PURITY OF BURTON ALE. 359 



me a share in the general satisfaction " The learned 

 person who had written the treatise had himself been 

 a practical brewer twenty years, and had been misled 

 by a circumstance which was sufficient to mislead any 

 one he found it impossible to make ale of the quality 

 of Burton ale, without the aid of certain saline ingre- 

 dients, gypsum, for instance, the water at Burton 

 flowing over a rock of that substance." This gypsum- 

 ized rock, then, has proved a rock of mutual defence 

 and security ; and the Rock of Burton ! ought to 

 become an established toast with all brewers of the 

 pure and genuine ingredients of "malt, hops, and 

 water," one only saline addition. Should I live to see 

 a seventh edition of my little book, I shall not fail to 

 revise and palate the new editions of Burton ale. I 

 think I have remarked that the ale of the retail or 

 shop-brewers, which I have tasted, has been the least 

 adulterated ; however, if I may be guided by a single 

 instance, they also have entered upon the march of 

 improvement. A bill of one recently embarked, with 

 high pretensions to genuineness and purity, being put 

 into my hands, I sent for a sample bottle. The beer 

 proved as saline and tropically sweet, and as heating 

 and stimulant to the stomach, as bay or common salt, 

 sugar and grains of paradise could render it. Now, 

 after all my diatribes on this subject, gentle readers, 

 who can blame the brewers, as brewing, not for them- 

 selves, but their customers ? seeing that the English 

 people have an inveterate aversion to genuine beer, 

 of which they probably, in the great majority, have 

 not been drinkers during the hundred years last past.. 

 In justice, I am bound to acknowledge, that I have 



