fined it? or was it because of the dark and evil times mild and good men were forced to shelter themselves in cells, and keep their liquor under lock and key?

However it may be, those cowled, good fellows had a good time of it. Safe and sure, tranquil and content, they fermented good wine, and brewed bad metaphysics; the wine they kept to themselves, but the metaphysics they let loose in the world to bother mankind, and deepen still more the darkness of the ages.

Soon after leaving Capri, I spent several weeks at the neighboring island of Ischia. At both places the vine-culture was substantially the same as at Sorrento, and at both places they cured oïdium unfailingly.

At Rome, a gentleman, whose father was a large owner of vineyards, gave me several kinds of wine to taste. All were decidedly pleasant, and the Aliatico delicious, but most of them having any age were more or less pricked. This gentleman, in giving some details of their modes of cultivation in the Roman territory, remarked that, for heavy work— trenching three feet deep, for instance--the most reliable laborers were from the province of Naples, describing them as strong, willing, and of excellent conduct.

From Rome I traveled northward into Tuscany,

where cultivation in all branches is thorough, systematic, and careful, and there I found no vines trained either on stake or trellis; all were clambering in tree-tops. Twenty-five feet was usually the distance between the trees on level ground, and fifteen feet on hills. Two or three vines were planted at the foot of each tree. This system is not confined to Italy alone; it is practiced in portions of France also. In the north of Italy it is common to prune the trees, so as to let in air and sunshine, while in parts of the south care is taken to keep them shaded. We often hear of vines grown upon trees in our own country, which, for some reason, escape disease, and from such facts an argument is drawn in favor of long and high training; but the immunity is probably due to the shelter from radiation which the foliage of the tree affords. M. Du Brieuil tells us vines trained upon trees in France suffer more than those on stakes. I learned the same thing to be true of trellis-grown vines in Burgundy. We know that in Italy neither trees nor trellis avail aught, and we shall find that in Southern France the lowest vines are least afflicted, and the highest suffer the most.

I left Italy by a wondrous road which skirts the Maritime Alps on one hand, and the Mediterranean on the other, and is called "Riviera” at one end, and

"Cornice" at the other, traveling in a carriage hired for the whole journey at Spezzia, where it begins.

It is a journey of six days, but so varied and so beautiful in all its ups and downs, ins and outs, that when it ends one is tempted to turn about and go back over it again. Now we descended to the very edge of the sea, and traveled for long reaches on its pebbly or sandy beach; now, mounting high, were whirled at a gallop along the verge of a precipice; now we rounded a rocky cape, on whose bleak sides no plant could stand, and now turned into a cove luxuriant with olive-trees and vines. Those who love the blue Mediterranean may thus, curving about her shores, embrace her, as it were, in a delightful week of prolonged leave-taking, and part from her at last more in love than ever. For nearly the whole diştance the abrupt sides of the mountains were terraced with walls of stone, almost from foot to crown, and the soil thus secured planted in vineyards and olive-orchards. Much as we praise the Hollanders for building the dikes which keep back the sea from coming in upon their lands, the Italians deserve scarcely less credit for those dikes of stone which keep theirs from tumbling down into the water. As to the terrace-work of the Rhinelanders, it is as nothing in comparison.

A

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SOUTH OF FRANCE.

T Nice I entered on the great vine-country of Southern France, where an enormous quantity of common, and a moderate quantity of superior wines are produced. In this region- namely, at Nice, Nismes, Montpellier, Cette, and other places—I remained about six weeks, with two subjects of inquiry in view-one, the vine disease, and the other, training en souche. What I learned on these points elsewhere I have mainly reserved for this place in my book, because in Southern France it is that the disease has been the most virulent and been most triumphantly subdued, and there it is that from time immemorial all the vines have been kept en souche basse (on low stocks).

The vine region in question extends from Nice in the east to Leucate in the west, and lies mostly between the 43d and 44th degrees of latitude, though extending as far down as below the 43d degree on the

western wing, and, where the valley of the Rhone is included, going nearly as far northward as the 45th. It reaches from the Alps to the Pyrenees, and includes the entire French Mediterranean coast. It is sheltered from the winds of winter by a line of mountains that bound its whole northern border, and from whose bases the whole surface slopes gradually down to the shores of the sea. Composed of portions of ancient Languedoc and Provence, it includes the present departments of Drôme, Ardèche, Vaucluse, Basses-Alps, Var, Bouches-du-Rhone, Gard, Herault, Aude, and Pyrenées-Orientales. Of its entire tillable surface, fully one fourth is in vines— namely, a million and a half of acres, and the culture is continually extending.

The formation is generally limestone. The soils are various. On the poor slopes at the base of the mountains very superior wine is grown. Below them, at different stages of elevation, but mostly of level or slightly-inclined surface, are strong, but not over-rich soils, clayey, limy, and sandy in different proportions, capable of yielding large crops of strong, sound wine, which sells, when new, at from ten to twenty-five cents a gallon. Here and there on the level ground are found pebbly deposits whose product, like that of the poor hill-sides, is of a high or