An ingenious correspondent of mine has lately been visiting the Brewers' Exhibition, and has come away from it full of Cider. I mean "full" in the intellectual rather than the physical sense--full of the subject, though unversed in the beverage. He reminds me that Charles Lamb had his catalogue of "Books which are no books--_biblia a-biblia_," among which he reckoned Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket-books, Draughtboards bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large, and Paley's Moral Philosophy. My correspondent suggests that, in a like spirit, a Brewer must have his catalogue of Drinks which are no drinks--_pota a-pota_--and that among them, if only the secret thoughts of his heart were known, he must reckon Cider. Yet at the Brewers' Exhibition there was a Literature of Cider, and that innocent-sounding beverage was quoted at a price per bottle at which Claret is not ashamed to be sold. That the men of Malt and Hops should thus officially recognize the existence of fermented apple-juice strikes my friend as an Economy of Truth; a suppression, or at least an evasion, of a deep-seated and absolute belief. They cannot really regard Cider as a drink, and yet they give it a place alongside that manly draught which has made old England what she is. I, on the other hand, who always like to regard the actions of my fellow-men in the most favourable light, prefer to think that the Brewers have been employing some portion of that enforced leisure, which the decay of their industry must have brought, in studying English literature, and that they have thus been made acquainted with the name and fame of Cider. _Biblia a-biblia_ set me thinking of Lamb, and when once one begins recalling "Elia" one drifts along, in a kind of waking reverie, from one pleasant fantasy to another. _Biblia a-biblia_ led me on to "Dream Children," and Dream Children to Dream Riddles--a reverie of my own childhood, when we used to ask one another a pleasing conundrum which played prettily on _In Cider_ and _Inside her_. But it made light of an illustrious name and had better be forgotten. Few, I fear, are the readers of John Philips, but, if such there be, they will no doubt recall the only poem which, as far as I know, has ever been devoted to the praise of Apple-wine. Philips was a patriotic son of Herefordshire, and in Hereford Cathedral he lies buried under bunches of marble apples which commemorate his poetical achievement:-- "What soil the apple loves, what care is due To Orchats, timeliest when to press the fruits, Thy gift, Pomona! in Miltonian verse, Adventurous, I presume to sing; of verse Nor skill'd nor studious; but my native soil Invites me, and the theme as yet unsung."