public—" sufferance is the badge of all their
tribe"—had to fall prostrate, as usual, at the
feet of Monopoly.

The age of beer is another question. Do we
get our beer as old as it used to be? Common
beer, brewed and vatted entire in the months of
March and April, can be drunk the next spring.
Beer brewed in October may need two seasons
to bring it into condition; but then it is of a
fine lasting quality. The alcohol, which is the
strength and preservative essence of beer, will
be in that October infusion, and also carbonic
acid gas enough to give it pungency and
brilliancy, and arm it against putrefying fermentation.
It will not be ropy; it will sparkle clear
in the glass; it will shine like amber; it will
do a man good.

But we are, we fear, fallen on degenerate
days. Who hears now, as in the brave old
times (as far as beer goes), when, on the birth
of an heir to the old manor house, a tun of
strong steadfast beer was instantly prepared
from the richest malt, and the rarest nosegay of
Canterbury hops? No cost, or time, or, labour
was spared in boiling the worts and locking it
safely in the great Falstaff of an oak hogshead.
There, it strengthened and strengthened and
warmed and nestled, year after year, while the
child began to walk, then to ride, then to slay
the deer and hunt the fox, then to fight and woo,
and walk in cap and gown, and, finally, come of
age; and then at last, out to the castle green, the
faithful tun was hauled from its dark abode and
solemnly tapped; the young heir drinking his
father's and mother's health in the first glass,
and his tenantry's in the second; then came the
dance round the Maypole, and the junketting,
and the merriest feast at which a roast ox
was ever devoured. That was something like
ale—ale twenty-one years old—ale of worship
—ale of experience; and Sly and Autolycus
would come lurking about the edge of the
festivity for their quiet share, you may depend
upon it.

Of hops, the best are the Farnham, and those
from round Canterbury. The Worcesters are
mild and pleasant flavoured, the North Clays
(Northamptonshire) rank, and chiefly used for
strong store beer. Good hops are best at two
months old. The Farnhams are most suitable
for London ales and their imitations; the darker
and more astringent Kents for store beer and
porter. No chemical or vegetable bitter has
yet been discovered to supersede the warm,
stomachic, aromatic, and cheering bitter of the
hop.

The best pure malt is light; but if the
"cockspur" or shoot appear, it will turn poor
and weak. It should be of equal colour and
uniform size; hard and flinty malt is bad.
It should easily bruise into a sweet white
flour; the skin should be thin, the meal sweet
and rich to the taste. An eminent brewer
says:

"The test in common use is to put a handful
of malt into a glass of cold water; the flints or
unmalted grain will sink to the bottom; those
partially made will dip obliquely in angles of
depression corresponding to their imperfection;
while the thoroughly malted seeds will swim
and float for several hours before they absorb
sufficient water to precipitate them. Experience
will, however, enable the eye, the teeth,
and the palate to determine with some accuracy
the quality of malt, though the ultimate and
best test of productiveness is the
saccharometer."

Beer contains what barley contains, or rather
what malt (barley chemically treated) contains,
i. e., starch, sugar, farina, mucilage, gluten,
bitter and extractive. Malting is, in fact, one
long chemical process of digestion, succeeding
three months sweating in the stack that the
barley has previously undergone. It is to feed
the young plant that nature reserves all the
choicest saccharine juices of the seed. The
maltster, therefore, wise and wily, contrives a
spurious growth of the plant, in order to obtain
these precious juices, and to turn all its starches
into sugar. It is first, steeped in water for from
forty to sixty-eight hours. It is then drained
and thrown into a couch to ferment. The heat
is then checked, and germination encouraged
after the sixth day. The grain then begins to
swell, heat, and decompose, as it would in
the moist earth, the radicle shoots forth, the
acrospire swells and grows beneath the husk,
and in a few days the farinaceous matter round
the root becomes friable and sweet.

Germinisation and saccharisation continue
till about the fourteenth day, when the moisture
decreases, and the particles turn to meal.
That is the moment the ever watchful and wily
maltster chooses. To check waste and preserve
the sweetness, he dries the grain in a kiln, and
evaporates it to dryness. The malt is sweet and
mucilaginous, but if the germination had
continued, all the starch would have turned into
sugar, and passed into the juices of the young
plant for whose necessities it was originally
intended.

The use of beer has very much increased of
late years in Paris. In 1805, a writer in the
Almanac des Gourmands says: " At this
moment there are only two places in Paris where
you are perfectly sure of getting good beer,
'un faiencier de la rue de l'Arbre Sec, et dans
le petit café Flamand de la rue Saint Louis
Saint Honoré." The French at this time had
strange, timid, heretical, notions about beer.
They thought it chilled the stomach and retarded
digestion. They considered white beer as less
nutritious than red, but lighter and more
wholesome; they also insisted on a coup de
milieu, or middle dinner dram, to correct the
heaviness and coldness of the new beverage.
Yet even at this time the number of brewers in
Paris had wonderfully increased since the
Revolution. One of the chief of these was M.
Santerre de la Fontinelle, in the Rue Neuve de
Berry. He was the brother of that " General
Frothy" (Mousseux), as he was wittily called
by the Parisian gamins, who bade his drums
beat louder to drown the remonstrances of