1892 Drinks of the world

BRINKS.

19^

The ancient beer compared by DIodorus Siculus to wine on account of its strength and flavour. This Egyptian beer is indeed spoken of by Herodotus as barley wine, a title which still sur- vives in some of the windows of our public-houses. At present beer is the habitual drink of the English, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian races. A drink, better called barley water than beer, appears to have been the favourite beveragre of the Danes and Ancrlo- Saxons, our ancestors in the remote past. Before Christianity had enlightened and corrected their views about the delights of a future state, these benighted folk supposed that the chief felicity enjoyed by the good — in those days synonymous with the brave — after their death and transplantation into Odin's paradise, would be to drink in large goblets large quantities of ale. Perpetual intoxication thus entered largely into their conception of celestial joy. Beer as we understand it— modified, that is, by the known in England before the beginning of the sixteenth cen- The varieties of beer at the present time are Perhaps as good a remark as any on this subject was made by a modern tradesman who, wishing to sell both, explained that, while strongly advocating the introduction of wine, he did not at all intend to depreciate the merits of our national beverage, beer. Where, he continued, plenty of out-door exercise is taken, and little intellectual demanded, good beer is perhaps the most wholesome of aTl and therefore he advised the " labouring man," who could not probably afford to buy wine, to drink beer, while others, who might be supposed able to afford wine, were warned that they could not drinkxbeer with impunity. of Egypt is irttroduction of the hop — was probably little tury. beer. effort is drinks ;