In the scenes of that great human comedy of
which William Hogarth was the worthy
exponent, the coffee-pot and coffee-cup hold no
insignificant place. Nought but coffee could
fill that delicate little vase which the
inimitable black boy hands to the fine lady in
the second scene of the Marriage à la mode;
and nought but coffee titillates the delicate
nerves of that as inimitable beau, with his
hair in papers, who, in the same picture, holds
his cup with an air of mincing, finicking
affectation infinitely truthful. There is coffee on
the alderman's table as well as ale; coffee,
as well as the hot kettle, and another black
boy, in the second tableau of the Harlot's
Progress; and, believe me, it was for the
purpose of diluting his coffee, and not his tea,
that the distressed poet contracted that
enormous score for milk for which he is so
ruthlessly dunned by the Welshwoman in his poor
garret, where Ins pretty wife sits patiently
mending her husband's clothes. How I love
that picture of the Distressed Poet, and how
my heart warms towards the honest
Englishman who painted it. There is a whole
life-history of patient love and truth and
untiring constancy; of the smile always
ready to meet the frown of disappointment
and vexation; of the hand always stretched
out to smooth the care-wrinkled brow; of
sure, cheerful, household virtues in that one
figure of the plain young woman darning
the poet's netherlings. I am sure Fielding
had the picture in his eye when he wrote
Amelia; I am equally certain Mr. Elmore
had a kindly remembrance of it when
he painted the Invention of the Stocking-
loom.

The coffee-houses of the Annian and
Georgian eras are household words with us.
Will's and Button's, and Betty's and Don
Salteros and Tom Kings are familiar spirits,
calling up recollections as familiar. They
call up John Dryden—enthroned in the
memorable arm-chair from which no man
dared to dream of ousting him—talking
criticism ex cathedrâ, and electrifying young
gentlemen from the country. They call up
old, garrulous, coarse Tom Durfey, wondering
whether he is fifty years in advance of the
world, or the world fifty years in advance of
him. They call up Mr. Dennis hanging up a
birch-rod by the side of the fire-place, with
which he threatens to whip Mr. Pope; Steele
writing charming billets to his wife between
his coffee and his wine; Addison, silent and
bashful at first, like his own Spectator; but,
warming when he has had, alas! a little more
wine than is good for him, becoming voluble
with discourse good for others. What though
a little more wine may have been consumed
in those old time coffee-houses than the
legitimate infusion of Mocha, they were true
coffee-houses, and we shall never see their
like again.

From the commencement of the reign of
George the Second till very nearly the
termination of that of George the Third, coffee-
houses were coffee-houses only in name. The
roystering dens where Richard Savage
swindled waiters, and opened subscriptions for
his own relief, and pinked his friends: where,
with inked ruffles, and flushed face, and
disordered wig, Harry Fielding sat down to pen
articles for the Covent Garden Journal—were
taverns, unadulterated taverns. Lieutenant
Lismahago may have occasionally dropped in
to take a " bowl " of coffee; Ferdinand Count
Fathom might rarely have cooled his fevered
blood with a cup of the aromatic article;
Squire Western may, from time to time, have
left his snuff-box in a coffee-house, and sent
his chaplain to fetch it, as it is on history that
he did at the Hercules' Pillars; but strong
liquor was the staple commodity vended.
They were as much coffee-houses—those so
called cafés of a hundred or eighty years ago
—as the coffee-rooms of our present public-
houses are really rooms for the consumption
of coffee.

Although not banished, but fallen into
desuetude in houses of public entertainment
in England, coffee found refuge and comfort
in France. The cafés of the Palais Royal
had, before the fall of the French monarchy,
achieved an European reputation. It was to
the Café de Cantal that Piron and Crebillon
the younger resorted, to crack questionable
jokes and to concoct libellous epigrams. In a
corner of the Café Procope, met that hardy
baud of encyclopedists (who knew almost
everything and believed in nothing) to sneer
away religion, and to crush belief—with
conundrums.

Were I to discuss, to describe, or even
cursorily to touch on the social characteristics
of any one of the numerous classes of
Continental coffee-houses, I should require a
book, rather than half-a-dozen columns.
The subject is one so cosmopolitan, so
intimately bound up with the progress of
civilisation; that, while ostensibly penning a
paper on coffee-shops, I should be in reality
writing a history of the manners, customs
and social peculiarities of the peoples who
were coffee-drinkers. So, seductive as are
the temptations of Continental coffee-shops, I
will not venture to touch upon them now.
I will reserve for a more convenient opportunity
the brilliant Parisian cafés, and the
consideration of the influence they have had
upon the progress of the decorative arts in
France; I will reserve the coffee-houses of
Germany where pipes and dominoes are the
rule, and clean coffee-cups and clean waiters
the exception; the cafés of Venice and Milan;
the cafés and cafejis of Stamboul and Smyrna;
the coffee-houses where there are concerts;
where there are dramatic performances;
where there are orchestras recruited by blind
men; where there are dances and orgies,
and feasts of cucumbers and hard eggs, as on
the Port at Antwerp; where circulate
massive white tureens of coffee considerably