flowers of cowslips also are frequently used, but they merely communicate their flavour to the wine, the spirit almost entirely arising from the sugar: and indeed when our own fruits are employed, they are not sweet enough to make any wine which would keep, and therefore a considerable quantity of sugar is invariably added; while the continental fruits are sufficient of themselves. The foreign wines are principally made from grapes, or the fruit of the vine, from which our own word wine is evidently derived. When the grapes are fully ripe, they are gathered, and submitted to the action of a press, from which their juice runs into vessels. The quantity of sugar contained in grapes when fully ripe is very considerable. It may be obtained in crystals by evaporating the must to the consistency of syrup, separating the tartar which precipitates during the evaporation, and then setting aside the must for some months. The crystals of sugar will thus gradually be formed. The colour of foreign wines is in many instances artificial, and imparted to those liquors after they come into. mercantile hands. Thus white wines are tinged red by decoctions of log wood or brazil chips, the juice of elder and bilberries, and, in France, by means of the husks of tinged grapes; while other ingredients are too frequently employed by unprincipled persons which are decidedly deleterious. The saccharine part of the grapes which as we have seen is the basis of the spirit, resides in the cells of the grapes, while the colour is the husk or skin. White wines therefore may be prepared from red grapes, provided that the juice may be carefully expres sed and the husks rejected, for there will be no redness unless the husks be mixed up and fermented with the grape; and the same observation may be made respecting the damson, black currant, and deeply coloured gooseberries, used by ourselves. The natural colour of wine may be entirely and speedily destroyed, by the addition of hot well-burnt charcoal in pretty fine powder, or by pouring into. it lime-water. This colouring matter likewise may be gradually separated and precipitated by exposing the wine to the heat of the sun. It sometimes precipitates of itself, as is observed not only in the incrustation of the bottles of port wine, but in its becoming more and more tawny the longer it is kept. The Red Port which is so much drank in England, derives its name from Oporto in Portugal. The quantity exported is from 50,000 to 70,000 pipes annually, by far the greater part of which goes to the British Dominions. Sherry is prepared near Xeres in Spain,and has hence been termed by our merchants Sherries and Sherry. -Malmsey was formerly only made in the Greek isles, but is now brought chiefly from Spain.-Champagne, Burgundy, Frontiniac, Rhenish,Hock, Alicant, &c. are among the most cele brated of the French and German wines. Those from Germany are full of spirit, and will keep for a long time. Madeira is procured from the Madeira Islands, and from Palma, one of the Canaries.-This wine is of two kinds, the first called Madeira sec, the latter, which is far richer, Canary or Palm sec (corruptly written sack) signifies dry, these wines being made from half-dried grapes. (Lon. Mag.) FEMALE TONGUES. Hippel, the author of the book "Upon Marriage," says "A woman, that does not talk, must be a stupid woman." But Hippel is an author whose opinion it is more safe to admire than to adopt. The most intelligent women are often silent amongst women; and again the most stupid and the most silent are often neither the one nor the other except amongst men. In general the current remark upon men is valid also with respect to women-that those for the most part are the greatest thinkers who are the least talkers; as frogs cease to croak when light is brought to the wa ter's edge. However, in fact, the disproportionate talking of women arises out of these dentariness of their labours : sedentary artisans,-as tailors, shoemakers, weavers,—have this habit as well as hypochondriacal tendencies in common with women. Apes do not TH talk, as savages say, that they may not be set to work: but women often talk double their share-even because they work. THE SPIRITS OF THE AGE. (New Mon.) MR. IRVING. HIS gentleman has gained almost unprecedented,and not an altogether unmerited popularity as a preacher. As he is, perhaps, though a burning and a shining light, not "one of the fixed," we shall take this opportunity of discussing his merits a second time, while he is at his meridian height; and in doing so, shall "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." Few circumstances show the prevailing and preposterous rage for novelty in a more striking point of view, than the success of Mr. Irving's oratory. People go to hear him in crowds, and come away with a mixture of delight and astonishment-they go again to see if the effect will continue, and send others to find out the puzzle-and in the noisy conflict between extravagant encomiums and splenetic objections, the true secret escapes observation, which is, that the whole thing is, nearly from beginning to end, a transposition of ideas. If the subject of these remarks had