This propensity of minor or subject peoples to imitate those dominant or more famous, is the greatest prize that rewards the pre-eminent for the fatigue necessary to conquer that place of honour; it is the reason why cultured and civilised nations ought naturally to seek to preserve a certain political, economic, and military supremacy, without which their intellectual superiority would weaken or at least lose a part of its value.  The human multitude in the vast world are not yet so intelligent and refined as to prize that which is beautiful and grand for its own sake; and they are readily induced to admire as excellent what is but mediocre, if behind it there is a force to be feared or to impose it.  Indeed, we may observe in the modern world a phenomenon analogous to that in historic Italy.  What, in succeeding centuries, have been the changes in the enologic superiority conquered by Rome?

Naturally I cannot recount the whole story, although it would be interesting; but will only observe that contemporary civilisation confirms the law by which predominance in the Latin world and the pre-eminence of wine are indissolubly bound together in history.

Paris is the modern Rome, the metropolis of the Latin world.  France continues, as far as can be done in modern times, the ancient sway of Rome, irradiating round so much of the globe, by commerce, literature, art, science, industry, dominance of political ideas, the influence of the Latin world, making tributaries to Latin culture of barbarous peoples, and nations too young for leadership or grown too old; and France has inherited the pre-eminence in wines, although it lies at the farthest confines of the vine-bearing zone, beyond which the tree of Bacchus refuses to live.  Do you realise that in all the wide belt of earth where vineyards flourish, only the dry hills of Champagne ripen the delicious effervescent wine that refigures in modern civilisation—­at least for those who are fond of wine—­the nectar of the gods?  And this, while effervescent wines are made in innumerable parts of the world and many are so good that one wonders if it were not possible for them, manufactured with care, placed in sightly bottles, and sold at as high a price as the most famous French Champagne, to dispute a part of the admiration that the devotees of Bacchus render to the French wine.  Ah, they do not scintillate before the eyes of the world as symbols of gay intoxication like the others, for through those bottles passes no ray of the glory and prestige of France!  An historian fond of paradoxes might affirm, and with great likelihood, what does not appear at first glance:  that the great brands of French Champagne would not be sold so dear if the French Revolution had been suppressed by the European coalition, and if France, overcome in the terrible trial, had been enchained by the absolute monarchies of Europe like a dangerous beast.  It would even be possible to declare that the reputation