milk, and after dinner took it black, but in a
very small quantity. If an Englishman call
for coffee in a French or Italian night journey,
he wants a whole soup-basin full. He likes a
draught such as he would have taken of tea at
home. There is no doubt, however, that our
workmen begin to prefer coffee to tea, and find it
stimulate the circulation and nourish more than
the infusion of rank Congo, or of that dark
woody Assam that is now much used for
adulterating and strengthening inferior teas. After
all, do let us think of this: two breakfast
cups of tea or coffee represent a pint of hot
water poured into the ever receptive and
long-suffering organ.

Brillat-Savarin, who, if he had not been a
great gourmet, would have been an eminent
psychologist, has most ably summed up the
peculiar effect of coffee on the powers of the
brain. The effect is sometimes modified by
habit, but there are many persons in whom
excitement is always produced. Some persons
are not kept awake by coffee, and yet require
its influence to keep them from sleep during the
day: being sleepy all the afternoon if they do
not have their usual morning coffee.

The sleeplessness caused by coffee is not
painful; it consists merely in the perceptions
being very clear, and there being no desire to
sleep. One is neither agitated nor miserable,
as when sleeplessness comes from any other
cause; but that does not, nevertheless, prevent
the unseasonable excitement from being
eventually hurtful. Savarin recounts a special
occasion when coffee had an extraordinary effect
upon his brain and nerves. A certain duke, then
minister of justice, had given him some work
to do, which required great care. There was
little time to do it in, for the duke wanted it
next day. Savarin, therefore, resolved to work
all night. In order to fortify himself against
the desire to sleep, he finished his dinner with
two large cups of strong and excellent coffee.
He returned home at seven o'clock to receive
the papers he had expected, but found, instead,
a letter which informed him that, owing to
some absurd formality of the bureau, he could
not receive them before next day. Thus
disappointed, Brillat Savarin returned to the
house where he had dined, and joined a party at
picquet: not without inquietude as to how he
should pass the night. He retired to rest at
his usual hour, thinking that even if he did not
sleep well he might get a doze of four or five
hours which would help him quietly on to the
morrow; but he was deceived; hour after hour
brought fresh mental agitation, until his brain
seemed like a mill whose wheels work without
having anything to grind. At last he got
up, and, to pass the time, began throwing
into verse a short English story he
had lately read. As sleep still refused to
come, he began another translation, but all
in vain; the mine was exhausted, and had to
be left. He passed the night without sleep,
and rose and spent the day in the same condition,
neither food nor occupation bringing any
change. Finally when he went to bed at
his accustomed time, he calculated that he had
not closed his eyes for full forty hours.

This great epicure closes his remarks on
coffee by speaking of its strength. A man
with a good constitution, he says, might live
long, even when taking two bottles of wine a
day, but if he dared to venture on the same
allowance of coffee he would soon become
imbecile, or waste into a consumption. He
warns parents against giving it to young children,
and mentions a man he saw in London
"sur la Place de Leicester," who had become
crippled by his immoderate use of coffee, but who
had come down again to five or six cups a day.

The quantity of coffee imported into
England in 1843 was twenty-nine million nine
hundred and seventy-nine thousand four
hundred and four pounds; in 1850, thirty-one
million one hundred and sixty-six thousand
three hundred and fifty-eight pounds; in 1857,
thirty-four million three hundred and sixty-
seven thousand four hundred and eighty-four
pounds; and in 1859, thirty-four million four
hundred and ninety-two thousand nine hundred
and forty-seven pounds.

There can be no doubt that as our poorer
classes learn to study cooking, and become
convinced that good cooking leads to good
appetite, and good appetite to good health,
they will attend more to those refinements which
remove coffee from the category of brown soup,
and place it high among the most favoured
beverages of the world.

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