YACHT-RACING. Vagrants, whose arts Have caged some devil in their mad machine, Which grinding, squeaks—with husky groans between— 207 At night, in your cabin, with your choice little collection of books around you, and the hanging-lamp well trimmed, and no sound save the rush of waves under the yacht's counter, is not your solitude pleasant? Shelley used to write his poems in a boat on the Thames under the Bisham Woods-in the snug coffin' of a Venetian gondola; but the cabin of a schooner yacht is surely preferable. It is the very place wherein to write the famous poem of the future-in ottava rima. In connection with yachting, something must, of course, be said of racing. This, however, we take to be a secondary matter with the true yachtsman. He does not care to be always maintaining that his yacht is swifter than other yachts, any more than that his wife is more charming than other women. The comparison may be admitted —for a yacht is very like a woman-it has so much beauty, and such changeable temper. You can hardly help endowing it with imaginary life. It is a spiritual feminine creature, and all the winds of heaven are in love with it, are caught in the meshes of that long hair which we prosaically call topsails. However, there are racing yachtsmen-and a choice fantastic silver cup or two will grace the sideboard-and so the delicate Ariels of the sea must do hard work occasionally. And after all, a regatta is a thing to be tolerated. What saith the poet ? "Oh, a charming liquor is well-iced 'fizz,' That he finds a rhyme in θάλαττα! And 'tis pleasant to watch the swift yachts swirl But sweetest of all is the lovely girl At your side in serge or holland." Blue navy serge, with yachting buttons, makes a very knowing sort of costume for a pretty yachtswoman-if that word is allowable. Yes, an occasional regatta is a pleasant sensation. Yachts of all kinds assemble, and every owner has the pleasure of reflecting what tubs all the others are in comparison with his dainty darling. If he races, and is beaten, he consoles himself; unlucky winds, insufficient allowance, and so forth, are the permitted solace of a defeated yachtsBut if he wins, is he not jubilant? Faith, he will stride at least an inch taller into the smoking-room of the Yacht Club, whose wide bay-windows come down so closely to the sea. man. CORN AND WINE. DEMETER AND DIONYSUS: these were the Greek deities who presided over the material requirements of man. Their very names are keys to wide realms of poetry. They open for us the Homeric hymns again. Demeter's slenderankled daughter plucks in the Nysian meadow, as she sports with the daughters of Oceanus, the marvellous flower which the Many-receiver caused suddenly to burst into life, that it might tempt her to linger a flower with a hundred blooms that filled the wide sky with its fragrance, while the whole earth laughed, and the waves of the salt Dionysus, a blooming youth in a cerulean chlamys, long-tressed and radiant, gazes across the unfruitful sea, and is seized by Tyrrhene pirates, who little dream of the evil doom that their crime will bring upon them. sea. But, leaving the Greek divinities in that classic limbo where few people have leisure to linger now that the lamp of life burns so fast, let us regard corn and wine on their intrinsic merits. They have been twin brethren since the world began. Bristol, not the least poetic of English cities, calls its two chief streets after them. As we think VOL. II. 0 of corn, England's wide wheat-fields stretch before the mind's eye, with the unsickled harvest slowly maturing beneath the autumn sun. Here and there the bearded barley rises, pale gold with clustering spires, destined to give delicate strength to the unrivalled ale of Allsopp and Bass. In the barley fields, Dionysus and Demeter join hands and are wedded-a consummation beyond Attic dreams. Wine brings into the focus of the imagination the Burgundian Coast of Gold, the radiant slopes of Champagne, the hill-vineyards of the Rhine and the Moselle. Surely this is a great gift to man; but all great gifts are liable to great abuse, and there is just now a scarcely reasonable crusade against alcohol in all its forms, which, in my judgment, is likely to do more harm than good. The Deipnosophist is going out of fashion, and we have taken to study that interesting creature, the Dipsomaniac. Of course we have all read those alarming articles in various journals which assert that everybody has his secret intoxication; that the gravest members of our learned professions are obliged to take continual stimulants; that even the ladies, though they seem content with their single glass of sherry or champagne, rely on their perfumers for Eau de Cologne, or their chemists for chloral. The practised reader, who knows how and why articles are written, takes these statements cum grano salis—not so the general public, who really become very much alarmed. The article-monger paves the way for the fashionable physician, who sees that a well-written treatise on the subject will bring him into notoriety. He follows on the track which the journalists have cleverly pioneered INTEMPERANCE. 211 for him. He enlarges on the terrible wear and tear of brain and nerve caused by the rapid movement of modern life, and flatters us by the assurance that we do a great deal more work than our forefathers. This is not the place to institute a comparison between the Elizabethan and the Victorian Age; but, judging by political and literary results, I am disposed to think that better work was done in the former, though the teetotaller could not exist for lack of his beloved beverages. The fashionable physician usually pushes his case rather too far. I note one writer, who asserts that any amount of alcohol, and in whatever form, is just as injurious as the largest amount in the most condensed form. Ale is as bad as brandy, claret as port. Every stimulus is an abomination, and there is no safety except in water. This reminds one of the homœopathic receipt for brewing punch, which began— "Take a glass of rum The smaller 'tis the better; Pour it in the lake Of Wener or of Wetter." From newspaper articles and books we naturally come to public meetings, and there lately have been several such. The Social Science Association has taken up the question of dipsomania; and, among other things, it was rather coolly suggested that any one who entered an establishment for dipsomaniacs of his own free will should be forcibly retained until cured. This is intemperate intemperance in its most violent form; it is a proposal to destroy that mutual confidence which is at the root of all social compacts. It is noticeable that at this particular |