like human beings, and for several generations there was no death in the world. Up to this time heaven has been ever since separated from earth. Yet their mutual love still continues; and when earth's sighs rise to him from the wooded mountains and valleys, men call them mists; and heaven, as he mourns through the long night, drops frequent tears upon her bosom, and men, seeing them, call them dewdrops. Such is the New Zealand Book of Genesis. A barbarous allegory it is, with little or no coherence, still it contains dim shadows of truth. They have retained some memory of the first pair of human beings, and it is probable that some tradition of the Deluge may be concealed in the story of the anger of the storm giant. But much more curious and amusing than this are the half-mythological legends of the man who caught the sun with a noose, and who fished up the house of one of the sea gods. Of the wonderful deeds of Mani and Tawhaki we may have more to say in a future number. THE TWO FACES. BEAUTY and I struck hands and swore Aught that she made not bright for me. To brooding passion's child, Spake of false love, cold shame, and death. Through a grey world, alone with grief, Like dawn from forth the shadows. Stern Renewed, joy-rapt; for I might see HOPS AND BEER. IT is sad that it should be so, but a profound study of the beverages of the ancients, of the people who flourished, so far as it was possible to flourish, in the dark ages, the middle ages, and other glowing but uncomfortable epochs of the good old times, convinces the careful student that his revered and remote ancestors had nothing fit to drink. The red wine which the "knights drank through the helmet barred "a feat the writer would like to see done, by-the-way-was poor stuff, acid as vinegar, and rough as a file. The sweety, sulphurous, pitchy-tasting wines of the classic world would find no purchasers today. Hock was badly and clumsily made till within the last two hundred years; champagne was only invented in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth; and beer, down to a late date, was made almost entirely without hops. Beer, of a sort, appears to have been a favourite beverage in very remote times. The Egyptians, in the intervals of pyramid-building and mummypreserving, solaced themselves with mighty draughts of beer. The ancient Armenians used a fermented drink made from barley; the Galatians had their "zythus," a similar preparation; Spain and Britain drank beer made from wheat. All these were very mean drinks," like the barley and millet beers still drunk among the uncivilised nations to whom Bass and Guinness are unknown. It was reserved for the Teutonic mind to make that great step in advance, which separates modern from ancient and barbarous beer. The Germans -the "invicti Germani”—had discovered the art of converting barley into malt, rejoiced in genuine beer, and, as a natural consequence, made short work of Varus The process of malting is simple along with it; so that all the portions of the grain which the acrospire has not reached are still in their starchy state, while all those parts opposite the acrospire have their starch converted into dextrine and grape sugar. This process having been carried as far as is consistent with safety, the final act of the maltster is to arrest further germination, and dry the grain for storing. This drying is performed in a kiln, and requires considerable nicety. The malt is at first exposed to a temperature of one hundred degrees; but when the moisture is nearly expelled, the heat is raised to one hundred and sixty-five degrees, and is kept at that level until the grain has acquired the proper shade of colour, for there are several malts known in commerce-pale malt, amber malt, brown malt, blown malt, and black or porter malt. Drying completed, the radicles, called "cornings" or "cummings," are broken off, and sifted from the malt. Black or porter malt-the legal colouringmatter used in porter brewing-is simply malt roasted in a cylinder of perforated iron over a fire, like coffee, till the required colour be given. By some rude process, analogous to that described, the ancient Teuton produced the material for his beer; but whether he used hops in it cannot be ascertained. To the Romans the hop-bine was well known, but simply as a garden vegetable. The noble Roman ate the young, tender shoots of the hop as we eat asparagus, and his example is followed to this day by the country folk of England and of all the beer countries of Europe-including the writer, who can confidently recommend a dish of "hop-tops," as they are called in his neighbourhood, to those readers of ALL THE YEAR ROUND who are sighing for a new vegetable to experiment upon. Only the very young shoots should be eaten, and they should, after being boiled, be served, either with melted butter, a little gravy, or the plain salad dressing composed of oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt. A great recommendation of this agreeable vegetable is that it is not only wholesome and pleasant to eat, but highly ornamental into the bargain. No natural object can be more beautiful than a hop-bine, especially when running over a hedge as it listeth. An American writer describes a curious meal enjoyed by him in Bavaria. "The only drink was beer, while a good part of the food was the materials of which beer is made-barley boiled, and served as a vege table, and the young sprouts of the hop, which seemed to be regarded as one of the delicacies of the spring season." There is an old rhyme embodying the tradition that "hops and turkeys, carp and beer, came into England all in one year;" but this tradition is-like other traditions. Hop gardens existed in France and Germany in the eighth and ninth centuries, and there is little doubt that the plant which grows wild all over Europe was cultivated in England long before the turkey-an American bird, by-the-waycame hither. It is, however, evident that the hop was rather prized for its medicinal properties, than as an ordinary ingredient in beer. In an English manuscript, written in the middle of the eleventh century, it is said of the hop that its good qualities are such that men put it in their usual drinks; and St. Hildegard, a century later, states that the hop is added to beverages, partly for its wholesome bitterness, and partly because it makes them keep. Hops for brewing were among the produce which the tenants of the abbey of St. Germain, in Paris, had to furnish to the monastery in the beginning of the ninth century; yet in the middle of the fourteenth century, beer, without such addition, was still brewed in Paris. It would seem that brewers of the middle ages, like some of their descendants, were staunch conservatives, detesting innovations. The good qualities of hops were known, but their use was furiously denounced. In 1425-26 an information was laid against a person for putting into beer "an unwholesome weed called an hopp;" and in the same reign of Henry the Sixth, Parliament was petitioned against "that wicked weed called hops." In the regulations for the household of Henry the Eighth (1530-31), there is an injunction that the brewer is "not to put any hops or brimstone into the ale;" while in the very same year hundreds of pounds of Flemish hops were purchased for the use of the family of L'Estrange of Hunstanton. For many years after this hops were by no means regarded as an essential in brewing. Gerarde, who died in 1607, speaks of them as used "to season" beer or ale, and explains that notwithstanding their manifold virtues, they "rather make it a physical drinke to keepe the body in health, than an ordinary drinke for the quenching of our thirst.' In fact vested interests were long opposed to the general use of the hop; and there is no doubt that the dealers in ground ivy-otherwise ale-hoof in alecost, sweet gale, and sage, fought hard against the "weed" which ultimately drove their wares out of the market. At the present moment the hop-crop is one of the most valuable and precarious of agricultural ventures. A little too much wet weather or the ravages of the hop-fly may cause almost ruinous loss. England has now about sixty-three thousand acres of hop-garden, about two-thirds of which are in the county of Kent, the remainder being scattered over Herefordshire, Hampshire, Worcestershire, and Surrey. În Continental Europe, hops are most largely produced in Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Belgium, and France, but in each on a smaller scale than in England. Notwithstanding the extensive production of this country, a large importation of hops takes place annually from the Continent and the United States-the balance between the exports and imports being over a hundred thousand hundred-weight. Hop-culture demands infinite pains and lavish expenditure. There is a world of setting, and tying, and poling to be gone through, before the ticklish crop can be brought to that stage at which a hop-ground excels in beauty all the vineyards in the world. When the hops are ripe for gathering, the rich county of Kent is all at once overrun by an army of strange beings, of uncouth speech and attire. These are the "hop-pickers," who appear to spring out of the earth as the crop puts on a rich golden hue. For a space there is great activity throughout the sunny county-for, once ripe, the hops must be gathered, picked, dried in the kiln, and pressed into bags or "pockets," as they are called, with all reasonable dispatch. When the crop is safely garnered, the gardens are dismal places indeed, with their pyramids of bare poles showing no vestige of their graceful burden. To sell his hops to the best advantage, the cultivator as a rule consigns them to a hopfactor, who acts strictly as his agent, and sells at a fixed rate of commission