f his fatherland, shall chant in
rhyme the virtues of his national drink. Yet though its merit has
inspired neither of the sister graces, poetry and song, to strike the
lyre in its honor, it has had, none the less, an important mission to
perform. To its plebeian sister beer, as a healthful beverage, wine must
yield the palm. As a common drink, suited to human nature's daily need,
it has never been surpassed. If it has nerved no hand to deeds of
daring, or struck the scintillating sparks of genius from the human
brain, it has added immensely to the health, long life, and happiness of
many nations, and is destined to still greater triumphs, as life becomes
studied more from a hygienic standpoint.

Beer is believed to have been invented by the Egyptians, and is of
almost universal use; the zone of the cereals being more extended than
that of the grape. Greek writers before Christ mention a drink composed
of barley, under the name of _zythos_. This beverage was not unknown to
the Romans, and we find it first mentioned by the historian Tacitus. By
the nations of the West it was regarded as a nourishing drink for poor
people. They prepared it from honey and wheat. Among the ancient Germans
and Scandinavians, however, beer was in former times the national
beverage, and was prepared from barley, wheat, or oats, with the
addition of oak bark, and later of hops.

The ancients put bitter herbs in beer, and the present use of hops is in
imitation. Modern beer was born at the time of Charlemagne, an epoch at
which hops were first cultivated. The earliest writing in which one
finds mention of hops as an aroma to beer is in a parchment of St.
Hildegarde, abbess of the convent of St. Rupert, at Bingen on the Rhine.
The art of fabricating beer remained for a long time a privilege of
convents. The priests drank Pater's beer, while the lighter or convent
beer was used by the laity. Although beer has been manufactured of all
the cereals, barley only can be called its true and legitimate father.

Bavaria and Franconia were already in the fourteenth century celebrated
for their excellent beer, and the German cities, of which each one soon
had its own brewery, vied with their predecessors. In the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries the Upper and Lower Saxony breweries became well
known. The Braunschweiger, Einbeker, Goettinger, Bremer, and Hamburger
beer, as well as the breweries of the cities of Wuerzen, Zwickau, Torgau,
Merseburg, and Gosl