"You have lost your party?" he said. "These are not your friends? I thought not. Be good enough to put your hand on my arm, and have no uneasiness." Then he turned to the scapegrace lads, who took different attitudes at his interference, some ready to pick a quarrel, some inclined for a more prudent retreat. "Come, young sirs," he said severely, "begone and get you home to your beds. Such youngsters cannot be trusted out of the nursery without mischief. As the friend of this lady I owe each of you a horsewhipping, but I will let you off on account of your tender years. When you have slept on this matter, I trust, for the sake of the men you may one day be come, that you will have the grace to feel ashamed of your conduct." No other form of treatment could have punished the delinquents so keenly. Afraid of such terrible words being overheard, as addressed to them, they slunk away; one or two hanging their heads, the rest with a faint attempt at bluster and swagger. After this was over and they had finally disappeared, Sir Archie and Hester passed half an hour on the staircase, watching in vain for a glimpse of any member of Lady Humphrey's party. At the end of that time Sir Archie became uneasy; looked at his watch, and grew more uneasy still. He had pressing business of his own on hand, important as life and death, yet how could he desert this trembling girl, whom he had volunteered to protect? At last he said: "I fear it is useless our waiting here longer. Strange as it may appear, I think your friends must have left the place without you. If you will tell me your address, I will bring you home myself without further delay." "Oh!" said Hester, with a new dismay; "but it is such a distance-such a very long distance all the way to Hampton Court Palace." "Hampton Court Palace!" repeated Sir Archie. "Ah! that is far, that is too far, indeed." I could not send you on so long a journey in a hired carriage alone. I have not a moment to lose for my own part, and I am going to leave you in the only place of safety I can think of. To-morrow I will call to see you, and we will contrive to send a message to your friends." The carriage at this moment turned into an old-fashioned square, with a dusty-looking garden in the centre, and tufts of grass growing up here and there between the paving stones. It stopped before a tall, wide, agedlooking house, with a gateway and windows which suggested that the house might have once been a nobleman's dwelling, perhaps in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. A great lantern hung before the entrance, whose flame still burned feebly in the grey daylight. Sir Archie, who had been scribbling in his pocket-book on his knee, sprang out of the coach, and pulled the heavy handle of a bell, which answered immediately with a great voice, that, in the utter silence of this place, they could hear making its sudden startling music among the passages and chambers within. Sir Archie then assisted Hester from the coach, led her to the stillclosed door under the shadow of a great black arch, and placed a written leaf of paper, unfolded, in her hand. "There may be yet some moments' delay about the opening of the door," he said, "and I have not one to spare. But you need not have a shadow of fear. You are safe to gain admittance here,” he added, with a latent smile about his eyes and lips as he looked down at her standing with her passport in her hand, full of faith" as safe to gain admittance, as if you were waiting at the gate of heaven itself." And then Sir Archie returned to his coach, and gave a fresh instruction to the driver. A moment longer he waited to hear the first bolt withdrawn behind the massive door, and to let his eye dwell with infinite approval on the slim white strip of a figure, the pale rim of a check, the little red hood half huddled over the loose golden hair. Truly Sir Archie had the eye of an artist, since, even in a moment like this, he could make pictures for himself out of The hands of his watch were wearing towards a masquerading girl, a patch of dawn-streaked four, and at half-past that hour it was required sky, and an old black archway with its lantern. of him to be present in a very different place A man who had seen all the wonderful sights of from this, and engaged upon far other affairs the world ought to have been less easily charmed than the relief of distressed damsels. Whilst with such simple materials. Yet, long years considering what there was that could be done later, it was found that this quaint bit of painthe brought Hester down the lower stair, ing in the deserted old square had held its own into the hall below, into the open air; and in his memory, through light and through then without further pause he hailed a waiting shade, against all the finer experiences of his vehicle, placed Hester within it, gave instruc- educated eyes. tions to the driver, and took his place in the coach at her side. Meanwhile, Hester, standing on the grassgrown pavement, under the expiring lamp, and As they drove along he explained himself. with the daylight brightening all round her, "When you reflect upon this adventure to-read the words written on the slip of paper in morrow," he said, "you will not blame me, I her hand: hope, for not consulting your wishes more than I have done. You must excuse me also if I have been brusque or stern. I am