of paper or parchment, signed and sealed in form. The name of this dexterous and successful solicitor was Bribery. At the next table was the office of Extortion. Behind it sat a person in a bob-wig, counting over a great sum of money. He gave out little purses to several, who, after a short tour, brought him in return sacks full of the same kind of coin. I saw at the same time a person called Fraud, who sat behind a counter with false scales, light weights, and scanty measures; by the skilful application of which instruments, she had got together an immense heap of wealth. It would be endless to name the several officers, or describe the votaries that attended in this temple. There were many old men panting and breathless, reposing their heads on bags of money; nay, many of them actually dying, whose very pangs and convulsions (which rendered their purses useless to them) only made them grasp the faster. There were some tearing with one hand all things, even to the garments and flesh of many miserable persons who stood before them, and with the other hand throwing away what they had seized, to harlots, flatterers, and panders, that stood behind them.

On a sudden the whole assembly fell a trembling, and upon inquiry, I found, that the great room we were in was haunted with a spectre, that many times a day appeared to them, and terrified them to distraction.

In the midst of their terror and amazement, the apparition entered, which I immediately knew to be Poverty. Whether it were by my acquaintance with this phantom, which had rendered the sight of her more familiar to me, or, however it was, she did not make so indigent or frightful a figure in my eye, as the god of this loathsome temple. The miserable votaries of this place were, I found, of another mind. Every one fancied himself threatened by the apparition as she stalked about the room, and began to lock their coffers, and tie their bags, with the utmost fear and trembling.

I must confess, I look upon the passion which I saw in this unhappy people to be of the same nature with those unaccountable antipathies which some persons are born with, or rather as a kind of phrensy, not unlike that which throws a man into terrors and agonies at the sight of so useful and innocent a thing as water. The whole assembly was surprised, when, instead of paying my devotions to the deity

whom they all adored, they saw me address myself to the phantom.

"O Poverty! (said I,) my first petition to thee is, that thou wouldst never appear to me hereafter; but if thou wilt not grant me this, that thou wouldst not bear a form more terrible than that in which thou appearest to me at present. Let not thy threats and menaces betray me to anything that is ungrateful or unjust. Let me not shut my ears to the cries of the needy. Let me not forget the person that has deserved well of me. Let me not, for any fear of thee, desert my friend, my principles, or my honour. If Wealth is to visit me, and to come with her usual attendants, Vanity and Avarice, do thou, O Poverty! hasten to my rescue; but bring along with thee the two sisters, in whose company thou art always cheerful, Liberty and Innocence.

The conclusion of this vision must be deferred to another opportunity.

No. 131. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1709.

-Scelus est jugulare falernum,

Et dare Campano toxica sæva mero.

MART.

Sheer Lane, February 8.

THERE is in this city a certain fraternity of chymical operators, who work under ground in holes, caverns, and dark retirements, to conceal their mysteries from the eyes and observation of mankind. These subterraneous philosophers are daily employed in the transmigration of liquors, and, by the power of medical drugs and incantations, raising under the streets of London the choicest products of the hills and valleys of France. They can squeeze Bourdeaux out of a sloe, and draw Champagne from an apple. Virgil, in that remarkable prophecy,

Incultisque rubens pendebit Sentibus Uva,

"The ripening grape shall hang on every thorn," seems to have hinted at this art, which can turn a plantation of northern hedges into a vineyard. These adepts are known among one another by the name of wine-brewers, and I am

afraid do great injury, not only to her Majesty's customs, but to the bodies of many of her good subjects.

Having received sundry complaints against these invisible workmen, I ordered the proper officer of my court to ferret them out of their respective caves, and bring them before me, which was yesterday executed accordingly.

The person who appeared against them was a merchant, who had by him a great magazine of wines that he had laid in before the war: but these gentlemen (as he said) had so vitiated the nation's palate, that no man could believe his to be French, because it did not taste like what they sold for such. As a man never pleads better than where his own personal interest is concerned, he exhibited to the court with great eloquence, That this new corporation of druggists had inflamed the bills of mortality, and puzzled the college of physicians with diseases, for which they neither knew a name or cure. He accused some of giving all their customers cholics and megrims; and mentioned one who had boasted, he had a tun of claret by him, that in a fortnight's time should give the gout to a dozen of the healthfullest men in the city, provided that their constitutions were prepared for it by wealth and idleness. He then enlarged, with a great show of reason, upon the prejudice which these mixtures and compositions had done to the brains of the English nation; as is too visible (said he) from many late pamphlets, speeches, and sermons, as well as from the ordinary conversations of the youth of this age. He then quoted an ingenious person, who would undertake to know by a man's writings, the wine he most delighted in; and on that occasion named a certain satirist, whom he had discovered to be the author of a lampoon, by a manifest taste of the sloe, which showed itself in it by much roughness and little spirit.

