NOTES OF A READER.


* * * * *


A BOTTLE OF GOOD WINE.


The following (from the _Ramblings of a Desultory Man_, in the _New
Monthly Magazine_) is in the best vein of a _bon vivant_ and will be
easily credited:--

"After dinner we ordered a bottle of Sautern, which was marked in the
carte at two francs ten sous. It was in a kind of despair that we did
it, for the red wine was worth nothing. It came--people may talk of
Hocheim, and Burgundy, and Hermitage, and all the wines that ever the
Rhone or the Rhine produced, but never was their wine like that one
bottle of Sautern. It poured out as clear as the stream of hope ere it
has been muddied by disappointment, and it was as soft and generous as
early joy ere youth finds out its fallacy. We drank it slowly, and
lingered over the last glass as if we had a presentiment that we should
never meet with any thing like it again. When it was done, quite done,
we ordered another bottle. But no--it was not the same wine. We sent it
away and had another--in vain;--and another--there was no more of it to
be had.

"It was like one of those days of pure unsophisticated happiness, that
sometimes break in upon life, and leave nothing to be desired; that come
unexpectedly, last their own brief space, like things apart, and are