Very strong beer permits itself, of course, to be bottled and kept in bottles: but I rather doubt whether it also is not best from the wood; though it is equally of course, much easier to cellar it and keep it bottled. Its kinds are various and curious. "Scotch ale" is famous, and at its best (I never drank better than Younger's) excellent: but its tendency, I think, is to be too sweet. I once invested in some--not Younger's--which I kept for nearly sixteen years, and which was still treacle at the end. Bass's No. 1 requires no praises. Once when living in the Cambridgeshire village mentioned earlier I had some, bottled in Cambridge itself, of great age and excellence. Indeed, two guests, though both of them were Cambridge men, and should have had what Mr. Lang once called the "robust" habits of that University, fell into one ditch after partaking of it. (I own that the lanes thereabouts are very dark.) In former days, though probably not at present, you could often find rather choice specimens of strong beer produced at small breweries in the country. I remember such even in the Channel Islands. And I suspect the Universities themselves have been subject to "declensions and fallings off." I know that in my undergraduate days at Merton we always had proper beer-glasses, like the old "flute" champagnes, served regularly at cheese-time with a most noble beer called "Archdeacon," which was then actually brewed in the sacristy of the College chapel. I have since--a slight sorrow to season the joy of reinstatement there--been told that it is now obtained from outside.[F] And All Souls is the only other college in which, from actual recent experience, I can imagine the possibility of the exorcism, Strongbeerum! discede a lay-fratre Petro, if lay-brother Peter were so silly as to abuse, or play tricks with, the good gift. I have never had many experiences of real "home-brewed," but two which I had were pleasing. There was much home-brewing in East Anglia at the time I lived there, and I once got the village carpenter to give me some of his own manufacture. It was as good light ale as I ever wish to drink (many times better than the wretched stuff that Dora has foisted on us), and he told me that, counting in every expense for material, cost and wear of plant, etc., it came to about a penny[G] a quart. The other was very different. The late Lord de Tabley--better or at least longer known as Mr. Leicester Warren--once gave a dinner at the Athenæum at which I was present, and had up from his Cheshire cellars some of the old ale for which that county is said to be famous, to make flip after dinner. It was shunned by most of the pusillanimous guests, but not by me, and it was excellent. But I should like to have tried it unflipped.[H]