There is a class of the nobility too poor to treat themselves with the diversions of court-life, and with notions of noble birth which forbid them to engage in business, especially as they would thereby forfeit their rank.  They fund their small means, so as to yield them a stated income; and in spending this and their time, they fall into a round which brings them three or four times a day to some place where beer is to be found, and with it a billiard-table and a reading-room.  This class does not, perhaps, embrace a very large number of the nobility, but it is largely reinforced from others, whose small means are similarly invested, and whose whole time is on their hands for disposal.  The class of men engaged in business, and pursuing it somewhat actively, give less attention to beer during the day.  They take a couple of glasses—­four of our common tumblers—­at dinner, and perhaps send out a servant occasionally during the day to replenish a pitcher for the counter,—­not, however, to treat customers, as used to be done in our country; but as beer had been all day secondary to business, the latter is dropped for the evening, and the undivided attention bestowed upon the national beverage.  A large portion of the poor, and many who cannot be called poor, have not the means for this indulgence; and yet men and women are seldom seen at their work without a mug of beer standing near them.  Ladies have the same provision in their families, as also students, and all who occupy rented rooms in connection with the families of the city; from ten to one o’clock servant-girls, with pitchers in their hands and immense bunches of keys hanging to their apron-strings, are seen running to and from the neighboring beer-houses thick as butterflies floating in a summer sun, and seem far more as if on business requiring haste.  No room is sought for renting without an inquiry as to the quality of the beer of the neighborhood; and the landlady feels that her chances for a tenant are exceedingly slim, if she cannot furnish a satisfactory recommendation in this respect.  Scarcely a house in the city is thirty steps from where the article can be had.  The places fitted up with seats and tables for drinking accommodate from twenty to five hundred persons, and even one thousand or more in summer, when a garden is generally prepared with seats for the purpose.  At these larger places, music is often provided, and ladies are frequently found lending the charm and solace of their presence, and sometimes a good deal more, to the other sex, in this self-denying work, in which the men have generally been the great burden-bearers.  But the greatest crowds of real beer-drinkers go to another class of houses,—­that is, the breweries themselves, where rooms are always fitted up for drinking.  Of these the Court Brewery is perhaps in highest repute, and is at least a great curiosity.  I visited it three or four times during a six years’ residence in the city, and always in company with others who