The porter and stout of the metropolis have long been famous. The virtues of the latter drink are celebrated all over the world; and a royal duke, ascribed the great mortality among the guards in the East to the want of their favourite beverage. No doubt the pure liquor, as it comes from the great brewers, is wholesome and strengthening; but it no sooner gets into the possession of the publicans than, in a great majority of cases, the article is made up. A stranger would naturally suppose that the foaming tankard of Meux's entire which he quaffs at the "Marquis of Granby" has an identical flavour with that at the "Blue Boar," where the same brewer's name shines resplendent on the house-front. Not a bit of it: one shall be smooth, pleasantly bitter, slightly acid, and beaded with a fine and persistent froth; the other, bitter with the bitterness of soot, salt, clammy, sweet, and frothing with a coarse and evanescent froth. The body of the liquor is undoubtedly the same, but the variations are all supplied by the publicans and sinners. We do not make _émeutes_, as they are continually doing in Bavaria, on account of our beer; but we have strong feelings on a matter of such national importance; and the wicked ways of brewers and publicans have been made, over and over again, the subject of parliamentary inquiry. The reports of various committees prove that, in times past, porter and stout were doctored in the most ingenious manner, and so universally and unreservedly, that a trade sprang up termed brewers' druggists, whose whole business it was to supply to the manufacturers and retailers of the national beverage, ingredients for its adulteration; nay, to such an extent did the taste for falsifying beer and porter extend, that one genius, hight Jackson, wrote a hand-book to show the brewers how to make Beer _without any Malt or Hops at all_! Accum has preserved, in his now antique pages, some of the recipes in vogue in his day. The boldness with which our fathers went to work is amusing. For instance, Mr. Child, in his "Practical Treatise on Brewing," after having made his non-professional reader aghast by mentioning a score of pernicious articles to be used in beer, remarks, in the mildest possible manner,--