1892 Drinks of the world

DRINICS.

160

they say mass, nor preach,^ and they are for the most part ignorant. But they make a boast to be excellent distillers of eaic de naffd'^ and other waters, both in Verona and elsewhere. Monastical liqueurs are worthy of a paragraph to themselves. So long as monks have existed, they seem to have manifested a taste for the concoction of these drinks. We can scarcely pass the shop window of a liqueur-seller without having our attention attracted by what the French call a Kyrielle or litany of flasks of diverse forms,- decorated with tickets bearing such Chartretix, Liqueur des Benedictins, Liqueur des Cannes, Liqueur des Trappistes, Liqueur des Peres de Garaison, Liqueur du P, Kermanny and so on. A large volume might well be composed on these liqueurs alone. About their supposed virtues, — -aperient, digestive, antiapo- that book might be well supposed likely to stretch out as far as the list of Banquo's issue to the diseased imagi- nation of Macbeth. The search for the philosopher's stone and the powder of projection was by no means wholly fruitless. It strengthened the hands of chemistry* It was also the cradle of liqueurs. In the early part of the middle ages the learned inhabitants of the convents ^ According to their first institution the J-esuits were not priests. This was conceded to them afterwards by Paul V. Their primitive principal occupation was the assistance of the sick and the distil- lation of salutiferous waters, whence they were known as ^^ padri delV acguaviie" or Fathers of brandies. titles as the following \-^Liqueur des plectic, antispasmodic, anticholeric, tonic, etc.,

* A liqueur made with the flower of citron.