THE GEAPE. Ill 



spread it in other lands. This India was, however, not 

 the Hindostan of our day, but the lands on the shores of 

 the Caspian, probably including Persia." It was probably- 

 introduced into ancient Italy from Greece, but met with 

 little attention for some time, the early Romans being 

 ignorant of the art of wine-making, and only planting the 

 vine in order to eat the grapes, until the time of Numa, 

 who, in order to encourage its cultivation, not only per- 

 mitted libations of wine, which it is said Romulus had 

 forbidden, but even declared the offering to be sacrilege 

 unless it were from the produce of a, pruned tree ; though 

 it was not till the 6th century u.c. that the Romans be- 

 gan to value their own wines, which, however, eventually 

 competed with those of Greece. Fearing the risk of per- 

 mitting women to be exposed to its seductive influence, 

 the use of wine, when it became general at Rome among 

 men, was forbidden to the other sex under penalty of 

 death; one gentle clause, however, in this harsh decree 

 permitting all male relations on meeting their female 

 kindred to test whether they had kept the law, only by 

 the soft trial of a kiss, a form of inquisition which it was 

 found was always most vigorously put in force in inverse 

 proportion to the distance of the relationship. 



Some believe that the vine was first introduced into 

 Britain by the Romans, while, according to others, it was 

 first brought here by the Phoenicians, who have also the 

 credit of having transplanted it from Palestine to the 

 islands of the Mediterranean. By whatever means it may 

 have come, when once here the gift was by no means ne- 

 glected, and long before French fashions " came over with 

 the Conqueror" home-made wine shared with ale, mead, 

 and cyder the honour of being one of our national drinks, 

 for the earliest English chronicles make mention of Eng- 

 lish vineyards. Gloucester was famous for them, and one 

 is known to have existed in the 13th century on that spot 

 now sacred to the Court Circular, the " Slopes" of Wind- 

 sor. Thus Jean Vigne, since looked on so jealously as a 

 foreign rival, was then competing in friendly strife side 

 by side with his compatriot John Barleycorn, for the 

 suffrages of their mutual countrymen. Vine culture con- 



