Manner of arranging the wine in the cellar when it is bottled. When the bottles are filled, corked, cemented and sealed, they must be arranged in succession in the cases. This is the method

to be pursued:

Under the first row, strew three inches thick of fine, dry sand, well sifted, to get rid of small pebbles; for if any such remain, the weight will occasion the bottle that rests upon them to break, and this will produce a displacing, and disarrangement of the whole bin. Level the sand, and arrange on it your bottles; the first range being about a dozen. The necks should be placed on that side next the wall, two inches from the wall: take care that the bottoms of your bottles are in a regular line, ranging evenly with each other. Put one lath upon the belly of the bottle, and two laths upon the neck. Place the next range in an opposite direction, the corks outward and the bottoms inward, taking care that the belly of the second range of bottles does not rest on the belly of the first range, but upon the laths and between the necks. Continue this operation as high as you please, always observing to keep your line even and regular, no one bottle projecting beyond another; for this would not only be unsightly, but would also cause inequality of pressure. If your sand be fine and well sifted-if you have used no cracked, starred, or blemished bottles-if your laths are sound-you may rest assured that you will be free from accidental breakage in stowing the bottles. Some persons, instead of laths, use whisps of straw, and find them serve a good purpose. Indeed I should recommend them in preference to laths.

Such are Beauvillier's remarks and directions: it may not be amiss to add some observations on the English and American practises.

As to the English: they bottle all their wine, white as well as red: although from great care in arching their cellars, grouting the brick work of the arch, and lining with board the inside of their binns, their cellars are dry, yet they are only so dry as a moist atmosphere will permit them to be. Wine merchants usually use stoves in their cellars, with thermometers to keep up the heat about 65° of Fahrenheit's thermometer. In that damp and variable climate, red port, the common beverage after dinner, is apt to lose its colour, and with its colour its flavour, which resides more in the skin than the juice of the grape. The red port is kept four years in the cask, and two or three in bottles, before it is considered in high perfection. Indeed it is a superior wine at good tables to what is usually met with here in America. To make up superior port for the best class of London consumers, good wine, not much brandied while in Portugal, (where they use nasty Portuguese or Spanish brandy, ill flavoured, ill distilled, and somewhat acid) is doctored in the wine merchant's cellar. To a pipe of mild high flavoured port, about two gallons of the finest cogniac brandy is put. If, also, about five

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gallons of sound claret or hermitage be added, the flavour is greatly improved. These should be put in after the fining, which in England is always white of eggs. The cask being stirred, or the wine in it well stirred to mix the ingredients, it is left to settle: generally the wine is over fined. I suspect the whites of ten eggs beat up with a gallon of the wine, is enough for a pipe. The hoops and the whole cask should be well examined to see that there is no starting, no pin hole. In three or four years the wine will be fit to bottle: in a year and a half after that, it will be fit to drink. Port wine is not improved by keeping, after six years old.

Port wine will improve like white wine in richness and mellowness, by being kept in a cask, but it will lose its peculiar flavour, and its colour also; and become in taste and appearance like some of the dry Greek wines. Hence it is better for being bottled according to the English practice; provided due precaution be observed. The English never seal their corks: they depend on the clip in the neck, which forms a kind of strait, through which the cork has to pass, and then swell out. If the cork be good, and the wine kept on its side, no air can get in or out.

In decanting, they use a muslin strainer in a silver frame, and a silver antiguglar to supply air to the inside, while the wine is decanted. They never decant within a wine glass remaining in the bottle. They never cool port wine: they often expose it to warm air before the fire. All these practices are the results of experience; but they are more applicable to coloured and red, than to white wines.