In the last place, he ascribed to the unnatural tumults and fermentations, which these mixtures raise in our blood, the divisions, heats, and animosities that reign among us; and in particular, asserted most of the modern enthusiasms and agitations to be nothing else but the effects of adulterated port.

The counsel for the brewers had a face so extremely inflamed and illuminated with carbuncles, that I did not wonder to see him an advocate for these sophistications. His rhetoric was likewise such as I should have expected from

the common draught, which I found he often drank to a great excess. Indeed, I was so surprised at his figure and parts, that I ordered him to give me a taste of his usual liquor; which I had no sooner drank, but I found a pimple rising in my forehead; and felt such a sensible decay in my understanding, that I would not proceed in the trial till the fume of it was entirely dissipated.

This notable advocate had little to say in the defence of his clients, but that they were under a necessity of making claret if they would keep open their doors, it being the nature of mankind to love everything that is prohibited. He further pretended to reason, that it might be as profitable to the nation to make French wine as French hats, and concluded with the great advantage that this had already brought to part of the kingdom. Upon which he informed the court, "That the lands in Herefordshire were raised two years' purchase since the beginning of the war."

When I had sent out my summons to these people, I gave at the same time orders to each of them to bring the several ingredients he made use of in distinct phials, which they had done accordingly, and ranged them into two rows on each side of the court. The workmen were drawn up in ranks behind them. The merchant informed me, that in one row of phials were the several colours they dealt in, and in the other the tastes. He then showed me on the right hand one who went by the name of Tom Tintoret, who (as he told me) was the greatest naster in his colouring of any vintner in London. To give me a proof of his art, he took a glass of fair water; and by the infusion of three drops out of one of his phials, converted it into a most beautiful pale Burgundy. Two more of the same kind heightened it into a perfect Languedoc: from thence it passed into a florid Hermitage: and after having gone through two or three other changes, by the addition of a single drop, ended in a very deep Pontac. This ingenious virtuoso, seeing me very much surprised at his art, told me, That he had not an opportunity of showing it in perfection, having only made use of water for the ground-work of his colouring; but that if I were to see an operation upon liquors of stronger bodies, the art would appear to much greater advantage. He added, "That he doubted not but it would please my curiosity to see the cider of one apple take only a vermilion, when another, with a less quantity of the

same infusion, would rise into a dark purple, according to the different texture of parts in the liquor." He informed me also, "That he could hit the different shades and degrees of red, as they appear in the pink and the rose, the clove and the carnation, as he had Rhenish or Moselle, Perry or White Port, to work in.”

I was so satisfied with the ingenuity of this virtuoso, that, after having advised him to quit so dishonest a profession, I promised him, in consideration of his great genius, to recommend him as a partner to a friend of mine, who has heaped up great riches, and is a scarlet dyer.

The artists on my other hand were ordered in the second place to make some experiments of their skill before me: upon which the famous Harry Sippet stept out, and asked me, "What I would be pleased to drink?" At the same time he filled out three or four white liquors in a glass, and told me, "That it should be what I pleased to call for;" adding very learnedly, "That the liquor before him was as the naked substance or first matter of his compound, to which he and his friend, who stood over against him, could give what accidents or form they pleased." Finding him so great a philosopher, I desired he would convey into it the qualities and essence of right Bourdeaux. Coming, coming, sir," (said he,) with the air of a drawer; and after having cast his eye on the several tastes and flavours that stood before him, he took up a little cruet that was filled with a kind of inky juice, and pouring some of it out into the glass of white wine, presented it to me, and told me, "This was the wine over which most of the business of the last term had been despatched." I must confess, I looked upon that sooty drug which he held up in his cruet, as the quintessence of English Bourdeaux, and therefore desired him to give me a glass of it by itself, which he did with great unwillingness. My cat at that time sat by me, upon the elbow of my chair; and as I did not care for making the experiment upon myself, I reached it to her to sip of it, which had like to have cost her her life; for notwithstanding it flung her at first into freakish tricks, quite contrary to her usual gravity, in less than a quarter of an hour she fell into convulsions; and had it not been a creature more tenacious of life than any other, would certainly have died under the operation. I was so incensed by the tortures of my

innocent domestic,