VINE. 
85 
conduct, by alleging the purity of their intentions. 
It has likewise been thought that those Gauls, who 
established their settlements along the Po, trans- 
mitted to us the useful invention of preserving wine 
in wooden vessels exactly closed. Its preservation 
and transmission to distant parts became more 
practicable from that period than it could be be- 
fore, when it was kept in earthen jars, that were 
easily shattered, or in skins which were liable to be 
unsewed, or to grow mouldy *. 
The vine was introduced by the Romans into 
Britain, and appears formerly to have been very 
common. From the name of vineyard yet ad- 
hering to the ruinous sites of our castles and mo- 
nasteries, there seem to have been few in the coun- 
try but what had a vineyard belonging to them. 
The county ofGloucester is particularly commended 
by Malmsbury in the twelfth century, as excelling 
all the rest of the kingdom in the number and 
goodness of its vineyards. In the earlier periods 
of our history, the isle of Ely was expressly deno- 
minated the Isle of Vines by the Normans. Vine- 
* To those who are unacquainted with the circumstance, it may 
not be improper to remark that it was customary in the early ages 
of the world to preserve wine in bottles made of skin, a specimen 
of which may be seen in the seventh volume of the Antiquities 
of Herculaneum, where a woman is pouring wine into a cup from 
the skin of an animal. The places where the legs had been are 
plainly visible ; and the neck served for the passage of the liquor. 
This illustrates some passages of scripture ; such as Matt. ix. 
ver. 17. “ Neither do men put new wine into old bottles, else the 
bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish.” 
