11 



culture to our ancestors. The restoration was one long festival of 

 rejoicings, and every possible display of exultation. Soldiers, old men, 

 women, and children, all united in the delightful labour of regenera- 

 ting the richest resource of the land. All seemed possessed with a 

 spontaneous eagerness to help in the task of breaking up the soil ; 

 grubbing out the decayed, useless stocks ; digging trenches, and sftt- 

 ting out the hill-sides, once more, with the cherished and long regret- 

 ted plant. From the testimony of contemporary annalists, it was a 

 festive sight to witness the population of whole villages, swarming 

 forth into the fields, and beating the ground with frolicsome dances, 

 making the air ring with songs and shouts, and in the midst of the 

 frankest merriment, restoring to the glebe, the plant which had been 

 forbidden to decorate it with its grateful shade and rich fertility for so 

 long a revolution of seasons. 



From that period, the vine, which had never been cultivated north 

 of the Cevennes, spread along the banks of the Rhone, the Saone, and 

 even to the shores of the Seine, the Marne, the Moselle, the Scheldt 

 and the Rhine ; becoming an object to the great land owners as well 

 as to the petty proprietor and cultivator. 



The wild and baleful expeditions to the East, in the twelfth and 

 thirteenth centuries, brought us from Cyprus, Alexandria, Corinth 

 and Palestine, grape-vine slips of an excellent species, till then un- 

 kno^\^l to us. They were planted at the foot of the Pyrennees^ and 

 from them we have the wines of Frontignac, Lunel, Rivesaltes, and 

 others. 



The Vine continued to extend over every part of France, and threw 

 open a rich department to commerce. But in 1556, a new proscription 

 arrested it. It was said that it drew attention from tillage ; and that 

 vineyards encroached on the proportion of ground that should be dedi- 

 cated to the plough and the reaping-hook. The vines were again torn 

 up, and the hills laid bare of their embowering verdure. Eleven rears 

 after the law v/as revoked ; and the Vine was allowed free grcv. th 

 until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when agriculture being 

 depreciated and debased by the heavy taxes and imposts of the times, 

 and the low esteem in which the most useful class of the country was 

 held, all sorts of cultivation languished ; the blame of which was laid 

 on the luxuriant and teeming vineyards, lovely with fertihty in spite 

 of neglect. A royal decree forbade the setting out of new slips, or the 

 giving the least care to such as had been out of training for two 

 years, under penalty of a fine of $600 ( 3000 franks. ) Far from reme- 

 dying the evil, it only added to the sum of misery and distress, as is 

 ever the case with proscription, that blindest and most headlong of 



