by laying it down that "Vinum est donatio Dei, cerevisia traditio humana." And he went so far as to pronounce the leading brewer of his time "Pestis Germaniae." But this same Luther was himself a zealous beer-toper. He drank beer, it is on record, when plotting the Reformation with Melanchthon at Torgau. He called for _Bierseidel_ when Carlstadt came to the "Bear" at Jena to discuss with him the subject of consubstantiation. And the two divines used their pewters very freely by way of accentuating their theological arguments, and, towards the close of the sitting, even in substitution of them. Luther records with satisfaction, in his "Table Talk," that many presents reached him from France, Prussia, and Russia, of "wormwood-beer." And at Worms, where he was pleading the cause of the reformed faith before a hostile Diet, the one ray of comfort which pierced through the gloom of his imprisonment was the arrival, particularly mentioned in his letters, of a small cask of "Eimbeck" beer from one of the friendly princes. Like our modern M.P.'s annually exercised about the matter, the German reformer had a fervent zeal for the "purity of beer"--so fervent, that he actually threatened adulterating brewers with Divine wrath. He wrote these lines: Am jüngsten Tage wird geschaut Was jeder für ein Bier gebraut. On the other hand, Cardinal Chigi's Roman anathema is more than neutralised by any number of benedictions, expressed or implied, from holy men of his Church. There are the regulations of St. Louis, of St. Hildegardis, the enlisted interest of the Bishops of Cologne, Utrecht, and Liége, the patron-saintship of St. Amandus, St. Leonard, St. Adrian, and the Irish St. Florentius, and, moreover, the very close connection which from time immemorial monks and religious houses have maintained with brewing. In olden days they were the brewers _par excellence_. In Lorraine our English Benedictines of Dieulouard, who maintained themselves in their monastery near Pont-à-Mousson down to the time of the Revolution, long possessed an absolute monopoly of brewing, and were famed for their produce. And M. Reiber will have it that there are still in Germany, at the present day, _des congrégations de moines brasseurs_. Then there is St. Chrodegang, a near relative of Charlemagne, the great reformer of monastic orders, who particularly directed--and the rule is still observed--that monks should be allowed the option of either beer or wine. And sensible monks, a communicative Carthusian confided to me the other day, prefer good beer any day to bad wine. If, in face of all this, neither Romanists nor Protestants can say anything against beer, much less are Mussulmans in a position to do so. For Mahomet actually, though he expressly forbids wine, never says a word in prohibition of beer--thus leaving a convenient loophole to thirsty Mahommedans, of which French writers tell us that bibulous Algerians eagerly avail themselves.