Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/100

 them about thirty subordinates employed under them, in preparing this favourite beverage; and it is said, that a refusal to supply a wife with coffee, is among the legal grounds for obtaining a divorce. The first mention of coffee in the west of Europe is by Rauwolff, in 1573. The tree was accurately described in 1591, by Prosper Alpinus. Its use as a beverage is noticed bv two English travellers, Biddulph in 1603, and William Finch in 1607. In 1615, Petro della Valle writes from Constantinople, that he should bring some coffee, which he believed was a thing unknown in this country. In France it was first introduced at Marseilles in 1644. In 1660, several bales were imported from Egypt, and in 1671 a coffee-house was opened at Marseilles. It was first brought to Paris in 1657, by that celebrated traveller Thevenot, but was very little known. In 1669, it was more generally introduced by Soliman Aga, ambassador from Sultan Mahomet IV. and in 1672 a coffee- house was opened by an Armenian named Pascal, who afterwards removed to London. But the use of coffee as a beverage had been known in England from the year 1652, when a Turkish merchant, named Daniel Edwards, brought home with him a Greek servant, named Pasqua, who understood the method of roasting and preparing it. This man was the first who publicly sold coffee; and kept a house for that purpose in George-yard, Lombard-street. The first mention of coffee in our statute books occurs in 1660 (12th Charles II. c. 24), and a duty of 4d. per gallon was levied upon the maker. In 1663, it was enacted, that all coffee-houses should be licensed at the quarter sessions for the county. In 1675, they were shut up by proclamation for a short period, as seminaries of sedition. Since this period, they are frequently mentioned in our statute books, but merely with a view to the regulation of the duties upon the article of coffee. In France and Germany, coffee is usually made stronger than in England: a lively French writer has observed, that the English care little about the quality, if they get but enough of it. Dr. Fothergill was of opinion, that if the poor and middling classes could procure it reasonable, and be sufficiently supplied, it would be much more nourishing and beneficial than the wretched beverage of ordinary tea, in which they now indulge. On the other hand, the thesis, entitled Potus Coffeœ, delivered by a Swedish student at Upsal, and published in the Amenitates Academicœ, under the direction of Linnæus himself, is a sarcastic, entertaining invective against the introduction of this novel luxury: he gives a ludicrous list of the expensive utensils required for its use in the fashionable style, which the vanity of his country-women would not suffer them to forego; and enumerates, with triumphant satisfaction, the long train of bodily disorders which it was likely to generate. But if we are to credit Du Tour, if banishes languor and anxiety, gives those who drink it a pleasing sensation of their own well- being, and diffuses through the whole frame a vivifying delightful warmth. It is also, according to this writer, highly favourable to the social virtues, promotes