494 
On Wine, 
beaus of Philadelphia, that segars are not admissible in the ball 
room on Washington’s birth day. 
Thus managed and thus drank, Port is a very fine wine ; and 
satiates far less than any other red wine ; but after all, it is not 
Madeira. 
The Southampton and Guernsey Port, (that is, the Port gene- 
rally sold there, and frequently smuggled there) is a thin kind of 
wine, pleasant but without body, and without merit. 
When wine is drank, the glass for red and the glass for white 
wine should not only be different, but of different forms. A 
full small glass of wine, is not half so agreeable, as the same quan- 
tity out of a larger glass. There is an association of gluttony,, 
and vulgarity, and slovenliness in a full glass. Bumpers should be 
banished to bacchanalian parties, which are never epicurean. The 
stem of the glass, should be long enough easily to admit two fing- 
ers without touching, and soiling the bulb. The glass should 
not only be the finest flint, clear, without colour, blebs, or blemish- 
es, but thin. Half a glass of wine (and more should seldom be 
filled) has more odour and flavour, in a tolerably sized glass, than 
the same quantity in the form of a bumper. All ornaments about 
a wine glass, are inelegant, bourgeoise ; they savour too much of 
finery. The character of a gentleman’s establishment, is simplex 
munditiis. The only use of a cut border to a drinking glass, is as 
a memento, not to fill it beyond the lower edge of the ornamented 
border. 
Hence, also, napkins at dinner, and doyleys after, are necessa- 
ries : not so, water glasses. The use of them like the four-pronged 
silver forks, arises from an affected imitation of foreign customs: af- 
ter a French dinner, where the fingers perform much of the duties of 
a knife and fork, water glasses are necessary: but not after an English 
dinner at a genteel table ; where meat is seldom touched with the 
fingers : where the dishes are solid for the most part, and the meat 
is cut, not torn : where the right hand is occupied by the knife and 
the left hand by the fork : while at a French dinner, the right 
hand holds the silver fork, and the left hand a piece of bread,, 
while the knife is deposited in the pocket, being comparatively 
little used. Not to mention the associations of uncleanliness and 
indelicacy connected with the use of water glasses. Where the 
dinner is a mixture of French and English cookery, the silver 
forks^ are not out of place. 
