1863 Cups and their customs

CUPS AND THEIR CUSTOMS.

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a man may see distinctly to the bottom of the glass its colour should represent the greenness of a buffaloes horn ; when drunk, it should descend impetuously like thunder; sweet-tasted as an almond; creeping like strong like the building of a Cistercian monastery; glittering like a spark of fire; subtle like the logic of the schools of Paris; delicate as fine silk; and colder than crystal/^ If we pursue our theme through the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, we find but little to edify us; those times being distinguished more by their excess and riot, than by superiority of beverages, or the customs attached to them. It would be neither profitable nor interesting to descant on scenes of brawling drunken- ness, which ended not unfrequently in fierce battles; or pause to admire the congregation of female gossips at the taverns, where the overhanging sign was either the branch of a tree, from which we derive the saying that ^^ good wine needs no bush,^^ or the equally common appendage of a besom hanging from the window, which has supplied us with the idea of "hanging out the broom .^^ The chief wine drunk at this period was Malmsey, first imported into England in the 13th cen- tury, when its average price was about 50^. a butt; this wine, however, attained its greatest popularity in the 15th century* There is a story in connexion with this wine which makes it familiar to every schoolboy, and that is the part it played in the death of the Duke of Clarence. Whether that nobleman did choose a butt of Malmsey, and thus carry out the idea of drowning a squirrel ; leaping like a roebuck ;