70 Otf THE ART OF MAKING WINE. 



since those days, the increase of trade, the 

 economical division and application of capital to 

 objects of commerce, and to those of domestic 

 manufacture, the multiplied demands which wealth 

 and prosperity have made on the consumption of 

 wine, and the increased discrimination and taste 

 which this has produced, have combined together 

 to change materially both the objects of com- 

 merce and cultivation, and have jointly operated 

 in producing the decay of this art, if (as is by no 

 means proved,) it was ever actually practised to 

 any great extent. But this question does not con- 

 cern our present purpose. It is sufficient to prove, 

 what in fact there is no reason whatever to doubt, 

 that the grape, as it is or may be cultivated in 

 England, is capable of making wine ; whether 

 with advantage, considered in an agricultural 

 view, and with what advantage, must depend 

 on other considerations into which I need not now 

 enter. However diminished this practice is in 

 modern times, it is by no means extinct. The 

 cottagers in Sussex are in the habit of making 

 wine almost annually from the produce of vines 

 trained on the walls of their houses. Many indi- 

 viduals through various parts of the southern 

 counties, and even as far north as Derbyshire, 

 practise the same with success. But the experi- 

 ment is well known to have been made for many 

 years on a large scale, and with complete results, 

 at Pain's Hill, by the Honourable Charles- Hamit 



