All this is scarcely surprising. We all knew it of the Germans long ago. But it is a little strange to find France once more--few people know about the first time--taking her place among beer-drinking countries and placing the _honestas chopinandi_ among the precepts of the modern decalogue. The French are good enough to explain that they do this, not for their own gratification, but as a public service, as "saviours of society," to "rendre les moeurs gambrinales plus aimables." That may be. But the fact remains, that the annual consumption of beer per head of the population in France has now risen to 21 litres (about 14 quarts), which on the top of 119 litres of wine (however light), 20 litres of cider, and 4 litres of spirits, is a respectable allowance enough. For Germany the figures are said to be--93 litres of beer, 6 of wine, and 10 of spirits--and such spirits! France brews every year more than eight millions of hectolitres of beer, and consumes considerably more. To do this, of course it must import from abroad. And very rightly too, I should say. For though French beer may no longer deserve the description given of it by the Emperor Julian, who condemned it as "smelling strongly of the goat," there is still little enough that is really good. And it is drunk out of such tiny thimbles! I suspect that there is a dodge in this. The "bocks" have grown smaller and smaller, till in some places they are mere tea-cups. But then out come the _restaurateurs_ with their old disused "bocks," now re-christened _bocks sérieux_, and charge double price. That promises to make France a real brewers' paradise. But, large glasses or small, there is something about the beer which you must first get used to. Accordingly, many of those gorgeous _brasseries_, of genuinely German type, which seem so out of place in the Paris boulevards, are supplied, not from Tantonville or Xertigny, but from Munich or Vienna, or else from Strassburg. For, of course, the attachment which Frenchmen feel for their lost provinces had a great deal to do with their new departure in the way of a liking for beer. France, as it happens, owes some reparation to Strassburg, and more particularly to its brewers. For at various times it has treated the latter most unkindly. In the first place, the Second Empire unmercifully hastened on the hour of "Bruce," making it eleven "sharp," instead of the quarter past which had been previously allowed. This threatens never to be forgotten or forgiven. In the second place, the First Republic, though it honoured hops by assigning to them, in the place of the calendar saint, St. Omer, the patronship of the 9th of September, inflicted a very grievous injury when, in the _An II._ of its era, its _tribunal révolutionnaire_ imposed a fine of 255,000 livres upon the brewing trade, as is stated in the official _Livre Bleu_, "pour les abus qu'ils ont pu se permettre sur leur comestibilité." The mulct is explained