t a similar test of their own capacities;
and as the article has double the alcohol of the common beer, many a one
staggers a little on his homeward way who had never felt such effect
from the common form of the beverage.

There is also no small amount of wine drunk in Munich. I have not the
statistics, but the number of large houses with the sign,
"Weinhandlung," and of the smaller ones with the sign, "Weinschenck,"
and then the fact that at all the large hotels wine is mainly drunk at
dinner, furnish my data for this conclusion. In the wine-growing
districts of Bavaria beer-drinking is reduced to about one-fourth of the
Munich standard, and so we may suppose that the removal of all wine from
the capital might add one-fourth to the beer-drinking as given
above,--at least, it takes the place of one-fourth of that which would
be the aggregate of the beer-drinking.

The government has a commission for the examination of the quality of
the beer; and, indeed, aside from this, the popular taste is not a bad
test in this respect. There is an error in the lines of Prior,--

"When you with High-Dutch Herren dine,
Expect false Latin and stummed wine:
They never taste who always drink;
They always talk who never think."[C]

The most common manifestation of Bavarian beer-drinking is a perpetual
tasting, and not a pouring-down of the liquid a glass at a time. These
people seem to have the art of doing this thing so gradually and quietly
that the soothing liquor passes gently into the circulation, and
produces an effect very different from that which would result from
swallowing it a glass at a draught, enabling them to drink without
visible effect a much larger quantity in the aggregate. They practise
upon the proverb, "The still sow drinks the swill,"--a proverb which
would serve admirably the purpose of those who desire to join in the
general sarcasm expended upon Bavarian beer-drinking, since almost every
word in it seems to express so exactly some characteristic which North
Germans and others are disposed to attribute to Bavarians.

Reference was made above to the government's regulating the price of
beer. The margin allowed between the wholesale and retail price is half
a kreutzer on the mass,--that is, one-fourth of a kreutzer or one-sixth
of a cent on the glass. What a blessing, if the retail liquor-trade in
our country were reduced to such a scale of profit! This would bring
less than two dollars on one thousa