forms. If mead was in general demand, still more so was wine. The common appetite found fitting expression in a common nomenclature, and we find the names given to wine in every country bearing a striking similarity. Compare the English wine with the Gaelic fion, the French vin, Italian vino, Welsh gwin, Danish viin, German wein, Latin vinum, Greek οἶνος, Hebrew yayin, the root term conveying the notion, according to some, of boiling up, ferment, whilst others refer it to the Hebrew verb signifying to press out.

Whether an advantage or otherwise, to the Romans undoubtedly we owe signboards. The bush, which was for ages with us the sign of an inn, we owe immediately to them. Our proverb, ‘Good wine needs no bush,’ is of course own child to the Latin ‘Vino vendibili suspensa hedera non opus est’—‘Wine that will sell needs no advertisement.’ Our sign of ‘Two Jolly Brewers’ carrying a tun slung on a long pole is the counterpart of a relic from Pompeii representing two slaves carrying an amphora.[6]

Again, our country owes to Roman influence the national custom of toasting or health-drinking.

The present writer has observed elsewhere[7] that among the Romans luxury was carried to unbounded excess. Many were their forms of revelry; amongst these were comissationes, or drinking bouts pure and simple. At these no food was taken, save as a relish to the wine. Specimens of their toasting formalities will be found in several classical authors.[8]

It were idle to imagine that the Britons were uninfluenced by such marked features of social life. If these customs had not been adopted by them before the time of Agricola, it is certain that when that most diplomatic of governors held sway here, he would teach the jeunesse dorée to drink healths to the emperor, and to toast the British belles of the hour in brimming bumpers. Sensual banquets, with their attendant revelry, no less than spacious baths and elegant villas, speedily became as palatable to the new subjects as to their corrupt masters.[9]

Intemperance was no stranger to any rank of society. Not even the imperial purple was stainless.[10] Thus was the soil prepared for the seed so abundantly to be sown when the Saxon, the Roman’s successor, should incorporate himself with our British population.