come out as a player, with all his advantages of figure, voice, and action, we think he would have failed: if, as a preacher, he had kept within the strict bounds of pulpit-oratory, he would scarcely have been much distinguished among his Calvinistic brethren: as a mere author, he would have excited attention rather by his quaintness and affectation of an obsolete style and mode of thinking, than by any thing else. But he has contrived to jumble these several characters together in an unheard-of and unwarranted manner, and the fascination is altogether irresistible. Our Caledonian divine is equally an anomally in religion, in literature, in personal appearance, and in public speaking. To hear a person spout Shakespeare on the stage is nothing the charm is nearly worn out-but to hear any one spout Shakespeare (and that not in a sneaking under-tone, but at the top of his voice, and with the full breadth of his chest) from a Calvinistic pulpit, is new and wonderful. The Fancy have lately lost something of their gloss in public estimation, and after the last fight, few would go far to see a Neat or a Spring set-to-but to see a man who is able to enter the ring with either of them, or brandish a quarter-staff with Friar Tuck, or a broad-sword with Shaw the Life-guards man, stand up in a strait-laced oldfashioned pulpit, and bandy dialectics with modern philosophers or give a cross-buttock to a cabinet-minister, there is something in a sight like this also, that is a cure for sore eyes. It is as if Cribb or Molyneux had turned Methodist parson, or as if a Patagonian sayage were come forward as a patron-saint of Evangelical religion. Again the doctrine of eternal punishment was one of the staple arguments with which, eternally drawled out, the old school of Presbyterian divines used to keep their audiences awake, or lull them to sleep; but to which people of taste and fashion paid little attention, as inelegant and barbarous, till Mr. Irving, with his castiron features and sledge-hammer blows, puffing like a grim Vulcan, set to work to forge more classic thunderbolts, and kindle the expiring flames anew with the very sweepings of sceptical and infidel libraries, so as to excite a pleasing horror in the female part of his congregation. In short, our popular declaimer has, contrary to the Scriptureworking, put new wine into old bottles, or new cloth on old garments. He has, with an unlimited and daring licence, mixed the sacred and the profane together, the carnal and the spiritual man, the petulance of the bar with the dogmatism of the pulpit, the theatrical and theological, the modern and the obso lete;-what wonder that this splendid piece of patchwork, spendid by contradiction and contrast, has delighted some and confounded others? The more serious part of his congregation, indeed, complain, though not bitterly, that their pastor had converted their meetinghouse into a play-house: but when a lady of quality, introducing herself and three daughters to the preacher, assures him that they have been to all the most fashionable places of resort, the opera, the theatre, assemblies, Miss Macauley's readings, and Exeter Change, and have been equally entertained no where else, we apprehend that no remontrances of a committee of ruling-elders will be able to bring him to his senses again, or make him forego such sweet, but illassorted praise. What we mean to insist upon is, that Mr. Irving owes his triumphant success, not to any one quality for which he has been extolled, but to a combination of qualities, the more striking in their immediate effect, in proportion as they are unlooked-for and heterogeneous, like the violent opposition of light and shade in a picture. We shall endeavour to explain this view of the subject more at large. Mr. Irving, then, is no common or mean man. He has four or five qualities, possessed in a moderate or in a paramount degree, which, added or multiplied together, give him the important space he occupies in the public eye. Mr. Irving's intellect itself is of a superior order; he has undoubtedly both talents and acquirements beyond the ordinary run of every-day preachers. These alone, however, we hold, would not account for a twentieth part of the effect produced: they would have lifted him perhaps out of the mire and slough of sordid obscurity, but would never have launched him into the ocean-stream of popularity, in which he "lies floating many a rood;"-but to these he adds uncommon height, a graceful figure and action, a clear and powerful voice, a striking, if not a fine face, a bold and fiery spirit, and a most portentous obliquity of vision, which throw him to an immeasurable distance beyond all competition, and effectually relieve whatever there might be of com 3 ATHENEUM VOL. 1. 