doing the best I can for you. It would be impossible for me to drive with you to Hampton Court to-night, and "Dear Mary. [So ran the pencil marks.] Take the bearer in, and be kind to her. She is a young lady who has been parted from her friends by accident, through no fault of hers. I know nothing of her father. She must, of course, communicate with her friends immediately. I will call to-morrow to see you, and we can talk about this, as well as many other matters. "With kind love, your brother, "ARCHIE MUNRO." "Archie Munro !" cried Hester, aloud, in her amazement, and turned her head quickly over her shoulder to look after the retreating coach. It just passed out of sight, the sound of the wheels died away, and a large old rook, on a morning excursion far from his home in one of the parks, alighted almost at her feet, and hopped round and round her. But at the same moment the last of the bolts was withdrawn inside the queer old dingy house, the faint flame of the lamp was suddenly quenched overhead, and the great black door shuddered, groaned, and swung back upon its hinges. THE JUG OF ALE. As I was sitting one afternoon I tramp and tramp though the gallows be near. This song is very unjustly confounded by some commentators with Mr. Lover's old Irish song, LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE. The Jug of Punch. As to the lines in it, which A JUG OF ALE. CLEAR and golden as sherry; creaming up as white as swans' down, in the long taper glass; fresh, bright, sparkling; with the pleasant aroma of the Kentish hop pervading the draught, gratefully nourishing and gently exhilarating -that is what a glass of good English ale should be-ale that Autolycus, a great judge on such matters, declared stoutly, as he went singing along the road to the shepherd's cottage, was "a dish for a king." We can fancy the artful rascal, with oblique eyes and greasy cap with broken feather, sitting at the ale bench outside the Peal of Bells, alefellow well met, with Christopher Sly, whose illustrious family came in with "Richard Conqueror." Sly, being thirsty and more dry even than usual, has just called for a "pot o' small ale." He is telling Autolycus of his descent from old Sly of Burton Heath, and has also informed him that he (Christopher) was by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear herd, and now, by recent profession, a tinker. Fourteen-pence is the score for sheer ale chalked against him by the fat ale wife of Wincot. Picture the scene at an Ostade alehouse. The sunset is red on the old faded sign, and on the dusty waggon at the door, red on the vine-leaves over the porch, red on the cups on the ale bench. It makes the face of Autolycus to glow with the cunning of a Mercury, and Sly's Bardolphian countenance to blaze again, as if he were peeping in at a furnace door. The fat Falstaff of a landlord breaks out laughing over the red curtain of the lattice window; the fat landlady and the buxom servant roar from the upper window, at the jokes of the two merry guests. The waggoner and the ostler and the harvestmen laugh too, while a great bear of a shepherd's dog barks with delight, as Autolycus clears his pipes and sings his favourite song of open somewhat resemble those in The Winter's Tale, I cannot eat but little meat, That fine old song of The Ex-ale-tation of Ale, draws one of the earliest distinctions between beer and ale: a distinction still regarded in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire and Staffordshire, where ale is the common liquor and beer is the gentleman. The writer observes quaintly: But now, as they say, beer bears it away, But all good men betake them to a pot of good Too many, I wis, with their deaths proved this, And found his beer far more bitter than ale. This is one of the earliest denunciations of the newly invented drink, flavoured with the Flemish hop, introduced in Henry the Eighth's time, and denounced at first by the physicians as unwholesome. The old English ale must have been fresh and creamy, like that of the Bavarians now. Heresy and hops, according to the men of the old faith, came in together. Where the vine would not grow, the barley rose, and shook its ears to soothe and solace man. The Egyptians drank their beer hundreds of centuries ago, and they drink it now. It is, however, what Beaumont would have called "a muddy drench," tasting too much of earth, and the malt retaining a scurvy touch of the dull hand that sowed it. Warriors under the feathery palms of Phile, with the asps of Egypt on their helmets, and the vulture wings for their crests, quaffed that horrible beer. The Nile boatmen give it you still. It is whitish, thick, and sour, like the worst Belgian brew. At the foot of the Pyramids, with their backs to the hot stone blocks, the warriors of the Pharaohs drank that execrable tap; and with the bliss of ignorance no doubt discussed the various merits of the Barclay and Perkinses of Thebes and Edfou. That was the poor but improvable beverage which Joseph and his brethren quaffed, and which supported the Israelites at their toilsome tasks in those brickfields whose fires have long gone out. It must have been tossed off in those tremendous Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, as the swarthy workmen rested after colouring their fourteenth room of hieroglyphics, and sat down to sup snugly upon