Part 8

The figures in the above tables are very fairly representative of different classes of British and Irish beers. It will be noticed that the _Mild Ales_ are of medium original gravity[8] and alcoholic strength, but contain a relatively large proportion of solid matter. The _Light Bitters and Ales_ are of a low original gravity, but compared with the Mild Ales the proportion of alcohol to solids is higher. The _Pale and Stock Ales_, which represent the more expensive bottle beers, are analytically of much the same character as the Light Bitters, except that the figures all round are much higher. The _Stouts_, as a rule, are characterized by a high gravity, and contain relatively more solids (as compared with alcohol) than do the heavy beers of light colour. With regard to the proportions of the various matters constituting the extractives (solids) in English beers, roughly 20-30% consists of maltose and 20-50% of dextrinous matter. In mild ales the proportion of maltose to dextrin is high (roughly 1:1), thus accounting for the full sweet taste of these beers. Pale and stock ales, on the other hand, which are of a "dry" character, contain relatively more dextrin, the general ratio being about 1:1-1/2 or 1:2. The mineral matter ("ash") of beers is generally in the neighbourhood of 0.2 to 0.3%, of which about one-fourth is phosphoric acid. The proteid ("nitrogenous matters") content of beers varies very widely according to character and strength, the usual limits being 0.3 to 0.8%, with an average of roughly 0.4%.

B. CONTINENTAL BEERS.

(Analyses by A. Doemens.)

+----------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | | Original | | Extractives | | Description. | Gravity. | Alcohol %. | (Solids) %. | +----------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | Munich Draught Dark | 1056.4 | 3.76 | 6.58 | | " " " | 1052.6 | 3.38 | 6.45 | | " " Light | 1048.0 | 3.18 | 5.55 | | " " " | 1048.1 | 4.05 | 3.92 | | " Export | 1054.3 | 3.68 | 6.32 | | " " | 1059.5 | 4.15 | 7.48 | | " Bock Beer[9] | 1076.6 | 4.53 | 10.05 | | Pilsener Bottle | 1047.7 | 3.47 | 4.90 | | " Draught | 1044.3 | 3.25 | 4.58 | | Berlin Dark | 1055.2 | 3.82 | 6.17 | | " Light | 1056.5 | 4.36 | 5.46 | | " Weissbier | 1033.1 | 2.644 | 3.01 | +----------------------+----------+------------+-------------+

It will be seen that, broadly speaking, the original gravity of German and Austrian beers is lower than that of English beers, and this also applies to the alcohol. On the other hand, the foreign beers are relatively very rich in solids, and the extractives: alcohol ratio is high. (See BREWING.)

C. AMERICAN BEERS AND ALES.

(Analyses by M. Wallerstein.)

+------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | | Original | | Extractives | | Description. | Gravity. | Alcohol %. | (Solids) %. | +------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | Bottom \ 1. | 1046.7 | 3.48 | 5.08 | | Fermentation | 2. | 1055.6 | 3.56 | 6.50 | | Beers | 3. | 1063.4 | 4.12 | 7.43 | | (Lager Type). / 4. | 1046.0 | 2.68 | 5.96 | | 5. | 1051.7 | 3.42 | 5.86 | +------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+ | Top Fermentation \ 1. | 1084.2 | 5.89 | 8.60 | | Ales | 2. | 1073.5 | 6.46 | 5.69 | | (British Type) / 3. | 1068.0 | 5.50 | 5.53 | +------------------------+----------+------------+-------------+

It will be noted that the American _beers_ (i.e. bottom fermentation products of the lager type) are very similar in composition to the German beers, but that the ales are very much heavier than the general run of the corresponding British products.

