BLACKBERRY, 105 
as yet in decanters. Thank you! thank you!” He held the 
glass to the light, smelt it, rolled it gently round in the glass, 
and then tasted it. ‘‘ Sweet,” he said critically, “‘ and strong: 
clings to the palate: a liqueur wine! a curious wine!” Then 
he drank it up. 
Other home-made sweet Wines are almost equally delicious, 
and singularly wholesome, containing but little spirit, and each 
possessing the herbal virtues of the fruit, or flowers, from which 
it is made. ‘‘ Perhaps you’d like to spend a couple of shillings, 
or so in a bottle of Currant wine bye-and-bye up in the bedroom,” 
said Steerforth to little David Copperfield, when newly come 
to Salem House School; “ you belong to my bedroom, I find.” 
So, respecting British Raisin wine (which is luscious, and slightly 
laxative), C. 8. Calverley relates, touching the fair Julia Goodchild, 
when he was a frisky pupil at Dr. Crabb’s Boarding School :-— 
“ With me she danced till drowsily her eyes began to blink ; 
When I brought her Raisin wine, and said, ‘ Drink, pretty creature ; 
Drink!’ ” 
It was the opinion of Charles Dickens that the proper place 
for Champagne is not at the dinner-table, but at the dance, 
where “it takes its fitting rank, and position, among feathers, 
gauze, lace, embroidery, ribbons, white satin shoes, and Eau de 
Cologne ; for Champagne is simply one of the elegant extras of 
life.” 
A fermented liquor may be made also from the sap of the 
Birch tree (Betula alba) in the Spring time, this being collected 
throughout the mountains, and wooded districts of Germany, 
and Scandinavia. It is possessed of diuretic properties, and 
is antiscorbutic, being especially commended for modifying the 
symptoms of diabetes mellitus. Birch bark yields an oil which 
is used for giving to Russia leather its peculiar pleasant odour. 
In the treatment of various chronic maladies the leaves, the sap, 
and the oil of this tree are employed. The West Indian Birch. 
or “gumbo-lumbo,” furnishes a kind of gum-elemi, which is 
beneficial in the treatment of gout. The traditional use of a 
Birch-rod is known to us all from our youth upwards. Hood 
bore witness to its tender mercies at Clapham Academy :— 
* There I was birched, there I was bred, 
There, like a little Adam fed 
From lJearning’s woeful tree.” 
In Chaucer’s time “ Gon a blackberyed ” seems to have been 