2d series. mon-place or bombast in his style of composition. Put the case that Mr. Irving had been five feet high--Would he ever have been heard of, or, as he does now, have "bestrode the world like a colossus ?" No, the thing speaks for itself. He would in vain have lifted his Lilliputian arm, people would have laughed at his monkey tricks. Again, had he been as tall as he is, but had wanted other recommendations, he would have been nothing. "The player's province they but vainly try, Who want these powers, deportment, voice, and eye.” Conceive a rough, ugly, shock-headed Scotchman, standing up in the Caledonian chapel, and dealing "damnation round the land" in a broad northern voice, what ear polite, what smile sedialect, and with a harsh, screaking rene, would have hailed the barbarous prodigy, or not consigned him to utter Edward Irving, with all his native wildneglect and derision? But the Rev. ness, "hath a smooth aspect framed to make women" saints; his very unusual size and height are carried off and moulded into elegance by the most admirable symmetry of form and ease of gesture; his sable locks, his clear ironturn the raw, uncouth Scotchman, into grey complexion, and firm-set features, distortion of sight only redeems the a noble Italian picture; and even his otherwise "faultless monster" within the bounds of humanity, and when admiration is exhausted and curiosity ceases, excites a new interest by leading to the idle question whether it is an advantage to the preacher or not. Farther, give him all his actual and remarkable advantages of body and mind, let him be as tall, as straight, as dark and clear of skin, as much at his ease, as silvertive as he is, yet with all these, and tongued, as eloquent and as argumentawithout a little charlatanry to set them off, he had been nothing. He might, keeping within the rigid line of his duty forever; he might have divided the oldand professed calling, have preached fashioned doctrines of election, grace, reprobation, predestination, into his sixheads, and his lastly have been looked teenth, seventeenth and eighteenth for as " as a consummation devoutly to he wished; he might have defied the devil and all his works, and, by the help of a loud voice and strong-set per son "A lusty man to ben an Abbot able”— have increased his own congregation, and been quoted among the godly as a powerful preacher of the word; but, in addition to this, he went out of his way to attack Jeremy Bentham, and the town was up in arms. The thing was new. He thus wiped the stain of musty ignorance and formal bigotry out of his style. Mr. Irving must have something in him to look over the shining close-packed heads of his congregation, to have a hit at the Great Jurisconsult in his study. He next, ere the report of the former blow had subsided, made a lunge at Mr. Brougham, and glanced an eye at Mr. Canning; mystified Mr. Coleridge, and stultified Lord Liverpool in his place-in the Gallery. It was rare sport to see him, "like an eagle in a dovecote, flutter the Volscians in Corioli." He has found out the secret of attracting by repelling. All those whom he attacks are curious to hear what he says of them: they go again, to show that they do not mind it. It is no less interesting to the by-standers, who like to witness this sort of onslaught, like a charge of cavalry, the shock and the resistance. Mr. Irving has, in fact, without leave asked or a licence granted, converted the Caledonian Chapel into a Westminster Forum or Debating Society, with the sanctity of religion added to it.. Our spirited polemic is not contented to defend the citadel of orthodoxy against all impugners, and shut himself up in texts of scripture and huge volumes of the Commentators as an impregnable fortress; he merely makes use of the strong-hold of religion as a restingplace, from which he sallies forth, armed with modern topics and with penal fire, like Achilles of old rushing from the Grecian tents, against the adversaries of God and man. Peter Aretine is said to have laid the Princes of Europe under contribution by penning satires against them so Mr. Irving keeps the public in awe by insulting all their favourite idols. He does not spare their politicians, their rulers, their moralists, their poets, their critics, their reviewers their magazine-writers; he levels their resorts of business, their places of amusement, at a blow-cities, churches, palaces, ranks and professions, arts and elegances-and leaves nothing standing but himself, a mighty land-mark in a degenerate age, over-looking the wide havoc he has made! He makes war upon all arts and sciences, upon the faculties and nature of man, on his vices and his virtues, on all existing institutions, and all possible improvements, that nothing may be left but the Kirk of Scotland, and that he may be the head of it. He literally sends a challenge to all London in the name of the KING of HEAVEN to evacuate its streets, to disperse its population, to lay aside its employments, to burn its wealth, to renounce its vanities and pomp; and for what?