"This very same wine we are drinking

To-night in classic Rome,

Sipping it after dinner

In our quiet foreign home.

I have told as I heard the story,

And now the white wine that is best,

Let us all fill a bowl of—

Here's peace to the soul of

The monk of the Est, Est, Est!"

To judge of the quality of Montefiascone, one must drink it at its home; like other white wines of the former Papal States, it will not bear the shock of distant carriage. As for the German ecclesiast, one should not take him too seriously, but consider him rather from the picturesque point of view, as Rowlandson and Combe have done with the reverend Syntax. "Other times, other manners,"—to-day his reverence would have made the journey by rail and not by post, and thus, doubtless, would have missed the fiasci of Montefiascone. One must also bear in mind that the wine in question, being of the muscat type, is extremely heady and exciting to the nerves, its deleterious effects being masked by its unctuousness and engaging aroma; so that an unsuspecting beer-drinking bishop, accustomed to copious libations of a milder fluid, might readily and unwittingly find himself under the table, and, even though a hierarch, prove an easy subject for a De Profundis. Many years have elapsed since the prelate's demise; and it is to be supposed that, meanwhile, the nectar of Est has been rendered less potent and even more delectable in heavenly vineyards.