The Bombay Castle had not been two hours at anchor before the passengers had availed themselves of an invitation from one of the English residents, and were quartered in a splendid house, which looked upon a square and one of the principal churches in the city of Funchal.  While the gentlemen amused themselves, at the extensive range of windows, with the novelty of the scene, and the ladies retired to their apartments to complete the hasty toilet of their disembarkation, Captain Drawlock was very busy in the counting-house below, with the master of the house.  There were so many pipes of Madeira for the Honourable Company; so many for the directors’ private cellars, besides many other commissions for friends, which Captain Drawlock had undertaken to execute; for at that period Madeira wine had not been so calumniated as it latterly has been.

A word upon this subject.  I am a mortal enemy to every description of humbug; and I believe there is as much in the medical world as in any other.  Madeira wine had for a century been in high and deserved reputation, when on a sudden some fashionable physician discovers that it contained more acid than sherry.  Whether he was a sleeping partner in some Spanish house, or whether he had received a present of a few pipes of sherry that he might turn the scale of public favour towards that wine, I know not; but certain it is, that it became fashionable with all medical gentlemen to prescribe sherry; and when once anything becomes fashionable, c’est une affaire decidee.

I do not pretend to be much of a pathologist; but on reading Mr F——­’s analysis on the component parts of wine, I observed that in one hundred parts there are perhaps twenty-two parts of acid in Madeira, and nineteen in sherry; so that, in fact, if you reduce your glass of Madeira wine just one sip in quantity, you will imbibe no more acid than in a full glass of sherry; and when we consider the variety of acids in sugar and other compounds, which abound in culinary preparations, the fractional quantity upon which has been grounded the abuse of Madeira wine appears to be most ridiculous.

But if not a pathologist, I have a most decided knowledge of what is good wine; and if the gout should some day honour me with a visit, I shall at least have the consolation to know that I have by potation most honestly earned it.

But allowing that the medical gentlemen are correct, still their good intentions are frustrated by the knavery of the world; and the result of their prescriptions is that people drink much more acid than they did before.  I do every justice to good old sherry when it does make its appearance at table; it is a noble wine when aged and unsophisticated from its youth; but for once that you meet with it genuine, you are twenty times disappointed.  When Madeira wine was in vogue, the island could not produce the quantity required for consumption, and the vintage from the north side of the island, or of Teneriffe,