s
quite limited, in Upper Bavaria at least; it is found only where the
influence of city-life has penetrated. Sometimes a peasant woman has a
little hid in her chest, from which she stealthily prepares and drinks a
cup when her husband is away; but it is little used. This article was
brought into Western Europe in the seventeenth century, and found beer
in possession of Germany. The monks are said to have preached against
the use of coffee, as anticipating, by the dense black smoke which arose
from burning it, the "fumes of hell." It came from Turkey, and at that
day the Turk was still the hereditary dread of all the peoples on the
middle and upper Danube. He was next thing to the Devil; and what came
direct from the former could be but recent from the latter.

Their beloved beer could not be traced so directly to an origin in the
nether world. The German tribes, as far back as history or tradition
reports them, seem to have loved this quieting beverage. Traces of their
coming together as now for banqueting purposes, under the shade of
Germany's primeval forests, are still found in history and historical
traditions. There is one fact which Americans, so accustomed to rapid
transformations of society by migration, immigration, and intermixture
of races, can scarcely comprehend, even when they know it as a fact: it
is the persistency with which national traits adhere to a people in an
old country, through generations and decades of generations and of
centuries, withstanding the shock of revolution both in government and
religion. Tacitus says of these people:--"At meals, they sit every man
upon a seat by himself and at a separate table. Arising, they proceed
armed to their business; and they go armed also to their banquets. _It
is no reproach to them to continue day and night drinking. Their drink
is fermented from barley or wheat into a certain resemblance of wine_.
Their food is simple,--wild fruits, fresh game, or coagulated milk. They
satisfy hunger without formality and without delicacies. _In regard to
thirst they do not exercise this moderation_. Indulge their appetites by
giving them all they desire, and you may conquer them by their vices not
less easily than by arms."

Viewing, then, these people of Upper Bavaria, and of Munich in
particular, in their cold, raw air,--in their supposed exposure to
typhus and typhoid fevers,--deficiency of good food,--the want of the
domestic circle as cemented in our country ove