THE VINE. 255 



lair proportion of the fruit of his labour, agriculture 

 began to flourish. The cultivation of hops was revived 

 or introduced about the end of the fifteenth century. 

 All these circumstances the decay of the vineyards, 

 the encouragement to the growth of grain, and the 

 culture of hops gradually tended to supersede the 

 demand for wine, by offering a beverage to the people 

 which was cheaper, and perhaps as exhilarating. Rit- 

 son a celebrated antiquary has preserved a rude 

 ballad of this period in praise of that beverage which 

 was becoming the national favourite : 



" Bryng us home no sydyr, nor no palde wyne; 

 For an that thou do shall have Cryst's curse and mine: 

 But bryng us home good ale, and bryng us home good ale, 

 And for our der lady's love bryng us home good ale." 



We understand that on the southern coast of De- 

 vonshire, possessing the mildest temperature of the 

 English counties, there are still two or three vine- 

 yards, from which wine is commonly made. A vine- 

 yard at the castle of Arundel, on the south coast of 

 Sussex, was planted about the early part of the last 

 century, and of the produce there are reported to 

 have been sixty pipes of wine in the cellars of the 

 Duke of Norfolk, in 1 763. This wine is said to have 

 resembled Burgundy ; but the kind of grape and the 

 mode of culture have not been particularly recorded. 

 Whatever may have been the condition and qualities 

 of the early English grapes employed in making 

 wine, we know that they must have been ripened by 

 the natural temperature of the climate, as artificial 

 heat was not resorted to for the ripening of grapes 

 till the early part of the last century; and then the 

 heat was applied merely to the other side of the wall 

 on which the vines were trained: nor is it till about 

 the middle of the same century that we have any 

 account of vines being covered with glass. Professor 



