s our drills of potatoes at home. 'Fancy open
and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking, scrubby bushes, seldom
rising two feet above the surface, planted in rows upon the summit of
deep furrow-ridges, and fastened with great care to low, fence-like
lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken ranks from one end of the
huge fields to the other. These espaliers or lathes are cuttings of
the walnut-trees around; and the tendrils of the vine are attached to
the horizontally running stakes with withes, or thongs of bark. It is
curious to observe the vigilant pains and attention with which every
twig has been supported without being strained, and how things are
arranged so as to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a
goodly allowance of sun.' There are some exceptions to this; but the
low regular dwarfs are the great wine-givers. 'Walk and gaze, until
you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened, scrubby, dwarfish,
expanse of snobbish bushes, ignominiously bound neck and crop to the
espaliers like a man on the rack--these utterly poor, starved, and
meagre-looking growths, allowing as they do the gravelly soil to shew
in bald patches of gray shingle through the straggling branches--these
contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed and withered raspberries,
it is which produce the most priceless, and the most inimitably
flavoured wines.' The grapes are such mean and pitiful grapes as you
would look at with contempt in Covent-Garden Market; and the very
value of the soil contributes to its appearance of destitution--a
rudely-carved stake marking the division of properties where a hedge
or ditch would take up too much of the precious ground. The vineyards
extend to the roadside, without any protection; and yet every living
creature, whether man or animal, eats grapes habitually, morning,
noon, and night, and to an excess that is perfectly wonderful.

When the fruit is ripe, the fact is announced to the community 'by
authority;' and until the proclamation appears, no man must gather his
grapes if they should be dropping from the bushes. The signal,
however, is at length given, and the work begins. 'The scene is at
once full of beauty, and of tender and even sacred associations. The
songs of the vintagers, frequently chorussed from one part of the
field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer air, pealing
out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of laughter shouted hither
and thither. All the green jungle