feelings, I began to be warmer still in my expressions.  A touch under the table silenced me.  The charge soon after gave me to understand that Johannisberg produced only sour grapes for my neighbour, as Napoleon had given the estate to the first Duke, and the allies had taken it away from his son.  This was not the first time I have had occasion to see the necessity of being guarded how one speaks, lest he offend some political sensibility or other in this quarter of the world.

The present owner of Johannisberg has fitted up the house, which is quite spacious, very handsomely, though without gorgeousness, and there is really a suite of large and commodious rooms.  I saw few or no signs of the monastery about the building.  The vines grow all around the conical part of the hill quite up to the windows.  The best wine is made from those near the house, on the south-eastern exposure.  The view was beautiful and very extensive, and all that the place wants to make it a desirable residence is shade; an advantage, however, that cannot be enjoyed on the same spot in common with good wine.  The nakedness of the ground impaired the effect of the dwelling.  The owner is seldom here, as is apparent by the furniture, which, though fresh and suitable, does not extend to the thousand little elegancies that accumulate in a regular abode.

The books say that this celebrated vineyard contains sixty-three acres, and this is near the extent I should give it, from the eye.  The produce is stated at twenty-five hogsheads, of thirteen hundred bottles each.  Some of the wines of the best vintages sell as high as four and even five dollars a bottle.  I observed that the soil was mixed with stone much decomposed, of a shelly appearance, and whitish colour.  The land would be pronounced unsuited to ordinary agriculture, I suspect, by a majority of farmers.

I bought a bottle of wine from a servant who professed to have permission to sell it.  The price was two florins and a half, or a dollar, and the quality greatly inferior to the bottle that, for the same money, issued from the cellar of the host at Rudesheim.  It is probable the whole thing was a deception, though the inferior wines of Johannisberg are no better than a vast deal of the other common wine of the neighbourhood.

From Johannisberg we descended to the plain and took the road to Biberich.  This is a small town on the banks of the Rhine, and is the residence of the Duke.  Nassau figures in the tables of the Germanic confederation as the fourteenth state, having three hundred and thirty-eight thousand inhabitants, and furnishing three thousand troops as its contingent.  The population is probably a little greater.  The reigning family is of the ancient line of Nassau, from a junior branch of which I believe the King of Holland is derived; the Duchess is a princess of Wurtemberg, and a sister of the Grand-duchess Helena, of whom I have already spoken so often.  This little state is one of the fabricated sovereignties of 1814, being composed of divers fragments, besides the ancient possessions of the family.  In short, it would seem to be intended for the government and better management of a few capital vineyards.