leaf and drink made according to the directions
of the most knowing merchants and travellers
in those eastern countries, and upon knowledge
and experience of the said Garraway's
continued care and industry in obtaining the best
tea, and making the best tea, and making drink
thereof, very many noblemen, physicians, and
merchants, and gentlemen of quality, have ever
since sent to him for the said leaf, and daily
resort to his house in Exchange Alley aforesaid,
and drink the drink thereof; and to this intent,
&c., these are to give notice that the said
Thomas hath tea to sell from sixteen to fifty
shillings the pound." Fifty shillings the pound,
forsooth; and now we get good Souchong, that
deadly enemy to beer and wine, at three shillings
a pound.

Soon after this Pepys, that rarest of gossips,
whose curiosity for novelties was insatiable,
mentions tasting tea in September, 1660. "Tea
—a Chinese drink, of which I had never drank
before." But it does not seem to have made
much impression on the worthy admiralty clerk,
for in 1667, he says again, "Came in and found
my wife making tea, a new drink which is said
to be good for her cold and defluxions." The
Earl of Clarendon, that grand party historian,
writes in his diary, "Père Couplet dined with
me, and after supper we had tea; which he
said was really as good as any he had drank in
China." Sir Kenelm Digby mentions with great
emotion a way of preparing tea used by the
Jesuits when coming in tired and waiting for
a meal.

"The priest that came from China," he says
"told Mr. Waller that to a pint of tea they
frequently take the yolks of two new-laid eggs,
and beat them up with as much fine sugar as is
sufficient for the tea, and stir all well together.
The water must remain upon the tea no longer
than while you can say the Miserere psalm
very leisurely, you have then only the spiritual
part of the tea, the proportion of which to the
water must be about a drachm to a pint."

In 1688 the Court of Directors, writing to
their factory agents at Bantam, in Java, ordered
them to send back home one hundred pounds
weight of the best tea they could get, and the next
year there arrived their first consignment of tea,
in two canisters of one hundred and forty-three
pounds and a half each. The directors had
previously presented Charles's Portuguese queen,
who had learnt to like the Chinese beverage at
home, on the shores of the Tagus, with twenty-two
pounds of tea on her birthday. It was on
this presentation that courtly Waller wrote his
verses:

Venus her Myrtle, Phœbus has his Bays,
Tea both excels, which she vouchsafes to praise;
The best of queens and best of herbs we owe
To that bold nation which the way did show
To the first region where the sun doth rise,
Whose rich productions we so justly prize.
The muse's friend, tea, doth our fancy aid,
Repress those vapours which the head invade,
And keeps that palace of the soul serene,
Fit on her birthday to salute the queen.

Nicholas Tulp, the same eminent Professor
of Amsterdam, whom Rembrandt painted with
his pupils gathered round him over the dissecting-
-table, had already, about 1670, written on
tea, and collected opinions of eminent physicians
on the subject of the new liquor. But in 1671
tea found a champion, indeed, in Cornelius
Bontekoe, a Leyden doctor, who upheld the
chemical theory of Dubois, and considered tea
a panacea against all the ills that flesh is heir
to. He pronounced it an infallible cause of
health, and thought two hundred cups daily
not too much even for a moderate drinker.
The Dutch East India Company is said to have
made it worth his while to uphold this opinion.

By Queen Anne's time tea had come into
full use, and tea parties were much what they
are now; indeed, there is now to be seen at
Leeds a picture painted before 1681, which
represents a tea party which strictly resembles
one at the present day, except that the kettle
stands by the side of the lady on a sort of tripod
stove.

In 1763, Linnæus had the satisfaction of
receiving a living tea-plant from China. He
seems to have believed it possible to grow tea
in Europe, for he says he looked upon nothing
to be of more importance than to shut the gate
through which so much silver went out of
Europe. In the time of the amiable Lettsom, who
died in 1815,

And if they dies, I Lett's-em—

tea-plants were introduced into England, and
they are now common in our conservatories.
The plant resembles a camellia. In France, at
one time, hopes were entertained of being able
to prepare the leaves for sale, but the scheme
was soon abandoned.

It must not be supposed that this Chinese
stranger forced his way to our tables without
opposition from the timid, the prejudiced, and
the interested. Hundreds of rival herbs and
spices were tried as the basis of refreshing
beverages. Medical men have gone alternately mad
after sage, marjoram, the Arctic bramble, the
sloe, goat-weed, Mexican goosefoot, speedwell,
wild geranium, veronica, wormwood, juniper,
saffron, carduus benedictus, trefoil, wood-sorrel,
pepper, mace, scurvy-grass, plantain, and
betony. Sir Hans Sloane invented a herb-tea,
and Dr. Solander (Captain Cook's companion)
another, but nothing has displaced the Chinese
leaf sprung from the eyelids of King Darma.

Cowper (circa 1782) did much in one of his
poems to associate tea with home comfort, and
to sanctify it with memories of domestic
happiness; what a pleasant interior he paints with
the firelight pulsing on the ceiling:

"Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each,
To let us welcome peaceful evening in."

We do not exactly know at what date the
urn, "the offspring of idleness," as it has been