declared by "Bumpkin " to have murdered
himself for the greater glory of the Protestant
establishment. And, king of coffee-house
frequenters as was glorious John Dryden,
pillar as he was of City and of West End
coffee-rooms, some little stronger tipple he
took, I trow, than coffee, when putting all
those brave though slightly bombastic words
into the mouths of his heroes and heroines,
when panegyrising Milton, or demolishing
Elkanah Settle. Natheless, did coffee and
coffee-shops nourish in King Charles's wicked
days. In fair little cups of tender, golden-
edged biscuit porcelain, it disputed with its
obese, oleaginous rival chocolate the privilege
of moistening the ruby lips of all the naughty
beautiful dames who yet smile from Lely's
canvasses in the bed-chamber in Hampton
Court. I warrant that the Duchess of Cleveland
was sipping coffee, when she rated
Clarendon; aye, and that she broke her
coffee-cup, too, when to all her abuse, the
grim Chancellor answered but these words,
"Woman, you will one day become old."
Pepys, I am of opinion, was no great coffee-
drinker. He drank wine, and thought wine
"Jolly good ale," too, (in moderation) was
more in stout Andrew Marvell's way, than
coffee; but Evelyn—who cannot fancy that
pearl of English gentlemen quietly,
complacently sipping his coffee, and inhaling its
fragrant aroma amid the green leaves and
old armour of Says Court, amid good books
and placid thoughts, and the proof-sheets of
the "Sylva Sylvarum?" And who of those
whose privilege it is to live in the memories
of the past, and, like the Russian peasant,
look upon their every-day existence, where
they are hungry and thirsty, and naked, and
oppressed, but as an evil dream; who of
these cannot fancy the coffee-cup soothing the
momentary gloominess and acerbity of the
blind old man who had Homer's majesty and
Virgil's elegance; who cannot place a modest
brew of coffee in an antique silver flagon beside
the rules and compasses and tracing-papers of
Christopher Wren; or, in a humbler vessel,
beside the flowers and foliage before which
Grinling Gibbons is studying new combinations
for his marvellous carvings?

Some writers have ascribed the introduction
of coffee into France to Madame, the
ill-fated daughter of Henrietta Maria, and
wife of the Duke of Orleans. She is stated
to have made the decoction fashionable on
her return from a visit paid to her brother
Charles in England. Poor young Princess!
She had better have drunk coffee, than that
fatal glass of chicory water, from the effects
of which she died two days afterwards. The
first public mention I find made of coffee in
France is in the Gazette of 1669, in which,
under the date of November sixteenth, I read
that the Marquis de Lyonne, Minister of
Foreign Affairs, having given an entertainment
to Soliman Aga at Suresne, partook of
cavé. The price of coffee was then forty écus,
or nearly two pounds ten sterling, the pound.
It burst into vogue immediately, as things
foreign and inordinately expensive do in most
countries; but in France extravagance and
profusion have handmaids called Art, and
Taste, and Elegance; and, close on the heels
of coffee followed palaces for its consumption,
called cafés, and coffee services from the
porcelain manufactories at Sèvres.

Up to this time, cafe à l'eau—plain coffee
infused in boiling water—was the only
preparation of the berry known. I have
listened in vain for the sound of that
trumpet which should declare the fame
of the sage who devised lump sugar or
sugar-candy for coffee. The discoverer of café
au lait—of milk-diluted coffee—was M. de
Nieukhof, Dutch Ambassador in China.
Envious men denied him, however, the entire
merit of the lacteal invention, and insinuated
that he was but a translator, and that milk-
coffee must have been previously known to the
Celestials at Canton, or to the Portuguese at
Macao. Honour, however, to M. de Nieukhof.
The Dutch had ever been ardent admirers
and zealous cultivators of coffee. In 1710
they transferred it from Mocha to Java, where
coffee plantations multiplied exceedingly and
with great success. They had previously
essayed coffee planting at Amsterdam, where
I need scarcely say the experiment was an
egregious failure.

The astuteness and fastidiousness of
subsequent generations added cognac and other
liqueurs as zests to coffee; and some slight
little public memorial—such as a statue, a
fountain, or a pump—is certainly due to that
philosopher who discovered the compound of
burnt coffee and alcohol, known as "gloria."
It has been reserved for this age, however, in
an almost depravity of improvement to give
us cakes, and even ices flavoured with coffee.
What will people do with it next? Will they
make prayer-books and pocket-handkerchiefs
of it as they have done of gutta percha; or
Napier's bones and portable a b c's as they do
now, in Paris, of chocolate?

Hie we back to England. In the days of
William the Dutchman, of the good Queen
Anne, of George the lover of bad oysters
and worse characters, coffee and coffee-
houses reached their apogee, to undergo,
however, in the two subsequent reigns, a
temporary decadence. From 1690 to 1730,
the age was essentially a coffee drinking and
coffee-house frequenting one. We cannot open
the pleasant pages of Swift's Journal to
Stella; we cannot skim through the brilliantly
bitter lines of Pope; or peep cursorily (very
cursorily) at the lucubrations of Mr. Ned
Ward; or plod through the London Gazette
or Daily Courant; or even yawn through the
columns of eccentric morality of wrongheaded
old Jeremy Collier, without finding scores of
references to coffee and coffee-houses.
Vanbrugh, Congreve, Farquhar, and Mrs. Centlivre,
abound with allusions to coffee-house life.