Give us a prime good glass, so will our praise be ample, Only be 't not too scant a sample; For when on wine I must decide With mouth right full I'd have it tried. _Goethe's Faust_. So thought the German students in earlier times, and so think they still. Drinking had reached a dreadful height in the Middle Ages, and many laws were passed, but in vain, to put a check on the madness. It was the same amongst the Burschen, who carried it to a most incredible extent. At the time that those students who were the best drinkers, were most regarded amongst their fellows in the universities, a Westphalian studying in Halle, made a visit to a countryman who was studying at Jena. The Jena student, to show his friend that he understood life, immediately on the first evening, called all his companions together, and they all drank to the welcome visiter so strongly in beer and wine, that on the following morning he had hardly slept off the effects of it before twelve o'clock. Scarcely had he dressed and despatched his dinner, when he was anew conducted to the drinking-place. Thus the revel continued for eight days in succession, when he travelled back to Halle. After his return he related many strange things of the mode of life of his countrymen in Jena, and always added--"Children,--it is very curious in Jena,--there is no forenoon there." Such madness is now gone by; yet, ever and anon, there are students who might boldly challenge the gentlemen of the old school to a trial at toping, if they would rise out of their graves to it. Beer is the general beverage of the students, and as the best sorts of the same, as the Bavarian, and the formerly celebrated Heidelberg beer, are not strong, the health of the consumer, even in a long-continued course, is not injured by it, as it is in other universities, where, through the want of beer, wine and spirits are drunk. Beer, at the same time, is the cheapest liquor, and on that account is liked by the student not less than by the common man, amongst whom it is equally the custom to drink much. In one year, when the choppin (pint) of beer cost one-third of a penny, or, about half the usual price, a coachman achieved a most extraordinary feat in drinking. Some students promised to pay for a hundred choppins if he would drink it with only short intervals. He accepted the offer, and had all the hundred measures set in a row on a bench. He drank the first, walked slowly to the end of the hall and back, drank off the second, and so on till finding not another drop, he said quietly to the landlord--"So, now let me have just another choppin for my money." The students drink generally beer at their Kneips, and if this is done in the open air, a large company is accustomed to pile up the emptied jugs into a pyramid.