“Dear Sir,--I shall not waste your time in idle congratulations. You know my joy on the commitment of the helm of Government to your hands.

I promised you when I should have received and tried the wines I had ordered from France and Italy to give you a note of the kinds which I should think worthy of your procurement; and this being the season for ordering them, so that they may come in the mild temperature of autumn, I now fulfil my promise.

They are the following: Vin blanc limuoureux d’Hermitage de M. Jourdan a Tanis. This costs about eighty-two and a half cents a bottle put on shipboard.

Vin de Ledarion (in Languedoc) something of the port character but higher flavored, more delicate, less rough. I do not know the price, but probably about twenty-five cents a bottle.

Vin de Rousillion. The best is that of Perpignan or Rives alte of the crop of M. Durand. It costs seventy-two cents a gallon, bears bringing in a cask. If put into bottles there it costs eleven cents a bottle more than if bottled here by an inexplicable and pernicious arrangement of our tariff.

Vin de Nice. The crop called Bellet, of Mr. Sasterno, is the best. This is the most elegant every-day wine in the world and costs thirty-one cents the bottle. Not much being made it is little known at the general markets.

Mr. Cathalan of Marseilles is the best channel for getting the first three of these wines and a good one for the Nice, being in their neighborhood and knowing well who makes the crops of the best quality. The Nice being a wine foreign to France occasions some troublesome forms. If you could get that direct from Sasterno himself at Nice, it would be better. And, by the bye, he is very anxious for the appointment of consul for the United States at that place. I knew his father well, one of the most respectable merchants and men of the place. I hear a good character of the son, who has succeeded to his business. He understands English well, having passed some time in a counting house in London for improvement. I believe we have not many vessels going to that port annually and yet as the appointment brings no expense to the United States, and is sometimes salutary to our merchants and seamen, I see no objection to naming one there.

There is still another wine to be named to you, which is the wine of Florence called Montepulciano, with which Mr. Appleton can best furnish you. There is a particular very best crop of it known to him and which he has usually sent to me. This costs twenty-five cents per bottle. He knows, too, from experience how to have it bottled and packed as to ensure its bearing the passage which in the ordinary way it does not. I have imported it through him annually ten or twelve years and do not think I have lost one bottle in one hundred.

I salute you with all my wishes for a prosperous and splendid voyage over the ocean on which you are embarked, and with sincere prayers for the continuance of your life and health.”