White wines, are best kept in the cask, upon their own lees, in a warm dry place. They are better fined with skimmed milk, than with eggs; some persons think that after fining with milk, the wine is apt to grow turbid in bad weather; I doubt this: the ullage is usually the richest and fullest part of the wine. There is no danger of white wines losing colour; but they ought not to be kept in new casks. All the French wines are too thin to keep in the cask; they would run into acid fermentation. A gallon of fine brandy to the quarter cask of Teneriffe or Madeira, improves the quality, if the wine be thin, for it prevents this tendency to acid fermentation, and causes the tartar to subside. The tartar of wine crystallizes and subsides much sooner in wood than in glass. In wood it adheres to the side of the cask; in glass it cannot catch hold. All new wines are unwholesome, intoxicating, and sickening, not from the spirit they contain, but from the tartar they contain; they never become full, oily, silky, till all the tartar has crystallized on the sides of the cask. Hence, for white wines, milk that decomposes and is decomposed by the acid of tartar, is better for fining than the white of eggs; and notwithstanding the objection already noticed, I think it preferable on the whole. Too much egg gives unpleasant flavour. No Madeira or Teneriffe, should be tapped under three years after fining.

A little salt is deemed a preservative against ropiness. To thin Madeira or to Teneriffe, add a gallon of malmsey to the quarter cask. To prove that however the French may excel in cookery, they do not despise English dishes, I shall now present to your readers, the receipts given by Beauvilliers for making Plumbuting, Woulche rabbette, (or lapin gallois) and meche de potetesse; which phrases being translated and compared with the receipts, are found, after due investigation, to be plumb-pudding, toasted cheese, and mashed potatoes. It would have been more fair, had the French connoisseurs who borrow our dishes, borrowed also the names of them. Rosbif, bifteck, and plumbouding, are common appellations: and I well remember over a coffee-house at Paris, a notice to passengers that they might be served within, with Ponge a la rom et a la rac a l'Anglais; thereby meaning, rum punch, and arrack punch. But in return, our good ladies and men cooks, who do us the honour of instructing us in the noble art of cookery, are not behind hand in disfiguring French names and French dishes. Hence we read (that is those who like the writer are amateurs of good living) of Cullis, and Leesons, and Beshmells, with many other strange misnames of equal importance, that puzzle the dictionary hunters to trace to their meaning. I wish that the laudable practice adopted in Paris were extended to London, Philadelphia and New-York. I omit Boston, because the good Yankees are fully satisfied with their national Chouder. The practice I allude to is this. A committee from the fraternity of cooks, some years ago, met, and applied to the Medical department of Paris to join them in the laudable design of publishing a truly scientifical book on cookery. The cooks expunged all articles that did not contribute to richness or flavour: the medical committee expunged all the articles which they deemed deletereous and unwholesome. I believe the book was published under the title of La Cuisine Medicale, or Cuisine de Sante, or some such appropriate appellation.

The following is the process given by Beauvilliers for making Welsh rabbit, Woulche rabbette, or Lapin Gallois.

Take slices of bread toasted of a fine brown colour: pare the rind off some Gloucester cheese, cut it into small dice, put it in a sauce-pan to dissolve with a very little water; add a little Cayenne pepper: when dissolved spread it on the hot toast; brown it with a salamander held at a little distance over it, and serve it up with mustard and salt.

We see, however, that if Beauvilliers has put the name in masquerade, he has not spoiled or disguised the process.

PHILOIN.

ART. III.-Delaplaine's Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans. Vol. 1.-Part 2. Philadelphia, Pp. 115.

1817.

WE

VE have heretofore had occasion to express an opinion of the general plan of Mr. Delaplaine's Repository, and to notice

the imperfections of his first Number, considered as a specimen of the whole work.* From the judgment then pronounced, subsequent events, and further reflection, have not induced us to depart.

We were at that time led to remark upon the disadvantages necessarily incurred by every production of human genius whose appearance has been preceded by too early and too pompous an annunciation, and, upon the imprudence of promising too much, which inevitably causes the performance to seem too little. There were some readers to whom our strictures, we are aware, appeared too severe, and who inferred from our decided disapprobation of the production then under observation, that we were hostile to the scheme of a national book of biography, such as it is Mr. Delaplaine's intention to give to the public. We have, however, on the contrary, always conceived it to be highly desirable that the lives of the eminent men of our country should be recorded, together with graphic memorials of their personal features, and a large portion of this Magazine has accordingly been devoted to original biographies of distinguished Americans.

