Page:Through a Glass Lightly (1897, Greg).djvu/101

 owners from being lamentably undone; while as for your delicate French wines, their portion is ruin, and the red precedes the white on the road to ruin. It is not every one, and least of all a Londoner or town man, who can scoop him a cellar under the living rock, which is the true matrix for the development of good wine; but you will find no finer hold than that which lies deep, some forty to fifty feet, as the soil allows, without excess of moisture, nor with any opening save one to the north alone. In populous cities pent, the least you should insist on is. a chamber in stone or brick, contrived at such a depth as will secure an even temperature all the year round. Let it not be subject to the fickleness of the outer air; for in truth nor rain, nor drought, nor heat, nor cold, nor temporal