things unite. There should be somewhere legends of him and the wine-
flask. There must be meanings to that effect in the Mythology, awaiting
unravelment. For the subject opens to deeper than cellars, and is a tree
with vast ramifications of the roots and the spreading growth, whereon
half if not all the mythic Gods, Inferior and Superior, Infernal and
Celestial, might be shown sitting in concord, performing in concert,
harmoniously receiving sacrificial offerings of the black or the white;
and the black not extinguishing the fairer fellow. Tell us of a
certainty that Time has embraced the wine-flask, then may it be asserted
(assuming the great year for the wine, i.e. combinations above) that a
speck of the white within us who drink will conquer, to rise in main
ascension over volumes of the black. It may, at a greater venture, but
confidently, be said in plain speech, that the Bacchus of auspicious
birth induces ever to the worship of the loftier Deities.

Think as you will; forbear to come hauling up examples of malarious men,
in whom these pourings of the golden rays of life breed fogs; and be
moved, since you are scarcely under an obligation to hunt the meaning,
in tolerance of some dithyrambic inebriety of narration (quiverings of
the reverent pen) when we find ourselves entering the circle of a most
magnetic polarity. Take it for not worse than accompanying choric
flourishes, in accord with Mr. Victor Radnor and Mr. Simeon Fenellan at
their sipping of the venerable wine.

Seated in a cosy corner, near the grey City window edged with a sooty
maze, they praised the wine, in the neuter and in the feminine; that for
the glass, this for the widow-branded bottle: not as poets hymning; it
was done in the City manner, briefly, part pensively, like men travelling
to the utmost bourne of flying flavour (a dell in infinite nether), and
still masters of themselves and at home.