_Production and Consumption._--(For manufacture of beer, see BREWING.) Germany is the greatest beer-producing nation, if liquid bulk be taken as a criterion; the United States comes next, and the United Kingdom occupies the third place in this regard. The consumption per head, however, is slightly greater in the United Kingdom than in Germany, and very much greater than is the case in the United States. The 1905 figures with regard to the total production and consumption of the three great beer-producing countries, together with those for 1885, are as under:--

+----------------+--------------------------------+---------------------+ | | | Consumption per | | Country. | Total Production (Gallons). | Head of Population | | | | (Gallons) | +----------------+------------------+-------------+----------+----------+ | | 1905. | 1885. | 1905. | 1885 | | +------------------+-------------+----------+----------+ | German Empire | 1,538,240,000 | 932,228,000 | 23.3 | 19.8 | | United States | 1,434,114,180 | 494,854,000 | 19.9 | 8.8 | | United Kingdom | 1,227,933,468[10]| 993,759,000 | 27.90[10]| 27.1 | +----------------+------------------+-------------+----------+----------+

The chief point of interest in the preceding table is the enormous increase in the United States. In considering the figures, the character of the beer produced must be taken into consideration. Thus, although Germany produces roughly 25% more beer in liquid measurement than the United Kingdom, the latter actually uses about 50% more malt than is the case in the German breweries. According to a Viennese technical journal, the quantities of malt employed for the production of one hectolitre (22 gallons) of beer in the respective countries is 0.40 cwt. in the German empire, 0.72 cwt. in the United States, and 0.81 cwt. in the United Kingdom. In a sense, therefore, England may still claim pre-eminence as a beer-producing nation. Large as the _per capita_ consumption in the United Kingdom may seem, it is considerably less than is the case in Bavaria, which stands at the head of the list with over 50 gallons, and in Belgium, which comes second with 47.7 gallons. In the city of Munich the consumption is actually over 70 gallons, that is to say, about 1-1/2 pints a day for every man, woman and child. It is curious to note that in Germany, which is usually regarded as a beer-drinking country _par excellence_, the consumption per head of this article is slightly less than in England, and that inversely the average German consumes more alcohol in the shape of spirits than does the inhabitant of the British Islands (consumption of spirits per head: Germany, 1.76 gallons; United Kingdom, 0.99 gallons). This is accounted for by the fact that the peasantry of the northern and eastern portions of the German empire consume spirits almost exclusively. In the British colonies beer is generally one of the staple drinks, but if we except Western Australia, where about 25 gallons per head of population are consumed, the demand is much smaller than in the United Kingdom. In Australia generally, the _per capita_ consumption amounts to about 12 gallons, in New Zealand to 10 gallons, and in Canada to 5 gallons. (P. S.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] London Ales.

[2] Strong Burton Mild Ale.

[3] Fairly representative of "Pale Ales."

[4] Heavy Stock Ales.

[5] Irish Stout.

[6] Nos. 2 and 3 are respectively "single" and "double" London Stouts from the same brewery.

[7] London Porter or Cooper.

[8] The specific gravity, or "gravity" as it is always termed in the industry, of the brewer is 1000 times the specific gravity of the physicist. This is purely a matter of convention and convenience. Thus when a brewer speaks of a wort of a "gravity" of 1045 (ten-forty-five) he means a wort having a specific gravity of 1.045. Each unit in the brewer's scale of specific gravity is termed a "degree of gravity." The wort referred to above, therefore, possesses forty-five _degrees_ of gravity. The "original gravity," it may here be mentioned, represents the specific gravity of the wort (see BREWING) before fermentation. The solids in the original wort may be ascertained by dividing the excess of the gravity over 1000 by 3.86. Thus in the case of Mild Ale No. 1 the excess of the original gravity over 1000 is 1055.13 - 1000 = 55.13. Dividing this by 3.86 we get 14.28, which indicates that the wort from which the beer was manufactured contained 14.28% of solids. In the trade the gravity of a beer (or rather of the wort from which it is derived) is generally expressed in pounds per barrel. This means the excess in weight of a barrel of the wort over the weight of a barrel of water. The weight of a barrel (36 gallons) of water is 360 lb.; in the above example the weight of a barrel of the beer wort is 360 X 1.05513 = 379.8. The gravity of the wort in lb. is therefore 379.8 - 360 = 19.8. The beer which is made from this wort would also be called a 19.8 lb. beer, the reference in all cases being to the original wort.

[9] A particularly heavy beer, only brewed at certain times in the year.

[10] The maxima of production and consumption were reached in 1899/1900, when the production amounted to 1,337,509,116 gallons (at the standard gravity) and consumption to 32.28 gallons per head.

