round Oporto, but also Colares, Barra-a-Barra,
Bucellas, Termo, Arinto, and Lisbon, all mixed
together, and then deliberately thickened, fired,
and darkened with elderberries, boiled grape
juice, and brandy. This stuff is then sent over
to England to be again brandied, darkened, and
poisoned; for while the wine merchants dilute
claret recklessly, they always try to thicken and
heat port, until at last, at low public-houses, it
becomes mere damson juice, mixed with bad
spirit and burnt raisins. It is a fact that no
pure port wine can be shipped from Portugal,
as the government, Doctor Druitt says, will
not give a pass for it, unless it is strong, dark,
and sweet enough to mix with other wines,
for which purpose it is never really used in
England.

The best authorities tell us that the price of
good port has doubled in the last fifteen years.
After the vine disease, the production of port
wine fell off from ninety-two thousand one
hundred and twenty-two pipes to seventeen
thousand three hundred and fifty-three pipes. In
1864, we imported of this horrible medicine
three million three hundred and forty-four thousand
eight hundred and seventy-one gallons;
and in return the Portuguese took from us
one million six hundred and thirty thousand
three hundred and four gallons of spirits with
which to doctor for our palates. The Portuguese
will not drink this new wine; in Lisbon,
indeed, it is considered a sort of liqueur, and
regarded with furtive suspicion. We should
like to know what proportion the whole wine
produce of Portugal bears to the quantity' of port
wine drunk by the infatuated people in England.

What a " deformed fool this fashion is."
Port is now a superstition; yet, when the