modified, or aggravated by schnaps, as at
the great pilots' coffee-house, the "KÅ“ning
Leopold " at Ostend.

Of the present state and position of coffee-
shops in one country, I feel myself called
upon, however, briefly to treat. The coffee-
houses of London have, within the last thirty
years, done, to my mind, so much good; have
worked such important results, and offer so
many curious questions for solution both
social and commercial, that I should be
unjust were I to pass them over. I mean
the genuine, orthodox, London coffee-houses—
coffee-shops, if you will; where coffee is
dispensed to the million at varying rates of one
penny, three-halfpence, and twopence per cup;
where eggs, bread and butter, bacon, and
similar refreshments, are provided at moderate
rates; but where no ardent spirits or
fermented liquors of any kind are either
demanded by the customers, or conceded
by the proprietors; where—in lieu of the
glasses that were wont to circle round
the board, and the good company that
was wont to fall underneath it in the old-
fashioned coffee-houses—there is provided for
the serious, well-conducted frequenters, a
feast of newspapers and a flow of cheap
periodicals. You and I can remember when such
coffee-houses were not. If, in the old time, we
wanted a cup, a dish or a bowl of coffee, we were
compelled to go to the coffee-room of an hotel
for it; provided always that we did not care
to consume it at home. And coffee at home,
even, was, in those days, not by any means a
faultless compound. Our aunts and mothers
and sisters were blindly attached to certain
prejudices and superstitions respecting the
lining or clearing of coffee. Noxious
compositions, such as dried fish-skins, egg-shells,
what ought to have been isinglass (but was
fish-bones boiled to a jelly), together with red
hot coals, were thrown into the unresisting
coffee-pot to facilitate the fining operation.
Certain strange and fetisli rites were also
performed with the same view, by knocking
the coffee-pot a cabalistic number of times on
the hob, and chucking it up in rnid air till the
hot liquid within became a confused mass of
grouts and conflicting flavours. Coffee-houses
have effected a great reform in this respect,
and have driven away many baneful though
time-honoured superstitions.

There is scarcely a street in London—
certainly it would be difficult to find three
together, unprovided with a coffee-shop. The
types do not vary much. Where men go
simply for amusement or dissipation, they
will naturally congregate in classes: the
beggar will go to the beggar's public-house,
and the thief to the thieves' theatre. But a
coffee-house is neutral ground. There are
in every coffee-shop whig, and tory, and
radical publications, and whigs, tories, and
radicals assembled harmoniously to read
them; for the readers are as mute as the
papers.

Something like uniformity, almost amounting
to monotony, prevails in the majority
of London coffee-shops. The ornamental is
generally sacrificed to the useful. A plain room,
divided into plain stalls by varnished partitions,
and fitted with plain Pembroke tables, papers,
periodicals, and magazines, not quite guiltless
of coffee stains and bread-and-butter spots, a
neat waitress, economical of speech, and who
is for ever ringing the changes between two
refrains of " coffee and slice," and " tea and
a hegg,"—are common to all coffee-houses.
There is more deal in some, more mahogany
in others; there are aristocratic coffee-
houses, where they serve you silver salt
castors with your muffins, and silver cream-
jugs with your coffee; there are low—very
low—coffee-shops, where there is sand on the
floor, and an ill odour pervading the place
"generally all over." Yet, in all these coffee-
houses, high or low, aristocratic or humble,
clean or dirty, deal or mahogany furnished,
night or day, I can sit for hours and wonder.
I ponder on the evidence of Mr. Pamphilon
before the coffee committee of the House of
Commons, not twenty years ago; and, reading
that, and reading the excise returns, how
I wonder! I wonder when I see these strong
bands of honest working-men; of swart
artizans; of burly coalheavers and grimy
ballast porters; who are content to come
straight from the factory, the anvil, or the
wharf to the coffee-shop; who can bid the
shining river of beer flow on unheeded, and
content themselves with the moderate
evening's amusement to be found in cheap
periodicals. And, forced as I am sometimes to
admit the presence in my coffee-cup of some
other ingredients besides coffee, such as chicory,
burnt beans, pounded bones, calcined clover,
or such trifling little strangers—I wonder
still at the immense good the penny cup of
coffee (as it should be), but still the cup,
coffee or not coffee, has worked in this huge
London. Whatever it be, they drink it, and
it does not make them, drunk; and drinking,
they read; and reading, they learn to think,
and to wash, and to teach their little children
to read, and to think, and to wash, too. I
doubt if a murder were ever planned in
a coffee-shop.

CHIPS.

TRANSPORTATION FOR LIFE.

IT appears that since the return of the
subject of " Transported for Life" (see pages
455 and 482 of the present volume), some
modifications have taken place in the rules
applicable to persons banished to the British
penal colonies. We are informed that now, no
prisoner is sent to Norfolk Island unless he
has proved utterly incorrigible during his
detention in a less penal settlement. Neither
is the sentence of transportation from this
country so immediately carried out as