BEERSHEBA, a place midway between Gaza and Hebron (28 m. from each), frequently referred to in the Bible as the southern limit of Palestine ("Dan to Beersheba," Judg. xx. i, &c.) Its foundation is variously ascribed to Abraham and Isaac, and different etymologies for its name are suggested, in the fundamental documents of Genesis (xxi. 22, xxvi. 26). It was an important holy place, where Abraham planted a sacred tree (Gen. xxi. 23), and where divine manifestations were vouchsafed to Hagar (Gen. xxi. 17), Isaac (xxvi. 24), Jacob (xlvi. 2) and Elijah (1 Kings xix. 5). Amos mentions it in connexion with the shrines of Bethel and Gilgal (Amos v. 5) and denounces oaths by its _numen_ (viii. 14). The most probable meaning of the name is "seven wells," despite the non-Semitic construction involved in this interpretation. Seven ancient wells still exist here, though two are stopped up. Eusebius and Jerome mention the place in the 4th century as a large village and the seat of a Roman garrison. Extensive remains of this village exist, though they are being rapidly quarried away for building; some inscriptions of great importance have been found here. Later it appears to have been the site of a bishopric; remains of its churches were still standing in the 14th century. Some fine mosaics have been here unearthed and immediately destroyed, in sheer wantonness, by the natives quarrying building-stone. The Biblical Beersheba probably exists at Bir es-Seba', 2 m. distant.

BEESLY, EDWARD SPENCER (1831- ), English historian and positivist, son of the Rev. James Beesly, was born at Feckenham, Worcestershire, on the 23rd of January 1831. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, which may be regarded as the original centre of the English positivist movement. Richard Congreve (q.v.) was tutor at Wadham from 1849 to 1854, and three men of that time, Frederic Harrison (q.v.), Beesly and John Henry Bridges (1832-1906), became the leaders of Comtism in England. Beesly left Oxford in 1854 to become assistant-master at Marlborough College. In 1859 he was appointed professor of history at University College, London, and of Latin at Bedford College, London, in 1860. He resigned these appointments in 1893 and 1889, and in 1893 became the editor of the newly-established _Positivist Review_. He collaborated in the translation of Comte's system of _Positive Polity_ (4 vols., 1875-1879), translated his _Discourse on the Positive Spirit_ (1903), and wrote a biography of Comte for a translation of the first two chapters of his _Cours de philosophie positive_, entitled _Fundamental Principles of Positive Philosophy_ (1905). Professor Beesly stood unsuccessfully as Liberal candidate for Westminster in 1885 and for Marylebone in 1886, and is the author of numerous review articles on social and political topics, treated from the positivist standpoint, especially on the Irish question. His works also include a series of lectures on Roman history, entitled _Catiline, Clodius, Tiberius_ (1878), in which he rehabilitates in some degree the character of each of his subjects, and _Queen Elizabeth_ (1892), in the "Twelve English Statesmen" series.

BEET, a cultivated form of the plant _Beta vulgaris_ (natural order Chenopodiaceae), which grows wild on the coasts of Europe, North Africa and Asia as far as India. It is a biennial, producing, like the carrot, a thick, fleshy tap-root during the first year and a branched, leafy, flowering stem in the following season. The small, green flowers are borne in clusters. A considerable number of varieties are cultivated for use on account of their large fleshy roots, under the names of mangel-wurzel or mangold, field-beet and garden-beet. The cultivation of beet in relation to the production of sugar, for which purpose certain varieties of beet stand next in importance to the sugar cane, is dealt with under SUGAR. The garden-beet has been cultivated from very remote times as a salad plant, and for general use as a table vegetable. The variety most generally grown has long, tapering, carrot-shaped roots, the "flesh" of which is of a uniform deep red colour throughout, and the leaves brownish red. It is boiled and cut into slices for being eaten cold; and it is also prepared as a pickle, as well as in various other forms. Beet is in much more common use on the continent of Europe as a culinary vegetable than in Great Britain, where it has, however, been cultivated for upwards of two centuries. The white beet, _Beta cicla_, is cultivated for the leaves, which are used as spinach. The midribs and stalks of the leaves are also stewed and eaten as sea-kale, under the name of Swiss chard. _B. cicla_ is also largely used as a decorative plant for its large, handsome leaves, blood red or variegated in colour.

