But really this is nothing new. Old inscriptions, dating from the Gallo-Roman era, show that Pliny was correct in setting down, at his period, the Gauls as a largely beer-drinking race. They had earthenware beer-pots, some of which have been exhumed, bearing the inscription, "Cerevisariis felicitas!" An old Gallo-Roman flagon is preserved in Paris, on which is engraved—"Hospita reple lagenam cervisia!" The oldest beer-song extant is Old-French, dating from the thirteenth century. It is as follows:

LETABUNDUS
Or hi purra;
La cerveyse nos chauntera
Alleluia!
Qui que aukes en beyt
Si tel seyt comme estre doit
Res miranda.

The prohibition which Charlemagne issued against keeping St. Stephen's Day too zealously by the consumption of beer and wine, applied to France no less than to Germany. The French were, in truth, great respecters of saints' days in a bibulous way. St. Martin's Day was with them a favourite occasion for drinking. Hence martiner still currently signifies drinking more than one ought. Another suggestive popular term is "Boire comme un Templier." France then has really only returned to her premier amour. But in doing so she has set upon it a seal of domination, which is significant, as meaning that it is not likely to be readily surrendered.

No doubt beer, having held its own so long, though much assailed, will still continue to maintain its position. There is too much of human nature in man to admit of its being effectually proscribed. "Abusus non tollit usum." The same school of Salerno which praises beer as a wholesome drink adds this wise proviso:—"Hic unicum de cervisiæ usu præceptum traditur: nempe ut modice sumatur, neque ea stomachus prægravetur vel ebrietas concilietur." Sebastian Brant writes in old German:

Eyn Narr muosz vil gesoffen han,
Eyn Wyser maesslich drincken kann.

There is great virtue in the modice sumatur. The wine-trade has passed through a similar change. Though four-bottle men have died out, the wine-trade is doing better than it did in olden days. So it will probably be with beer. However temperance advocates may regret it, it is not to be got rid of by railing. In truth it is now indeed making le tour du monde. And, unless mankind changes its character altogether, it will probably go on drinking—more or less modice—to the end of the chapter, a beverage which stands commended by so exemplary a Father of the Church as the whilom Bishop of Bath and Wells, Polydore Virgil, who pronounces it

Potus tum salubris tum jucundus.

Footnotes:

[1] Blackwood's Magazine, August, 1894.

[2] The church encloses, in addition to one of the "true" pebbles with which was stoned, says M. Bellot-Herment, the chronicler of Bar, "St Etienne, curé de Gamaliel, bourg du diocèse de Jerusalem," that boldly original sculpture from the chisel of the great Lorrain artist, Ligier Richier, whom we so undeservedly ignore, the famous "Squelette"—the mere name of which frightened Dibdin away, as he himself relates. Durival terms this sculpture "une affreuse beauté"—but "beauté" it undoubtedly is.

[3] Patriotic Frenchmen derive this name from the Latin fascinatio. But quite evidently it is a gallicised form of the German fastnacht, which in Alsace is pronounced fàsenacht, or very nearly fàsenocht; in a French mouth it would naturally become faschinottes.

[4] Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1891.

[5] National Review, February, 1892.

[6] Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1893.

[7] See the Memoirs of the Family of Taaffe, p. 13.

[8] Westminster Review, May, 1892.

[9] National Review, May, 1892.

[10] Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1894.

[11] The "English" student who took the second prize on the occasion must, I think, have been Edmund Arnold. At any rate, I can discover no other English name on the register. English students were still few in those days.

[12] Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1891.