the German composer Von Flotow ascribes our sturdy robustness: Das ist das treffliche Elixir, Das ist das kräftige Porterbier. Obsopæus says of the ancient Saxons: Coctam Cererem potant _crassosque liquores_. And an old rhyme, still quoted with gusto, goes to this effect: Ein echter Sachse wird, wie alle Völker sagen, Nie schmal in Schultern sein, noch schlaffe Lenden tragen. Fragt Einer, welches denn die Ursach' sei: Er isset Speck und Wurst, und trinket _Mumm_ dabei. "Mumm" is our own good old "mum," about the meaning of which in an Act of Parliament there was recently some controversy, when even Mr. Gladstone did not quite know how to explain it. It is the good, thick, stout, nourishing beer--_nil spissius illo_--which makes blood and flesh, and gives strength--"vires præstat et augmentat carnem, generatque cruorem," says the school of Salerno. Very presumably it is such beer as this, too, of which the unnamed witty poet quoted in Percy's "Reliques" writes: nobilis ale-a Efficit heroas dignamque heroe puellam. No doubt beer has had a good many nasty things said about it. The same school of Salerno lays it down that "crassos humores nutrit cerevisia, ventrem quoque mollit et inflat." It also affirms that ebriety resulting from beer is more hurtful than that produced by wine. But, notwithstanding this, it endorses the advice given by Matthew de Gradibus, which is, to drink it in preference to wine at the beginning of, or even throughout, meals, and above all things after any great exertion. "Cerevisia vero utpote crassior, et ad concoctionem pertinacior, non tam avide rapitur: quare ab ea potus in principio prandii vel coenae utilius inchoatur. Cerevisia humores etiam orificio stomachi insidentes abluit, et sitim, quæ ex nimia vini potatione timetur, praeterea et quamlibet aliam mendosam coercet ac reprimit." To say nothing of the censure pronounced by Crato, Henry of Avranches, and Wolfram von Eschenbach--that pillar of the Roman Church, Cardinal Chigi, charitably suggests that if beer had but a little sulphur added, it would become a right infernal drink. And Moscherosch, joking on the admixture of pitch with beer, common in his time--possibly copied from a similar practice applied to wine in the days of ancient Greece--speaks of "la bière poissée qui habitue au feu de l'enfer." "Pix intrantibus" used to be a familiar superscription placed for a joke over tavern doors. Then, again, we have Luther barely qualifying the old German rhyme-- Gott machte Gutes, Böses wir: Er braute Wein, wir brauen Bier--