-that he may enter in crowned with glory; or after enforcing his threat with the battering ram of logic, the grape-shot of rhetoric, and the crossfire of his double vision, reduce the British metropolis to a Scottish heath, with a few miserable hovels upon it, where they may worship God according to the root of the matter. Such is the pretension and the boast of this new Peter the Hermit, who would get rid of all we have done in the way of improvement on a state of barbarous ignorance, or still more barbarous prejudice, in order to begin again on a tabula rasa of Calvinisin, and have a world of his own making. It is not very surprising that when the whole mass and texture of civil society is indicted as a nuisance, and threatened to be pulled down as a rotten building ready to fall on the heads of the inhabitants, that all classes of people run to hear the crash, and to see the engines and levers at work which are to effect this laudable purpose. What else can be the meaning of our preacher's taking upon himself to denounce the sentiments of the most serious professors in great cities as vitiated and stark ught, of relegating religion to his native glens, and pretending that the hymn of praise or the sigh of contrition cannot ascend acceptably to the throne of grace from the crowded street as well as from the barren rock or silent valley? Why put this affront upon his hearers? Why belie his own aspirations? God made the country and man made the town." So says the poet; does Mr. Irving say so? If he does, and finds the air of the city death to his piety, why does he not return home again? But if he can breathe it with impunity, and still retain the fervour of his early enthusiasm, and the simplicity and purity of the faith that was once delivered to the saints, why not extend the benefit of his own experience to others, instead of taunting them with a vapid pastoral theory? Or, if our popular and eloquent divine finds a change in himself, that flattery prevents the growth of grace, that he is becoming the god of his own idolatry by being that of others, that the glittering of coronet-coaches rolling down Holborn-Hill to Hatton Garden, that titled beauty, that the parliamentary complexion of his audience, the compliments of poets, and the stare of peers, discompose his wandering thoughts a little; and yet that he cannot give up these strong temptations tugging at his heart; why not extend more charity to others, and show more candour in speaking of himself? There is either a good deal of bigoted intolerance with a deplorable want of self-knowledge in all this; or at least an equal degree of cant and quackery. To whichever cause we are to attribute this hyperbolical tone, we hold it certain he could not have adopted it, if he had been a little man. But his imposing figure and dignified manner enable him to hazard sentiments or assertions that would be fatal to others. His controversial daring is backed by his bodily prowess, and, bringing his intellectual pretensions boldly into a line with his physical accomplishments, he, indeed, presents a very formidabie front to the sceptie or the scoffer. Take a cubit from his stature, and his whole manner resolves itself into an impertinence. But with that addition, he overcrows the town, browbeats their prejudices, and bullies them out of their senses, and is not afraid of being contradicted by any one less than himself. It may be said, that individuals with great personal defects have made a considerable figure as public speakers; and Mr. Wilberforce, among others, may be held out as an instance. Nothing can be more insignificant as to mere outward appearance, and yet he is listened to in the House of Commons. But he does not wield it, he does not insult or bully it. He leads by following opinion, he trims, he shifts, he glides on the silvery sounds of his undulating, flexible, cautiously modulated voice, winding his way between heaven and earth, now courting popularity, now calling servility to his aid, and with a large estate, the "saints," and the population of Yorkshire to swell his influence, never venturing on the forlorn hope, or doing any thing more than "hitting the house between wind and water." Yet he is probably a cleverer man than Mr. Irving. There is a Mr. Fox, a dissenting minister, as fluent a speaker, with a sweeter voice and a more animated and beneficent countenance than Mr. Irving, who expresses himself with manly spirit at a public meeting, and is the darling of his congregation; but he is no more, because he is diminutive in person. His head is not seen above the crowd the length of a street off. He is the Duke of Sussex in miniature, but the Duke of Sussex does not go to hear him preach, as he attends Mr. Irving, who rises up against him like a martello tower, and is nothing loth to confront the spirit of a man of genius with the blood-royal. We allow there are, or may be, talents sufficient to produce this equality without a single personal advantage; but we deny that this would be the effect of any that our great preacher possesses. We conceive it not improbable that the consciousness of muscular power, that the admiration of his person by strangers might first have inspired Mr. Irving with an ambition to be something, intellectually speaking, and have given him confidence to attempt the greatest things. He has not failed for want of courage. The public, as well as the fair, are won by a show of gallantry. Mr. Irving has shrunk from no opinion, however paradoxical. He has scrupled to avow no sentiment, however obnoxious. He has revived exploded prejudices, he has scouted prevailing fashions. He has opposed the spirit of the age, and not consulted the esprit de |