But it is very evident that the value of biography, particularly of those men whose individual reputation gives a tone to the national character, is too important to be with propriety abandoned to periodical miscellanies, whose editors cannot be expected to possess such opportunities of collecting accurate and detailed information, nor such command of pecuniary means, as would be requisite for the production of a biography, on the perfect authenticity of which there might be implicit reliance, while in style and graphic embellishments, it might afford a favourable specimen of the condition of authorship and the arts in America. Such a work is certainly a desideratum, the public taste calls for it, and public liberality would amply remunerate its author. All candid, well disposed critics, would joyfully hail its appearance, and we trust none more so than ourselves; but it behoves all those who may be instrumental in pronouncing the judgments of public taste, to be especially careful not to acknowledge the desideratum is obtained, until a work shall be produced in all the essential requisites, such as it will gratify our American pride to exhibit to Europe as truly national.

In common with all the friends of American literature, we read Mr. Delaplaine's proposals with great pleasure, and anticipated from the public spirit and enterprize of that gentleman, such a book as we had desired to see. We, of course, expected that talents of the first order would be employed upon its various parts; that the typography would be equal to any previous specimen; the engravings superior to any the American school had yet produced; that the whole performance would be exclusively American; and, as by far, the most important requisite, that the lives

*Aul. Mag. Sept. 1816.

or

sketches," as they are called, would be written by some gentleman of such established reputation and respectability, as would ensure a style, if not elegant, at least chaste and classic, and an accuracy of statement both unswerving and unquestionable. These anticipations were justified not only by the language of the proposals issued by Mr. Delaplaine; the high price demanded, and the length of time occupied in preparation, but also by the due consideration of what is essentially necessary to form a national biography of any utility or value.

The Repository, however, we are constrained to say, has fallen very far below the expectations so justly entertained. Biography, like history, ceases to be valuable when its authenticity is questionable; and anonymous biography as well as anonymous history, must always be of dubious veracity. A fatal objection, therefore, to the usefulness of the book, is found in this circumstance; that the names of the authors of the "lives" are studiously concealed. For not only is there room thus left to doubt, whether the writers are our countrymen or foreigners, residing here or in England, which possibility of doubt, of itself destroys the perfect nationality of the book; but a more fatal evil flows from this concealment; there can be no secure nor confident reliance on the truth of narratives, resting on the credit not only of no name of respectability, but of no name at all. It is inconsistent with the plainest rules of evidence and common sense, to give implicit belief to statements whose authors are unwilling to stamp them with their own characters, and to support them by the pledge of their own reputations.

As materials for future historians, therefore, or authentic sources of information to the rising generation, and to foreigners, the Repository can only hold a rank with the innumerable sketches of lives and characters, eulogistic and detractory, with which our periodical publications and daily papers, from Maine to Georgia, are constantly teeming. We do not say there is a single fact misstated in all the "lives" in the Repository. We hope there is not; the views taken of every one of the characters are such as are most gratifying to our national pride, and therefore they find willing credence with the generality of readers. But on whose testimony do they rest? By what circumstance are they entitled to more credit than the assertions of anonymous paragraphists in the daily prints? We can perceive no distinction but in the large neat type, the wide margins, the wire wove paper, and the correspondent magnificence of price exacted from subscribers. Nor can this great fault be corrected in the future numbers, unless the reputation of a respectable man is pledged for the fidelity of the statements. Then, indeed, we might declare to our sons and to Europe, these narratives are true, and implicit confidence may be placed in them, for a man of honour who had a reputation at stake, and had opportunities of investigation and inquiry, has