1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

267

The foregoing verses epitomise the praise of good beer. The first is from one of the earHest known drinking songs in the English language — the last is an old Wassail song — the Wassail bowl, which was of hot spiced ale, with roasted apples bobbing therein, — a kindly way of welcome on New Year's Eve, of Saxon derivation as its name " Wes-hal," be of health, ox your healthy testifies. That the Anglo-Saxon took kindly to his beer, we have already seen ; and that that feeling exists at the present day is undoubted, for what says the refrain of a comparatively modern drinking song ? — and it has reached to such a height that the brewing trade seems to be instituted for the propagation of Peers of the realm a fact which Dr. Johnson even could not have fore- seen, although, at the sale of Thrale's brewery, he did say that they had not met together to sell boilers and vats, but " the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dream of avarice." It was the national drink — for tea and coffee were not introduced into England until the middle of the seventeenth century — and it is only of very modern times that the '' free breakfast table " fad of statesman- ship has made those beverages so popular, by bring- ing them within the means of the very poorest. " I loves a drop of good beer — I I'se partickler fond of my beer — I is And their eyes, If ever they tries To rob a poor man of his beer." does Its popularity has never waned