onions just within the keen black shadow of the scorching doorway hewn square in the rock, waiting till the high priest himself came down at sunset, with all his fan-bearers, and harpers, and spearmen, to see the great alabaster sarcophagus fashioning for the king soon to be gathered to his fathers by natural causes and the help of a purple cushion or two. It was "beer" ("boozy" they call it now) that inspired the Egyptians when they tore pellmell over the desert after the Israelites; beer that led them on to battle with the Romans, to keep the crown on Cleopatra's head; beer that-but, perhaps, as it was beer that led them to do all the good things they did, and all the evil, we may refer our readers for the rest of their deeds to Egyptian history. There is no doubt that all the Scythian and Tartaric races brought from those great grassy plains, where they had tended their miles of sheep, bags of seeds from the huge tracts of corn they had raised, and also the knowledge how to brew from it a strong water, good for raising the spirits after battle, good after long rides of flight or pursuit, good to make Tartar men fierce and bold, but apt too, in over doses, to make Tartar men cruel, raving, bloodthirsty and mad. Pliny speaks of this corn wine as common in Gaul, Spain, and, indeed, all through the west of Europe. Pliny praises the Spaniards for making this beer so that it could be kept good a long time, and then appends his moral: "So exquisite is the art of mankind in gratifying their vicious appetites that they have thus invented a method to make even water itself intoxicating." Or does it prove only that nature has in every country provided a stimulus, harmless in moderation, which shall refresh weary nature, lessen exhaustion, and repair the losses produced by excitement, labour, and anxiety? Isidore, describing the beverage of the ancient Britons, says: "The grain is steeped in water and made to germinate, by which its spirits are excited and set at liberty; it is then dried and ground; after which it is infused in a certain quantity of water, which, being fermented, becomes a pleasant, warming, strengthening, and intoxicating liquor." Our rude forefathers made beer of wheat, oats, and millet. The Picts, we believe, made a drink of heather, the secret of which perished in a general engagement which swept away the last of the race. At least, Sir Walter, who knew everything about the land of the heather, used to relate some such tradition with much gusto. Perhaps, after all, the Pict drink was only another form of whisky, and the alchemists did not discover aqua vitæ, and mistake it for the Elixir of Life, as generally reported, after all. The Welsh, who fought against Edward and his mailed men, and went cheerfully to death, led by three thousand drunken harpers, playing madly The Men of Harlech, and Of a Noble Race was Shenkin, and those bare-legged sinewy Scotch who wrestled with the enemies of Bruce, Wallace, and the Douglas, had two kinds of ale: common ale and spiced ale. One of their old laws specifies : "If a farmer have no mead he shall pay two casks of spiced ale, or four casks of common ale, for one cask of mead." Wine was no doubt slow in reaching Wales, the purple casks of Gascon and Burgundian wine having to pass by too many a Norman gate to reach Wales often safely, or without paying heavy toll. Fed on bad beer, no wonder the Welshmen went down before the charge of the Norman knights. Is beer as good as it used to be? Was it always the custom, when hops were dear, to add liquorice and black resin to give flavour, tone, and colour? Did molasses, raw grain, and sugar, often take the place of malt? Were brewers' chemists always as respectable, honest, aboveboard, and ingenious, as they now are? If gentian, bitter wort root, marsh trefoil, and quassia, were used formerly instead of hops, we did not know it, and were therefore happy. We used to feel a kind of warmth after a draught of good ale, and never knew that it was derived from capsicum; or that the solid crest of froth came from the stimulating influence of salts of steel and copperas. Is it possible that the beer we used to quaff at Putney, after boating, and thought nectar, was made from flown malt, cocculus indicus, the bitter bean of St. Ignatius, tobacco, or the poisonous nux vomica? That sweet flavour was honey, that refreshing headyness carraway and coriander seeds, that effervescence jalap, that inde scribable something we used to fondly term a high rapid fermentation, which carries down "the strawberry flavour," was composed of the density without diminishing the high ginger, grains of paradise, orange-peel, long flavour drawn from the materials. The rapid pepper, opium, hartshorn shavings, marble process also suits the brown malt, which being dust, egg-shells, and oyster-shells (to check less dense than that from pale, cannot support acidity), sub-carbonate of soda, magnesia, and a vigorous fermentation, and the yeast being potassa. Such was the liquor prepared for more rapidly thrown off, leaves the beer clear us, and called in brewers' advertisements, "a and durable." healthy, bright, exhilarating ale, gently stimulating the digestive organs of the dyspeptic and gratefully nourishing the strength of the robust." Porter was invented in the year 1731, by a London brewer, named Harwood, who combined the flavours of "half-and-half," or "three threads," as it was then called, in a beverage which he was pleased to call "entire butt." The new combination took, in the city, among the "porters," and from its new patrons it obtained its name. Those brawny men with knots, all day resting their broad backs against the church walls, or on the tramp between Lombard-street and the Docks, patronised the brown refreshing drink, and found gave them fresh heart to endure the curse of Cain. The demagogues of the crowd, the hard hitters from the shoulder, led the rabble to the same brown fountain; they too drank, were cheered, and smiled a gracious approval. The fan-tailed hats and wearers of obscure white stockings who took an interest in coals and the Newcastle trade on the shore of the Thames, very soon gave in their vote also, and a plumper was for the same black-brown liquid, so gently acid, so harmless, so invigorating. it But there are still vexatious antiquarians who declare that the honest liquor (honest at least in its youth) never derived its name from the brawny porters of London, but, on the contrary, derived it from Harwood's practice of having his new beverage portered or carried round to his customers' areas, in shining pewter pots in long covered racks; his pot-boys shouting "porter," to announce their auspicious arrival, as they rat-tat-tatted at the door. More than a century this brown, mantling liquor-thin, slightly watery, but pleasant and heartening has gone frothing up in the pewter pots of London; and may it go frothing up for ever! Good porter should have fulness, potency, and flavour; it should not be thin and vinous, like good ale; for it is of humbler origin, has no blue blood in its veins, and is only a sort of cousin-german of that fat, merry, laughing knight, old Sir John Barleycorn. Good porter should be made from black-scorched malt, made from good sound barley, of a uniform chocolate colour. The burnt sugar contained in the scorched malt and the mucilage, imparts the odour to porter, and gives it its fine flavour and tenacity. The gluten in the wort is, however, destroyed by too long boiling. An eminent brewer says, "the general method of fermenting porter differs from the cool and gradual process so essential to preserve the flavour and richness of ale. Porter owes much of its tart and astringent flavour to One misfortune of porter is, that brewers often scorch their damaged malt, and so disguised use it for porter making. We much regret that we are unable to give the exact date of the introduction of that fat potent liquid, stout. Still we can go pretty near the bull's eye, if we do not exactly touch its centre. As Mr. Kirkman, the biographer of Macklin, who died in 1797, at the age of one hundred and seven, particularly records the fact, that his hero drank only a sort of beer called "stout"-it was evidently not long instituted in 1767. Kirkman says: "It had been bis constant rule for a period of thirty years or upwards to visit a publichouse called the Antelope, in White Hartyard, Covent Garden, where his usual beverage was a pint of beer, called stout, which was made hot and sweetened with moist sugar almost to a syrup. This, he said, balmed his stomach and kept him from having any inward pains." Pale ale originally manufactured for India alone-has been an universal beverage for more than twenty years. It has more hops than malt in it, and was at first derided by stout drinkers, as a nauseous, insipid medicine. Tonic it might be, but more fit for people with no livers than for your good livers and bons camarades. Perhaps, however, even then, the busy age was growing more dyspeptic, for it soon woke up as it were from its tipsy dream of the miserable three-bottle days, and like Sly, stretched, yawned, and called for a pot of the smallest ale. The doctors, always rather valetudinarian in their notions, from being so shut up with invalids, were in raptures at the pleasant new tonic. The new medicine was pronounced to be a cordial, warm, aperitive, digestive, diuretic, stomachic, and sudorific. It was an antispasmodic-its aromatic bitter was to restore the depraved appetite, and correct unwholesome nutriment, to promote digestion, and increase the nutritive value of all food. The hops used for this light Indian beer, are of the dryest and lightest possible colour. The Farnhams, and Goldings, or the very best East Kents, are to be preferred. The hops were the chief ingredient, the brewers said, and they were everything. The timid and not unnatural question put by the public was—If so little malt is wanted for this new beer, we suppose it is going to be very cheap-say a penny a glass? Not it; it rose to twopence the half pint, fourpence the pint, eightpence the quart, Heaven knows what the cask!