Since the introduction of Tea into England, but more especially since the British public has patronised it, a marked improvement characterises the tone and manners of Society. It is not, possibly, too great an assumption to assert that there must exist something about Tea specially suitable to the English constitution and climate; for not even in Scotland or Ireland, nor in any European country, is the beverage consumed to a like extent. Certain travellers aver that a large consumption of the leaf obtains in Russia; but it is chiefly the upper classes who are addicted to its use. The moujiks, peasants, and artisans scarcely know the taste of it, for now, as in the time of Peter the Great, they regard vodká as their only national drink.

That all classes of the community in this country have derived much benefit from the persistent use of Tea, is placed beyond dispute. It has proved, and still proves, a highly prized boon to millions. The artist at his easel, the author at his desk, the statesman fresh from an exhaustive oration, the actor from the stage after fulfilling an arduous rôle, the orator from the platform, the preacher from the pulpit, the toiling mechanic, the wearied labourer, the poor governess, the tired laundress, the humble cottage housewife, the votary of pleasure even, on escaping from the scene of revelry, nay, the Queen on her throne, have, one and all, to acknowledge and express gratitude for the grateful and invigorating infusion.

Shortly after it had became fashionable to partake of Tea, persons of quality in England were wont to invite their friends to a “dish” of the newly-imported beverage. Lord Macaulay mentions how “Tea, which at the time Monk brought the Army of Scotland to London (A. D. 1660), had been handed round to be stared at and just touched with the lips as a great rarity of China, was, eighty years later, a regular article of import, and was soon consumed in such quantities that financiers began to consider it as an important source of revenue.” Seven years later Pepys has this entry in his famous Diary: “Home, and there find my wife making of Tea, a drink which Mr. Pelling, the apothicary, tells her is good for her cold.” That Queen Anne ranked among the votaries of the leaf is manifest from Pope’s couplet:—

From this time forth writers of renown make constant allusions to the new drink. Essayists in the Spectator, the Tatler, and other literary organs, are ever dropping remarks respecting the tea-table. Pope, in his “Rape of the Lock,” when Belinda is declaring what terrible things she would rather have had happen, than have lost her favourite curl, makes her cap everything by the wish that she could be transported to—

than which privation she can imagine nothing worse.

Then what a source of social pleasure the “afternoon Tea” becomes! Brady, in his well known metrical version of the “Psalms,” thus illustrates the advantages accruing therefrom:—

The poet Cowper’s praise of the beverage has been sadly hackneyed; nevertheless, as the Laureate of the tea-table, his lines are worthy of further reproduction. Who cannot recall how Mrs. Gilpin scornfully characterises her neighbours’ children as being markedly inferior to her own,

as though the force of comparison could no further go. Yet it is in his more serious and didactic poem that the melancholy friend of the hares exclaims:—

But Tea had its avowed enemies no less than its staunch friends. Certain old fashioned physicians did not like it. Nay, they even sneered at and denounced it. Jonas Hanway, the philanthropic but eccentric founder of the Marine and the Magdalen Societies, more bold than his compeers, actually rushed into print in order to inveigh against it. But he had reason to regret his hot-headed impetuosity. In answer to his petty attack, the beverage found a noble defender in no less a personage than Dr. Johnson, whose defence, in point of style, is among the best essays the great moralist ever penned. Hanway, however, nothing daunted, resumed the attack. Having lost his temper, he gave full scope to his prejudices, and denounced Tea as the worst of poisons and the secondary cause of all the moral, religious, and political evils that distracted mankind. Not only so, but he was rash enough to attack the leviathan of literature personally. Yet he had far better have saved his ink, for Johnson—the first time in his life that he had retorted on an adversary—fell upon him like an avalanche. Hanway having foolishly laid himself open to ridicule, most assuredly the Doctor did not spare him. Such a contest, of course, could not be regarded as equal. No possible comparison existed between the combatants. Therefore, setting aside all the hard knocks which Johnson administered to poor Jonas, it will be sufficient to produce one passage in which the eminent writer declares himself “a hardened sinner in the use of the infusion of this plant, whose tea-pot had no time to cool, who with Tea solaced the midnight, and with Tea welcomed the morning.” There is not the slightest exaggeration in this confession. What is affirmed therein is attested both by Boswell and Mrs. Thrale in their respective writings, who record that Dr. Johnson frequently exceeded a dozen large cups at one meal.

It is alleged that the first command given by our gracious Queen upon her accession to the Throne was “Bring me a cup of Tea and The Times.” It is to be hoped that Her Majesty got the former uncoloured.

For a time it appeared that so far as one class of the community was concerned, the use of Tea was likely to be checked by the imperious sway of inconstant Fashion. It became the custom in the houses of the aristocracy to supply only coffee after dinner, so that, for a period, Tea was ostracised. Recently however, a reaction has set in, for we find that the most agreeable meetings in “Society” are those which assemble at “the five o’clock Tea.” Accordingly one of the whirligigs of time has so conspired, that while the fashionable breakfast and dinner hours are completely revolutionised, the hour for Tea has reverted to the precise period of the day at which it used to be taken one hundred years ago. Although noble ladies have not now black pages to hand round the tea-cups, yet the very china used by their great grandmothers is called into requisition simply because of its antiquity. One circumstance calls for special notice. It is this, that in the words of Dr. JohnstonB “Everywhere unintoxicating and non-narcotic beverages are in general use among tribes of every colour, beneath every sun, and in every condition of life. The custom, therefore, must meet some universal want of our common nature.”

Philanthropists and sociologists are now fully alive to the moral effects produced by such non-intoxicant drinks as Tea and Coffee. Intemperance is the bane of the nation. And now that legislation has utterly failed to restrain the evils arising therefrom, philanthropy, full of faith in the experiment, endeavours by the establishment, in divers quarters, of quite a different class of “Public Houses,” to arrest an evil which is assuming the gravest character. And there can be no doubt that if the masses could be induced to substitute the pure beverages Tea and Coffee for the deleterious fluids they are wont to imbibe, the country would be vastly benefited by the salutary change.