to the merchants, who, again, sell to the great brewers. The hop - factors mostly live about St. Thomas's-street, not far from the Borough-market; and some of these houses have existed for several generations. Mr. West, of the house of West, Jones, Whithead, and Co., for example, is the seventh in descent from the founder of the house, whose sale-notes are preserved as venerable relics of the ancient gentleman, while his picture, like that of the primeval Tattersall, smiles benignly on the private counting-house of the firm. Hops are sold by samples, cut in greenish golden cubes from the pockets in which the fragrant "weed" is tightly pressed. Of these samples, Messrs. West & Co. have often twenty thousand on hand, representing a sum which varies curiously, according to the season and the weather. A pocket of hops weighs about one and three-quarter hundred-weight, but is always sold by weight, and the quotations are at so much per hundred-weight. Sometimes this hundred-weight of hops is worth sixty shillings, sometimes twelve poundsa margin sufficient to allure the speculative mind into bulling or bearing-buying and selling-not as a mere business transaction, but with a view to future prices, carefully calculated, "from information received." The eye filled with "speculation" is singularly prompt in perceiving opportunities of indulgence. Tallow is not at first sight a commodity to excite the imagination of an Alnaschar, but some pretty round fortunes have "slipped up" on it nevertheless. Opium and indigo, nay copper and iron, have brought some great fortunes "by the board," and the "lee scuppers" of cotton ships are red with the blood of slaughtered speculators. So is it with hops, but, as the slang of the day has it, so." more In the days of the hop-duty, speculation was not confined to strict buying and selling, and transactions were reduced to a noble simplicity. Instead of making contracts to deliver or receive at certain dates, like the "puts" and "calls" of the Stock Exchange, or buying and selling outright to the amount of hundreds of thousands in a single day as is done at present, the hop-merchants and speculators simply betted-made absolute wagers on the amount of the hop-duty that would be paid. This duty commenced in 1714, and ceased in 1861. It amounted to twopence a pound on all the hops grown in England, and by affording a certain index of production told in the unimpeachable language of figures how prices should range. Speculation was therefore simplified by making heavy bets on the gross amount of the hop-duty; and as this rose in good years to twelve times the amount assessed in bad years, there was abundant scope for predictive genius. July was a critical month for the hop-bettors, for there is an old saw to the effect that When St. James is come and gone, But it is wonderful to see how surely, when this eventful period was passed, the betting settled into narrow limits, and how closely the experts gauged the amount of production. The abolition of the duty has removed the test of betting, and this curious form of gambling has fallen into desuetude-along with faro, trente-etquarante, roulette, and that noble game at which the "bucks" and "dandies" of bygone generations were wont to relax the stiffness of their elbows. Hazard and the hop-duty have passed into the limbo of extinct media for speculation, and their place has been filled by foreign loans and "bogus" mines. Whether the world has gained much by the change is a question for political economists; but mere observers of manners may pause to note that as the doors of gaming-houses closed, those of the Stock Exchange opened wider and wider. But the ultimate destiny of malt and hops is to supply the Briton with that beer which renders him, as the Italian librettist has it, proud. "Che il Britanno rende altier" is a good phrasealmost as good as the "pride in his port, defiance in his eye," of an older and better poet; and this noble independence was once manifested very vigorously, as Marshal Haynau found to his cost, at that famous establishment on Bankside, which is almost within hail of the home of the hop-factors. Few names are more widely known and more fervently worshipped than those of Barclay and Perkins, whose horses, whose beer, and whose draymen are alike celebrated. The site of Barclay and Perkins's brewery is historical. In the good old times Bankside, on the south of the Thames, was as Alsatia on the north; and many a liberal fare was earned by the jolly young watermen of the period, by "translating" the subjects of the king of Alsatia to the domains of the master of the Mint. The thoroughfares between the river and the Mint were of evil odour, inherited from the times of Cardinal Beaufort, who caused to be built on the site of the "stews," or artificial fish-ponds in the park attached to the episcopal palace, the houses which gave the word another signification. Near at hand was the Bear Garden, and on the very spot now occupied by the "Anchor Brewery" was the Globe Theatre, built by Henslowe and his son-in-law Alleyne, and closely associated. with William Shakespeare himself-by far the greatest, by no means the only great, man whose memory is associated with the locality. Of the early days of the "Anchor Brewery" no record exists. Probably the landlord of the Anchor Tavern, commencing by brewing beer to sell retail, gradually extended his operations to wholesale magnitude. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that as early as the reign of Queen Anne, the product of the brewery at Bankside had become famous beyond its immediate neighbourhood. At that period the business was in the hands of a Mr. Halsey, whose beer became so famous for its excellence that large quantities were exported for the use of the English army -then fighting and "swearing terribly" in Flanders, under "Handsome Jack Churchill," otherwise Duke of Marlborough. Mr. Halsey having made an immense fortune, retired from business, bought an estate, and founded a family, like a sensible English gentleman as he was. The purchaser of the brewery was a Mr. Thrale, under whose management its fame was greatly extended. Mr. Thrale, whose country seat and estate were at Streatham, was made high sheriff of Surrey in 1752, and about the same time was elected Member of Parliament for the borough of Southwark, which he continued to represent in the House of Commons until his death. At that time Thrale's brewery stood eighth on the list, and produced annually nearly thirty-three thousand barrels of beer. The son of Mr. Thrale-a wild, speculative, and eccentric, but apparently generous and amiable, man-was the friend of Dr. Johnson; and up to the time of the fire in 1832, visitors used to be shown a room, near the entrance gateway of the brewery in Park-street, which the great doctor occupied as his study. Thrale the younger took great pride in the size of his vats, of which he possessed four of the capacity of sixteen hundred barrels each; and was reduced to a wretched state of mind by hearing that Mr. Whitbread had built a larger vat than any of his. Pouring out his woes to Dr. Johnson, he actually applied to himself, in sober seriousness, the saying attributed to Themistocles by Plutarch, "The trophies of Miltiades hinder my sleeping ;" and resolved on building another vat, in which Whitbread's should be able to swim about; and was only dissuaded from his resolution by the remonstrances of Dr. Johnson and Mr. Perkins, his manager and brewer. During the Thrale period, and for some time after, there was a mania among brewers for building large vats. Now the rage for these enormous vessels has died out, and the introduction of improved methods of brewing has done away with much of the necessity for vatting, but a hundred years ago every London brewer bragged of his vats. The Great Napoleon of vats was erected at Meux's brewery in 1793. It was sixty feet in diameter, one hundred and twenty six feet in circumference, and twenty three feet in height. It cost five thousand pounds building, and would hold from ten to twelve thousand barrels of beer. When it was finished a dinner was given to two hundred people at the bottom, and two hundred more joined in drinking "success to the vat." Ushered into life under happy auspices, this great vat was destined to a dreadful end. In 1814 it burst. Eight persons were drowned outright, and several more had a narrow escape for their lives. Early in 1781 Mr. Thrale died, and left the brewery mainly to his widow-afterwards Mrs. Piozzi-with smaller shares to the four Misses Thrale, their daughters. His executors determined to sell the brewery if an eligible purchaser could be found. Strangely enough, the executor who protested longest against parting with the business was Dr. Johnson-who, without any experience of business, yet saw more clearly than his colleagues the capabilities and probable extension of the brewery. The doctor was laughed at by the shortsighted, so-called "men of business," who recommended the sale, and Lord Lucan's story of his demeanour while the sale was going forward was considered at the time an exquisite joke. His lordship described him as bustling about with an inkhorn at his button-hole like an exciseman, and on being asked what he really considered to be the value of the property which was to be disposed of, answered: "We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice!" If Johnson really used the words attributed to him, he never displayed his sound common sense more clearly than on this occasion. He knew that the brewery returned a clear profit of at least fifteen thousand a year; that at one time, Thrale being, in consequence of outside speculations, in debt a hundred and thirty thousand pounds, actually paid it off, without retrenching his personal expen |