-just as if it were the strongest and most stalwart beer possible. There was no appeal; the trade persisted; and the public-poor patient public-sufferance is the badge of all their partially made will dip obliquely in angles of tribe"-had to fall prostrate, as usual, at the feet of Monopoly. The age of beer is another question. Do we get our beer as old as it used to be? Common beer, brewed and vatted entire in the months of March and April, can be drunk the next spring. Beer brewed in October may need two seasons to bring it into condition; but then it is of a fine lasting quality. The alcohol, which is the strength and preservative essence of beer, will be in that October infusion, and also carbonic acid gas enough to give it pungency and brilliancy, and arm it against putrefying fermentation. It will not be ropy; it will sparkle clear in the glass; it will shine like amber; it will do a man good. But we are, we fear, fallen on degenerate days. Who hears now, as in the brave old times (as far as beer goes), when, on the birth of an heir to the old manor house, a tun of strong steadfast beer was instantly prepared from the richest malt, and the rarest nosegay of Canterbury hops? No cost, or time, or, labour was spared in boiling the worts and locking it safely in the great Falstaff of an oak hogshead. There, it strengthened and strengthened and warmed and nestled, year after year, while the child began to walk, then to ride, then to slay the deer and hunt the fox, then to fight and woo, and walk in cap and gown, and, finally, come of age; and then at last, out to the castle green, the faithful tun was hauled from its dark abode and solemnly tapped; the young heir drinking his father's and mother's health in the first glass, and his tenantry's in the second; then came the dance round the Maypole, and the junketting, and the merriest feast at which a roast ox was ever devoured. That was something like ale-ale twenty-one years old-ale of worship -ale of experience; and Sly and Autolycus would come lurking about the edge of the festivity for their quiet share, you may depend upon it. Of hops, the best are the Farnham, and those from round Canterbury. The Worcesters are mild and pleasant flavoured, the North Clays (Northamptonshire) rank, and chiefly used for strong store beer. Good hops are best at two months old. The Farnhams are most suitable for London ales and their imitations; the darker and more astringent Kents for store beer and porter. No chemical or vegetable bitter has yet been discovered to supersede the warm, stomachic, aromatic, and cheering bitter of the hop. The best pure malt is light; but if the cockspur" or shoot appear, it will turn poor and weas. It should be of equal colour and uniform size; hard and flinty malt is bad. It should easily bruise into a sweet white flour; the skin should be thin, the meal sweet and rich to the taste. An eminent brewer says: "The test in common use is to put a handful of malt into a glass of cold water; the flints or unmalted grain will sink to the bottom; those depression corresponding to their imperfection; while the thoroughly malted seeds will swim and float for several hours before they absorb sufficient water to precipitate them. Experience will, however, enable the eye, the teeth, and the palate to determine with some accuracy the quality of malt, though the ultimate and best test of productiveness is the saccharometer." Beer contains what barley contains, or rather what malt (barley chemically treated) contains, . e., starch, sugar, farina, mucilage, gluten, bitter and extractive. Malting is, in fact, one long chemical process of digestion, succeeding three months sweating in the stack that the barley has previously undergone. It is to feed the young plant that nature reserves all the choicest saccharine juices of the seed. The maltster, therefore, wise and wily, contrives a spurious growth of the plant, in order to obtain these precious juices, and to turn all its starches into sugar. It is first steeped in water for from forty to sixty-eight hours. It is then drained and thrown into a couch to ferment. The heat is then checked, and germination encouraged after the sixth day. The grain then begins to swell, heat, and decompose, as it would in the moist earth, the radicle shoots forth, the acrospire swells and grows beneath the husk, and in a few days the farinaceous matter round the root becomes friable and sweet. Germinisation and saccharisation continue till about the fourteenth day, when the moisture decreases, and the particles turn to meal. That is the moment the ever watchful and wily maltster chooses. To check waste and preserve the sweetness, he dries the grain in a kiln, and evaporates it to dryness. The malt is sweet and mucilaginous, but if the germination had continued, all the starch would have turned into sugar, and passed into the juices of the young plant for whose necessities it was originally intended. The use of beer has very much increased of late years in Paris. In 1805, a writer in the Almanac des Gourmands says: "At this moment there are only two places in Paris where you are perfectly sure of getting good beer, un faiencier de la rue de l'Arbre Sec, et dans le petit café Flamand de la rue Saint Louis Saint Honoré." The French at this time had strange, timid, heretical, notions about beer. They thought it chilled the stomach and retarded digestion. They considered white beer as less nutritious than red, but lighter and more wholesome; they also insisted on a coup de milieu, or middle dinner dram, to correct the heaviness and coldness of the new beverage. Yet even at this time the number of brewers in Paris had wonderfully increased since the Revolution. One of the chief of these was M. Santerre de la Fontinelle, in the Rue Neuve de Berry. He was the brother of that "General Frothy" (Mousseux), as he was wittily called by the Parisian gamins, who bade his drums beat louder to drown the remonstrances of |