No doubt beer, having held its own so long, though much assailed, will still continue to maintain its position. There is too much of human nature in man to admit of its being effectually proscribed. "Abusus non tollit usum." The same school of Salerno which praises beer as a wholesome drink adds this wise proviso:—"Hic unicum de cervisiæ usu præceptum traditur: nempe ut modice sumatur, neque ea stomachus prægravetur vel ebrietas concilietur." Sebastian Brant writes in old German:
Eyn Narr muosz vil gesoffen han,
Eyn Wyser maesslich drincken kann.
There is great virtue in the modice sumatur. The wine-trade has passed through a similar change. Though four-bottle men have died out, the wine-trade is doing better than it did in olden days. So it will probably be with beer. However temperance advocates may regret it, it is not to be got rid of by railing. In truth it is now indeed making le tour du monde. And, unless mankind changes its character altogether, it will probably go on drinking—more or less modice—to the end of the chapter, a beverage which stands commended by so exemplary a Father of the Church as the whilom Bishop of Bath and Wells, Polydore Virgil, who pronounces it
Potus tum salubris tum jucundus.
Footnotes:
[1] Blackwood's Magazine, August, 1894.
[2] The church encloses, in addition to one of the "true" pebbles with which was stoned, says M. Bellot-Herment, the chronicler of Bar, "St Etienne, curé de Gamaliel, bourg du diocèse de Jerusalem," that boldly original sculpture from the chisel of the great Lorrain artist, Ligier Richier, whom we so undeservedly ignore, the famous "Squelette"—the mere name of which frightened Dibdin away, as he himself relates. Durival terms this sculpture "une affreuse beauté"—but "beauté" it undoubtedly is.
[3] Patriotic Frenchmen derive this name from the Latin fascinatio. But quite evidently it is a gallicised form of the German fastnacht, which in Alsace is pronounced fàsenacht, or very nearly fàsenocht; in a French mouth it would naturally become faschinottes.
[4] Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1891.