lished in 1791. This pleasant, gossiping miscellany, the result of extensive reading, is not distinguished for any of the higher qualities of authorship. It is neither brilliant nor profound. But, if not always accurate, it is never offensive; and we read the book with the same delight that we listen without effort to an agreeable and unpretending story-teller, who is fuller of his subject than of himself. His son, the Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli, created Earl of Beaconsfield, earned for himself laurels, not only in the fields of literature, but also in the senate.]

It is said that the frozen Norwegians, on the first sight of roses, dared not touch what they conceived were trees budding with fire; and the natives of Virginia, the first time they seized on a quantity of gunpowder which belonged to the English colony, sowed it for grain, expecting to reap a plentiful crop of combustion by the next harvest, to blow away the whole colony.

In our own recollection, strange imaginations impeded the first period of vaccination; when some families, terrified by the warning of a physician, conceived their race would end in a species of Minotaurs.

We smile at the simplicity of the men of nature, for their mistaken notions at the first introduction among them of exotic novelties; and yet, even in civilised Europe, how long a time. those whose profession, or whose reputation, regulate public opinion, are influenced by vulgar prejudices, often disguised under the imposing form of science! and when their ludicrous absurdities and obstinate prejudices enter into the matters of history, it is then we discover that they were only imposing on themselves and on others.

It is hardly credible, that on the first introduction of the Chinese leaf, which now affords our daily refreshment; or the American leaf, whose sedative fumes made it so long a universal favourite ; or the Arabian berry, whose aroma exhilarates its European votaries; that the use of these harmless novelties should have spread consternation in the nations of Europe, and have been anathematised by the terrors and the fictions of some of the learned. Yet this seems to have happened. Patin, who wrote so furiously against the introduction of antimony, spread the same alarm

at the use of tea, which he calls "l'impertinente nouveauté du siècle." In Germany, Hanneman considered tea-dealers as immoral members of society, lying in wait for men's purses and lives; and Dr Duncan, in his treatise on hot liquors, suspected that the virtues attributed to tea were merely to encourage the importation.

Many virulent pamphlets were published against the use of this shrub, from various motives. In 1670, a Dutch writer says it was ridiculed in Holland under the name of hay-water. "The progress of this famous plant," says an ingenious writer, "has been something like the progress of truth; suspected at first, though very palatable to those who had courage to taste it; resisted as it encroached; abused as its popularity seemed to spread; and established its triumph at last, in cheering the whole land from the palace to the cottage, only by the slow and resistless efforts of time and its own virtues."-"Edinburgh Review," 1816.

The history of the tea-shrub, written by Dr Lettsom, is usually referred to on this subject: I consider it little more than a plagiarism on Dr Short's learned and curious "Dissertation on Tea," 1730, 4to. Lettsom has superadded the solemn trifling of his moral and medical advice.

Those now common beverages are all of recent origin in Europe; neither the ancients nor those of the middle ages tasted of this luxury. The first accounts we find of the use of this shrub are the casual notices of travellers, who seem to have tasted it, and sometimes not to have liked it. A Russian ambassador, in 1639, who resided at the Court of the Mogul, declined accepting a large present of tea for the czar, as it would only encumber him with a commodity for which he had no use." The appearance of a black water," and an acrid taste, seem not to have recommended it to the German Olearius, in 1633. Dr Short has recorded an anecdote of a stratagem of the Dutch in their second voyage to China, by which they at first obtained their tea without disbursing money; they carried with them great store of dried sage, and bartered it with the Chinese for tea; and received three or four pounds of tea for one of sage; but at length the

Dutch could not export a sufficient quantity of sage to supply their demand. This fact, however, proves how deeply the ima gination is concerned with our palate, for the Chinese, affected by the exotic novelty, considered our sage to be more precious than their tea.

This ac

The first introduction of tea into Europe is not ascertained; according to the common accounts, it came into England from Holland, in 1666, when Lord Arlington and Lord Ossory brought over a small quantity: the custom of drinking tea became fashionable, and a pound weight sold then for sixty shillings. count, however, is by no means satisfactory. I have heard of Oliver Cromwell's tea-pot in the possession of the collector, and this will derange the chronology of those writers who are perpetually copying the researches of others, without confirming or correcting them.

Amidst the rival contests of the Dutch and the English East India Companies, the honour of introducing its use into Europe may be claimed by both. Dr Short conjectures that tea might nave been known in England as far back as the reign of James I., for the first fleet set out in 1600: but had the use of this shrub been known, the novelty would have been chronicled among our dramatic writers, whose works are the annals of our prevalent tastes and humours. It is rather extraordinary that our East India Company should not have discovered the use of this shrub in their early adventures; yet it certainly was not known in England so late as 1641, for in a scarce Treatise of Warm Beer," where the title indicates the author's design to recommend hot in preference to cold drinks, he refers to tea only by quoting the Jesuit Maffei's account, that "they of China do for the most part drink the strained liquor of an herb called Chia, hot." The word Cha is the Portugese term for tea, retained to this day, which they borrowed from the Japanese: while our intercourse with the Chinese made us, no doubt, adopt their term Theh, now prevalent throughout Europe, with the exception of the Portugese. The Chinese origin is still preserved in the term Bohea, tea which comes from the country of Vouhi; and that of Hyson was the