The beet prospers in a rich deep soil, well pulverized by the spade. If manure is required, it should be deposited at the bottom of the trench in preparing the ground. The seeds should be sown in drills 15 ins. asunder, in April or early in May, and the plants are afterwards to be thinned to about 8 in. apart in the lines, but not more, as moderate-sized roots are preferable. The plants should grow on till the end of October or later, when a portion should be taken up for use, and the rest laid in in a sheltered corner, and covered up from frost. The roots must not be bruised and the leaves must be twisted off--not closely cut, as they are then liable to bleed. In the north the crop may be wholly taken up in autumn, and stored in a pit or cellar, beyond reach of frost. If it is desired to have fresh roots early, the seeds should be sown at the end of February or beginning of March; and if a succession is required, a few more may be sown by the end of March.

BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN (1770-1827), German musical composer, was baptized (probably, as was usual, the day after birth) on the 17th of December 1770 at Bonn. His family is traceable to a village near Louvain, in Belgium, in the 17th century. In 1650 a lineal ancestor of the composer settled in Antwerp. Beethoven's grandfather, Louis, quarrelled with his family, came to Bonn in 1732, and became one of the court musicians of the archbishop-elector of Cologne. He was a genial man of estimable character, and though Ludwig van Beethoven was only four years old when his grandfather died, he never forgot him, but cherished his portrait to the end of his life. Beethoven's father, a tenor singer at the archbishop-elector's court, was of a rough and violent temper, not improved by his passion for drink, nor by the dire poverty under which the family laboured. He married Magdelina Leim or Laym, the widow of a _valet-de-chambre_ of the elector of Trier and daughter of the chief cook at Ehrenbreitstein. Beethoven's father wished to profit as early as possible by his son's talent, and accordingly began to give him a severe musical training, especially on the violin, when he was only five years old, at about which time they left the house in which he was born (515 Bonngasse, now preserved as a Beethoven museum, with a magnificent collection of manuscripts and relics). By the time Beethoven was nine his father had no more to teach him, and he entered upon a perhaps healthier course of clavier lessons under a singer named Pfeiffer. A little general education was also edged in by a certain Zambona. Van den Eeden, the court organist, and an old friend of his grandfather, taught him the organ and the pianoforte, and so rapid was Beethoven's progress that when C.G. Neefe succeeded to Van den Eeden's post in 1781, he was soon able to allow the boy to act as his deputy. With his permission Beethoven published in 1783 his earliest extant composition, a set of variations on a march by Dressler. The title-page states that they were written in 1780 _"par un jeune amateur Louis van Beethoven age de dix ans_." Beethoven's father was very clumsy in his unnecessary attempts to make an infant prodigy of his son; for the ante-dating of this composition, implying the correct date of birth, contradicts the post-dating of the date of birth by which he tried to make out that the three sonatas Beethoven wrote in the same year were by a boy of eleven. (Beethoven for a long time believed that he was born in 1772, and the certificate of his baptism hardly convinced him, because he knew that he had an elder brother named Ludwig who died in infancy.) In the same year, 1783, Beethoven was given the post of cembalist in the Bonn theatre, and in 1784 his position of assistant to Neefe became official. In a _catalogue raisonne_ of the new archbishop Max Franz's court musicians we find "No. 14, Ludwig Beethoven" described "as of good capacity, still young, of good, quiet behaviour and poor," while his father (No. 8) "has a completely worn-out voice, has long been in service, is very poor, of fairly good behaviour, and married."

