In Germany the best white bread is everywhere made in small rolls of different shapes, very delicious when quite new, but the Germans have an almost superstitious belief in the medicinal virtues of aniseed, and all the ordinary household bread is plentifully sprinkled with these seeds, the flavour of which is far from pleasant to an English palate. The Germans, also, eat rye bread, but of that anon. All through Europe at the present day the finest wheaten bread - chiefly in the form of rolls - is consumed by the upper classes, whilst the poorer people eat rye or barley bread. Probably little wheaten rolls were early in use in England when the ordinary household bread was of rye or barley. Shakespeare alludes to these delicate wheaten cakes when, in his song of the fairies, he says : -

A grain o' the finest wheat Is manchet that we eat.

But we must not enter into fairy lore, lest our subject should drift into something too ethereal for mortal appetite.

The bread of ancient Greece is said to have been of dazzling whiteness and exquisite taste, but they soon began to mix ingredients with the paste which altered its character, and seventy-two kinds of bread were introduced. Some of these, according to Soyer's 'History of Food,' were made with milk, honey, oil, cheese, and wine, mixed with best flour, and all were known as artos bread. Women sold this bread in an open market, as also azumos, a kind of biscuit made without leaven; artofoganos, in which wine, pepper, oil, and milk were introduced; and escarites, made of light paste with raw sweet wine and honey. The poorer people had dolyres, made of rye and barley; whilst ladies of fashion ate puff-cakes called placites or melitutes, and the workmen bought tyrontes, a bread mixed with cheese.

Amongst the Romans, porridge appears to have been the national dish until wheaten bread was introduced from Greece; they had also a very coarse bread made of bran and a little coarse flour, which was made expressly for dogs and slaves. Their leaven, according to Pliny, was made from millet or wheat-bran, soaked in wine and dried in the sun, or of a dish of barley paste placed on red-hot coals till it boiled, and then put into vessels till it became sour.

Barley bread is now so entirely discarded, that it is hard to realise that even up to the beginning of the present century, it was the common food of the English peasantry, even as it was in ancient times the bread of Egypt, and of the Jews in the days of Christ, as we learn from the miracle wrought upon the lad's five barley loaves. We remember once talking to an old man, who grumbled at the hardness of the times and the difficulty of getting a living. ' But,' we said, ' you get a great deal more wages now than when you were young.' 'Oh, ay,' he said, 'but it don't seem to go so fur.' 'That's because you live better, perhaps?' said we. 'For instance, you didn't get white bread and butter every day then.' 'Noa, noa,' said he, 'that we didn't; barley bread as black as my hat and a bit of thin cheese was what we did get mostly, and a slice of fat bacon and cabbage now and then - that's what we did live upon when I were young.' ' Well,' we answered, ' if you would eat the same now, you'd soon be quite rich.' But he only shook his head, repeating, ' Barley bread as black as my hat - noa, noa, couldn't eat it now: teeth baint so good as they wer.'

In truth, it must have been hard, dry stuff, and we are not surprised that it should have been superseded by wheaten bread as soon as wheat became sufficiently cheap to be used in common. In like manner oat cake is now discarded, even in Scotland, ' the land of cakes,' except in some few districts, and it is more difficult to get oat cake in Edinburgh than in London, in which latter city it is consumed as a luxury by the rich, instead of forming the staple food of the working classes. Yet it is good wholesome fare, and might be eaten advantageously, especially by children, instead of the much-adulterated and unsatisfying white bread now so largely, and, indeed, exclusively eaten by the English poor, for they will not eat whole-meal bread if it is offered them, partly, perhaps, owing to the price, which is always higher than that of white bread, but chiefly because of its traditional use by poor people, so that white bread has come to be regarded as a luxury by the poor, and therefore preferred.

When, however, we come to rye bread, we find that, although it is now unknown in this country, it still forms the principal food of the peasantry of the greater part of Europe. Often have I seen the German peasant toiling along the dusty road by the side of his horse, cutting huge slices from what resembled a great black ham tucked under his arm, and feeding therewith himself and his horse alternately. This black bread does not look very appetising, but if you buy a sandwich of it, with German sausage, at the railway stations, as you can do, you will find it far from despicable. The Russian peasants also eat rye bread only, and a slice is always served at the tables of the wealthy, and, when eaten hot and quite new, is very good and nutritious.

But the most peculiar, and we should imagine the least palatable, of these rye breads, is that consumed in Norway under the name of Fladbrod, which is made only twice a year, in a hut constructed for the purpose. The rye-meal paste is spread as thin as possible on a large flat round gridiron, the size of a small table, turned very deftly by means of a wooden stick, and when sufficiently baked is stored for use in heaps 8 feet high; but it is coarse and indigestible.

It is hardly to be supposed that any of my readers will be tempted to return to this food of our ancestors, especially as, according to our old friend quoted above, ' Teeth baint as good as they wer' - a fact which many of the wise attribute in no small degree to the consumption of fine wheaten bread instead of the whole-meal bread, or the barley, oaten, and rye bread formerly in common use.