Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/101

Rh  conversation, sharpens the capacity for wit, smooths the wrinkled brow, and is sometimes able to convert enemies into friends. As it produces or aggravates hysterical and hypocondriacal affections, Tissot cautions literary and sedentary people against its use: but to those who are inclined to trim the midnight lamp, it cannot but prove acceptable; but they would do well to use it rather as an occasional refreshment, than as a constant beverage. Dr. Fothergill thought the French practice of drinking coffee immediately after dinner, much better than our plan of postponing it to a later hour: that, at any rate, it must prove a desirable substitute for the bottle, which, in England and the northern parts of Europe, detains the gentlemen at the dinner-table so long after the cloth is withdrawn, to the injury of their fortunes, and too often to the still greater injury of their health and happiness.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE REPOSITORY OF ARTS, &c.

distresses of the West India colonies have been so fully substantiated and proved, that it may be assumed as a fact, respecting which there can be no difference of opinion. The causes which have produced this situation of things, and the remedies which have been adopted for the relief of the West India planters, are subjects which have occasioned considerable discussions both in and out of doors; but I cannot help remarking, that in defiance of fact, and almost in contempt of conviction, there are persons who, with an obstinacy more wilful than error, impute these distresses to every cause but that which reason and common sense point out as the true one. The letter which I had written with a view to its insertion in the first number of your Repository, was intended to remove the impressions which some observations in the Monthly Review for October were calculated to make on the public mind.

In the account of "A short Appeal to the Landed Interest of this Country," after quoting an observation from the pamphlet, "that the West India interest have a right to relief from government," the writer of the Review boldly asserts, "that the embarrassments of that body, however, it has been most clearly shewn, have arisen from shortsighted and erroneous speculations;" and then asks, "on what principle is a government to relieve persons who fall into difficulties from want of skill and foresight?" After a very weak, illogical, and irrelevant illustration of this argument by a reference to the losses which a merchant of the utmost ability and judgment may sustain in consequence of hostilities, in provoking of which he has been in no degree accessary [sic], the reviewer L2