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 remembered for ever." We remember just such a bottle of Grave at Abbeville.
ST. SAVIOUR, SOUTHWARK.[4]
Among the fine old localities of London is the neighbourhood of the church of St. Saviour, Southwark; this is one of the noblest and largest churches in London, and when the new London Bridge is finished, might be made a noble object from the approach on the Borough side. It is a positive disgrace if it be suffered to remain in its present dilapidated state by the parishioners. The massy spaciousness of the structure, and the solidity of its walls, strike the stranger who first beholds it with admiration. In this church lies old Gower the poet, and there are several very curious relics of the olden time scattered about within its walls. Its date is believed to be anterior to London Bridge. All the ground along the river near it towards Blackfriars' Bridge is filled with remains celebrated in the annals of the church, and what is singular, also of the theatre.—New Monthly Magazine.