ouse publishes in
his daily bill of fare twelve varieties of American wine, from three
States, Ohio, Missouri, and California. The cheapest is the Ohio
Catawba, one dollar a bottle; the dearest is Missouri champagne, at
three dollars and a half. The wine culture, it appears, is somewhat out
of favor at present among the farmers of Ohio. A German family,
many-handed, patient, and economical, occupying a small vineyard and
paying no wages, finds the business profitable; but an American, who
lives freely, and depends upon hired assistance, is likely to fail. A
vineyard requires incessant and skilful labor. The costly preparation of
the soil, the endless prunings and hoeings, the great and watchful care
required in picking, sorting, and pressing the grapes, in making and
preserving the wine, the many perils to which the crop is exposed at
every moment of its growth and ripening, and the three years of waiting
before the vines begin to bear, all conspire to discourage and defeat
the ordinary cultivator. The "rot" is a very severe trial to human
patience. The vines look thrifty, the grapes are large and abundant, and
all goes well, until the time when the grapes, being fully grown, are
about to change color. Then a sudden blight occurs, and two thirds of
the whole crop of grapes, the result of the year's labor, wither and
spoil. The cause, probably, is the exhaustion of some elements in the
soil needful to the supreme effort of Nature to perfect her work.
Nevertheless, the patient Germans succeed in the business, and sell
their wine to good advantage to the large dealers and bottlers.

The Longworth wine-cellar, one of the established lions of the city,
cheers the thirsty soul of man. There we had the pleasure of seeing, by
a candle's flickering light, two hundred thousand bottles of wine, and
of walking along subterranean streets lined with huge tuns, each of them
large enough to house a married Diogenes, or to drown a dozen Dukes of
Clarence, and some of them containing five thousand gallons of the still
unvexed Catawba. It was there that we made acquaintance with the "Golden
Wedding" champagne, the boast of the late proprietor,--an acquaintance
which we trust will ripen into an enduring friendship. If there is any
better wine than this attainable in the present state of existence, it
ought, in consideration of human weakness, to be all poured into the
briny deep. It is a very honest cellar, this. Except a little rock candy