but that these are felt and are the stimulus to the production is beyond doubt.
Allowing for the changes wrought by time and cultivation, we can still perceive the truth of what Tacitus wrote of Germany almost two thousand years ago:—"The land, though somewhat varied in aspect, is in the main deformed with dismal forests and foul marshes. The part next to Gaul is wetter, and that next to Pannonia and Noricum higher and more windy. It is sufficiently productive, but not adapted to fruit-trees." The whole country lies in a high latitude,—Munich, though in the southern part, being forty-eight degrees North. No large city on the continent lies at such an elevation,—about eighteen hundred feet above the level of the Adriatic. In the midst of a vast plain, it is exposed to all winds. Its site and the surrounding country are a great gravel-bed, hundreds of feet thick, a deposit from the Alps, spurs of which are within thirty miles on the south, subjecting the whole region to sudden changes of weather ranging in a few hours through many degrees of Fahrenheit. The air is raw and chilly, and although many parts of Germany have since the days of Tacitus developed an adaptation to the vine and other fruits, none flourish in the neighborhood of Munich. The whole country suffers from deficiency of nourishing and stimulating food. They may not themselves know it, but this is true of the peasants who are best to do in the world. Of the peasantry of Upper Bavaria, some have meat five times in the year, on their chief holidays,—namely, Shrove Tuesday, Easter, Whitsuntide, Church-Consecration, and Christmas; some have it on but two of these days, and some only at Christmas. The exceptions may be many, and the large cities are quite exceptional, but the change is of late introduction. When people must labor upon such a diet, they feel the lack of something; but the Bavarians have been too long in this case to think of crying, like Israel of old in the wilderness, after having left the abundance of Egypt, "Who shall give us flesh to eat?"—they attempt rather to allay the gnawings at their stomachs by potations of beer, and the appetite grows by what it feeds on.
It is plausibly maintained that the climate of this particular locality creates an actual necessity for the use of this beverage. Often, during the earlier part of my residence there, I was besought by friends, with manifestation of deepest concern, to use beer instead of water, with the remark that the climate made this a necessary measure of security against the prevalent typhus and typhoid fevers: a conviction which seems to be deeply seated in the minds of the people.
Aside from all this, there is an almost total want of the pleasant beverages used in our families. Tea is as good as unknown in Old Bavaria, its use being confined to those who have been in England, or have learned it of the English, and not one woman in twenty thousand can prepare it. Let the word tea be erased from our vocabulary, and from our minds all the cheerful associations which it awakens, and there passes from our hearts none can tell how much of that which we most fondly cherish there,—the family of both sexes, and occasionally some neighbors and friends, seated around the table,—the gently stimulating narcotic diffusing a charm over the whole social being, and communicating itself to the vocal machinery. Fanatical reformers have proclaimed its injurious effects; and it may have such; but they are a thousand times compensated by its value as a bond of union to the elements of the domestic circle. The tea-table has been the butt of many a jest and sarcasm, as a fountain of gossip and slander. This may be true; but the security it furnishes against the dissipation of the elements of the social circle outweighs thousands of such trifles, and we half suspect that this objection was originated, and is mischievously propagated, by those who are already developing a love for other beverages. If Cowper, with the "sofa" assigned as his subject, could sing so beautifully of all things social and domestic,
