in the nineteenth century, under the merciful
dispensation of wise and humane laws and
increasing civilisation. Be thankful for the
leniency which renders your immediate
incarceration and deportation beyond sea
illegal; and for that sagacious discretionary
power placed in the hands (and eyes) of all
classes of readers who, if they do not like
your subject matter, need not read what you
write."

In sooth I am almost ashamed, and am
reluctant, and hang back, and blush—if one
can blush in pen and ink—now that (a
portion of my task being accomplished and
the houses and drinkers for a time disposed
of) it becomes my bounden duty to treat of
beer itself. So I am fain to take heart, and
gird up my loins to the task, catching at,
nervously, an additional, though fragile,
consolation, that my subject is, at least, not a
dry one.

It is my present purpose to relate to you
the particulars of a visit I paid not many
weeks past, to a very worthy knight, a friend
of mine, whose family has enjoyed great
fame and consideration in the English country
for upwards of five hundred years—Sir John
Barleycorn.

This knight, though he has never aspired
to any grade superior to that which his
equestrian spurs confer on him, has been,
time out of mind, the boon companion of
emperors and monarchs; yet, with a wise
magnanimity, he hath not, at the same time,
disdained to enliven the leisure moments of
clowns and churls—yea, down even unto
vagrants and Abraham-men. One of Sir
John's panegyrists sings—

                     "The Beggar who begges
                      Without any legges,
         And scarcely a rug on his bodye to veile,
                      Talks of princes and kynges
                      And all these fine thynges,
         When once he has hold of a tankard of ale."

Ale being, indeed, the article for the
confection of which and his many convivial
qualities, Sir John hath, in times both
ancient and modern, been principally
celebrated. So highly esteemed was his ale
of old, that another poetic eulogisor of
our knight, in reverent station no less
than a bishop, hath declared—as we
previously set forth—his willingness that both
his outward back and side should "go bare,
go bare," provided that his inner man were
irrigated with a sufficiency of "jolly good ale
and old." And in our own days there have
not been wanting bards enthusiastic in
sounding the praises of Sir John Barleycorn
and his ale, from him that writ the affectionate
strophe commencing with “Oh, brown beer,
thou art my darling," to that other lapwing
of Parnassus, the democratic admirer of Sir
John, who, in his lay, calls down fierce
maledictions on those who would attempt "to rob
a poor man of his beer."

It was with an honest pride that Sir John
(a burly, red-faced, honest-looking country
gentleman, in a full suit of brown aud silver,
with a wig of delightful whiteness) discoursed
to me of these matters, when last stopping in
town, at the coffee-house where he
entertained me. "Yes," he said, "I and my
ancestors have seen fine days, I can tell you.
We have entertained more kings, crowned
and discrowned, than Monsieur Voltaire's
Candide ever saw supping together at the
Carnival of Venice. My father was a
favourite (and rivalled it sharply with Prince
Potemkin too) with Catherine of Russia.
The Polish nobles delighted in him, and the
Muscovite Boyards literally drank up his
words. Nor was he less considered here in
England. Queen Bess honoured my great
grandfather; and it was with a foaming
tankard of my great uncle's October brew
that the serving-man soused Sir Walter
Raleigh when, surprising him smoking a pipe
of tobacco he, the servitor, thought his master
to be afire. Down where I dwell the monks
of the old abbey frequently chose their cellarer
for abbot, so high a respect had they for even
those remotely connected with the Barleycorns.
But we have seen in our time evil
days. We have been vilified, scandalised,
made responsible for all the evils which an
indiscriminate and immoderate use of our good
gifts may bring upon intemperate persons.
The last Sir John was indicted and tried for
his life at Glasgow by a temperance poet;
and had he not put himself upon his country
and proved beyond a doubt that none of the
genuine Barleycorns ever meant harm to the
people of Scotland; but that it was an idle,
intemperate, deboshed fellow, smelling terribly
of peat smoke—one Usquebagh, who had
formed an illicit alliance with a cast-off
hussey of the Malt family—that had, through
them, endeavoured to bring the Barleycorns
to shame; had he not done this it would have
gone hard with him. You may see the
report of the case now in a Scotch poem,
called The Trial of Sir John Barleycorn.
I myself, as harmless a man (though I say it)
as ever broke bread, have been treated in
these latter days as something very little
better than a murderer, a male Brinvilliers,
and my ale as a sort of aqua tofana. 'Twas a
French chemist did me this turn, thinking to
annihilate me. You shall take coach with
me to-morrow, and we will go to my ancestral
seat, where the principal branch of our
family hath had their habitat since Harry the
Eighth's time. Sir, you shall do John
Barleycorn the honour of a visit at his poor
house at BURTON-ON TRENT."

Whereupon this jovial knight (he should
be a baronet, for his title is hereditary, but
he stoutly disclaims the bloody hand, and
writes himself simple eques) called for t'other
flaggon; which, being discussed, he paid the
reckoning, and appointing a rendezvous for
the morrow, swaggered off to bed, humming