In the spring of 1787 Beethoven paid a short visit to Vienna, where he astonished Mozart by his extemporizations and had a few lessons from him. How he was enabled to afford this visit is not clear. After three months the illness of his mother, to whom he was devoted, brought him back. She died in July, leaving a baby girl, one year old, who died in November. For five more years Beethoven remained at Bonn supporting his family, of which he had been since the age of fifteen practically the head, as his father's bad habits steadily increased until in 1789 Ludwig was officially entrusted with his father's salary. He had already made several lifelong friends at Bonn, of whom the chief were Count Waldstein and Stephan Breuning; and his prospects brightened as the archbishop-elector, in imitation of his brother the emperor Joseph II., enlarged the scale of his artistic munificence. By 1792 the archbishop-elector's attention was thoroughly aroused to Beethoven's power, and he provided for Beethoven's second visit to Vienna. The introductions he and Count Waldstein gave to Beethoven, the prefix "van" in Beethoven's name (which looked well though it was not really a title of nobility), and above all the unequalled impressiveness of his playing and extemporization, quickly secured his footing with the exceptionally intelligent and musical aristocracy of Vienna, who to the end of his life treated him with genuine affection and respect, bearing with all the roughness of his manners and temper, not as with the eccentricities of a fashionable genius, but as with signs of the sufferings of a passionate and noble nature.

Beethoven's life, though outwardly uneventful, was one of the most pathetic of tragedies. His character has had the same fascination for his biographers as it had for his friends, and there is probably hardly any great man in history of whom more is known and of whom so much of what is known is interesting. Yet it is all too much a matter of detail and anecdote to admit of chronological summarizing here, and for the disentangling of its actual incidents we must refer the reader to Sir George Grove's long and graphic article, "Beethoven," in the _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_, and to the monumental biography of Thayer, who devoted his whole life to collecting materials. These two biographical works, read in the spirit in which their authors conceived them, will reveal, beneath a mass of distressing, grotesque and sometimes sordid detail, a nobility of character and unswerving devotion to the highest moral ideas throughout every distress and temptation to which a passionate and totally unpractical temper and the growing shadow of a terrible misfortune could expose a man.

The man is surpassed only by his works, for in them he had that mastery which was denied to him in what he himself calls his attempt to "grapple with fate." Such of his difficulties as lay in his own character already showed themselves in his studies with Haydn. Haydn, who seems to have heard of him on his first visit to Vienna in 1787, passed through Bonn in July 1792, and was so much struck by Beethoven that it was very likely at his instigation that the archbishop sent Beethoven to Vienna to study under him. But Beethoven did not get on well with him, and found him perfunctory in correcting his exercises. Haydn appreciated neither his manners nor the audacity of his free compositions, and abandoned whatever intentions he may have had of taking Beethoven with him to England in 1794. Beethoven could do without sympathy, but a grounding in strict counterpoint he felt to be a dire necessity, so he continued his studies with Albrechtsberger, a mere grammarian who had the poorest opinion of him, but who could, at all events, be depended on to attend to his work. Almost every comment has been made upon the relations between Haydn and Beethoven, except the perfectly obvious one that Mozart died at the age of thirty-six, just at the time Beethoven came to Vienna, and that Haydn, as is perfectly well known, was profoundly shocked by the untimely loss of the greatest musician he had ever known. At such a time the undeniable clumsiness of Beethoven's efforts at academic exercises would combine with his general tactlessness to confirm Haydn in the belief that the sun had set for ever in the musical world, and would incline him to view with disfavour those bold features of style and form which the whole of his own artistic development should naturally have predisposed him to welcome. It is at least significant that those early works of Beethoven in which Mozart's influence is most evident, such as the Septet, aroused Haydn's open admiration, whereas he hardly approved of the compositions like the sonatas, _op._ 2 (dedicated to him), in which his own influence is stronger. Neither he nor Beethoven was skilful in expressing himself except in music, and it is impossible to tell what Haydn meant, or what Beethoven thought he meant, in advising him not to publish the last and finest of the three trios, _op._ 1. But even if he did not mean that it was too daring for the public, it can hardly be expected that he never contrasted the meteoric career of Mozart, who after a miraculous boyhood had produced at the age of twenty-five some of the greatest music Haydn had ever seen, with the slow and painful development of his uncouth pupil, who at the same age had hardly a dozen presentable works to his credit. It is not clear that Haydn ever came to understand Beethoven, and many years passed before Beethoven realized the greatness of the master whose teaching had so disappointed him.