The use of malt by brewers is of no little importance to English grain-growers, and is rightly looked upon by many as of national concern. Considerable misconception, however, may exist on this point, for the brewing trade generally, say that of late years English barley, from climatic or other causes, has not been found altogether suitable for brewing purposes, rendering an admixture of foreign grain necessary. All we can do is to express a hope that the brewers are somewhat mistaken in their estimate of English barley; but that if they are correct, England may in future years be accorded its due share of sunshine—that blessing of which Dame Nature has been somewhat niggardly of late, so that malt made from English grain alone, may again fill our mash-tuns. {178} A distinction between beers arises, in name at least, from the vessels in which they are contained. We have beer in casks and beer in bottles. Fuller, in his _Worthies of England_, ascribes the invention of bottled beer to Alexander Newell, Dean of St. Paul’s and a master of Westminster School in the reign of Queen Mary. The Dean was a devoted angler. “But,” says old Fuller, “whilst Newell was catching of fishes, Bishop Bonner was catching of Newell, and would certainly have sent him to the shambles, had not a good London merchant conveyed him away upon the seas.” Newell was engaged in his favourite pursuit on the banks of the Thames, when such pressing notice of his danger reached him, that he was obliged to take immediate flight. On his return to England, after Mary’s death, he remembered, when resuming his old amusement, that on the day of his flight he had left his simple repast, the liquor of which consisted of a bottle of beer, in a safe place in the river bank; there he sought it, and, as the quaint language of Fuller informs us, he “found it no bottle, but a gun, such the sound at the opening thereof; and this is believed (casualty is the mother of more invention than industry) the original of bottled ale in England.” If this be the true origin of bottled ale, the use of it must have spread rapidly, for we find it mentioned in many Elizabethan writers. In Ben Jonson’s _Bartholomew fair_, Ursula calls to the drawer to bring “A Bottle of Ale, to quench me, rascal,” and many other quotations could be given proving its use in those days. Of course ale must have been carried in bottles long before Newell’s time, almost as early, indeed, as bottles came into use, but the bottled ale referred to is that which has been so long in bottle as to have acquired a peculiar and delicious flavour combined with a certain briskness not found in draught ale.