26 THE VINE AND CIVILISATION. 
a 
state of the vineyards and the morals of Italy, we should 
observe that civilisation has always been in proportion to the 
quality and quantity of wine consumed. 
‘¢‘Wine has always been held in great honour in Italy. 
Horace has collected in five remarkable verses the chief 
moral qualities of wine. Pliny speaks of the vine in the 
XXII. Book of his Natural History, he says: ‘I am about 
to speak of the vine with the gravity that becomes a Roman 
when he treats of the arts and the useful sciences. I would 
speak of it, not as a physician, but as a judge, whose duty it 
is to pronounce on the physical and moral health of mankind.’ 
‘Some water-drinkers have pretended that the use of wine 
in the middle ages was proscribed by the learned professors of 
Salerno, supporting their arguments upon the words ‘ parce 
mero,’ which are found in the dedication of the precepts of 
the school which John of Milan addressed, in 1066, to Edward 
the Confessor, King of England, as if the words ‘ soyez sobre,’ 
be sober, signified—Drink not.’’ 
After Italy the learned professor takes France and Spain in 
review, as connected with the cultivation of the vine and the 
use of wine in those countries. In regard to Spain, his native 
country, Babrius says: 
**As long as the culture of the vine was an object of atten- 
tive care with the Spaniards this illustrious people accom- 
plished noble works. Its decadence dates from the day when 
its hands abandoned the vineyards and turned to digging in 
the gold and silver mines of America; this was the first 
ause of the weakening of its genius. 
‘‘ In its voyages beyond the seas it contracted the vicious 
habit of tobacco smoking, and this became a custom so general 
that women and children could not be restrained from it. Nar- 
cotism, produced by tobacco, finished in destroying the little 
