inest in the world, and is the
standard by which all other beers are judged. It is the poetry of beer;
it is to all other brewings what Shakespeare is to the drama; what the
Coliseum is to other antiquities. None of the beer is exported or sold;
it is all drunk on the spot, and when it gives out no other brewery can
supply a drop comparable with it. The Parisians, who have heaped every
luxury, from the poles to the tropics, in their capital of the world,
have not enough money in the Bank of France to purchase a cask of it. It
is said that Maximilian II. resolved that the best beer in the world
should be made at the royal brewery in Munich. It has never been
expected that it would yield any revenue, but merely pay its expenses.
It is now under the protection of the present King, and the ingredients
are inspected by an officer of the royal household.

For its dirt, its darkness, and its utter want of service, the Hof
Brauerei is unequalled in the world, and nowhere else can be found such
a mixed society. Entering the low-vaulted room, each one looks anxiously
about for an empty mug. These are of gray stone, containing a mass, the
price of which is seven and a half kreutzers. Spying one, he hastens to
secure it from other competitors. The first who reaches it carries it
off in triumph to the spring in the anteroom, rinses it, and presents
himself behind a queue of predecessors at the shank window, where
several pairs of hands are occupied all day long in filling mugs from
the great casks within. This accomplished, he returns to the guest room
and searches for a seat. If found, it is certainly not luxurious--a
wooden bench of pine, stained by time and continual use to a dark dirt
color, behind an ancient table. The walls and ceiling are grim with age,
and the atmosphere hazy with smoke. The scene baffles description. All
classes of society are represented. Side by side with the noble or
learned professor, one sees the poorest artisan and the common soldier.
Here and there the picturesque face of an artist is in close proximity
to a peasant, and through the smoky atmosphere one catches the gleam of
the scarlet or sky-blue cap of a German student, or the glitter of an
epaulette. The Catholic of the most ultramontane stamp is there, as well
as the Jew, the Protestant, and the freethinker. Here stands a pilgrim
from far America, armed with a Baedeker, and there an Englishman with the
inevitable Murray under his arm, too amazed o