8 INTRODUCTION INTO EUROPE. 



of sensitive enjoyment, a submission not at all uncom- 

 mon, the political objections were not so easily silenced. 

 The government, first with that instinctive faculty so 

 natural to all despotic rulers of converting to their own 

 advantage the tastes and prejudices of their subjects, 

 laid a heavy tax on the sale and consumption of coffee, 

 from which it derived an enormous revenue. But the 

 ever-trembling apprehensions of such forms of govern- 

 ment, not satisfied w r ith this restriction, found, or rather 

 fancied it found, in the coffee-houses resorts for the 

 disaffected and nurseries of sedition. These " dangerous 

 places " were consequently regarded with a jealous eye, 

 and again proclaimed against by the edict of the Sultan. 

 But not being deemed formidable beyond the precincts 

 of the city, and also being of too much importance to 

 the public revenue, they were suffered to remain open in 

 all other parts of the empire. Scruples of conscience 

 and political objections, however, eventually died out, 

 religious superstition and political opposition being no 

 longer excited against the use of coffee as a beverage, 

 so far as the Turkish empire was concerned. 



It is likewise very difficult to determine in what year 

 and in what exact manner coffee was first carried from 

 Constantinople to western Europe, but it is generally 

 admitted that the Venetians, on account of the proximity 

 of their dominions and extensive trade with the Levant, 

 were the first Europeans to become acquainted with it. 

 And it is a noteworthy fact that the three principal dietical 

 beverages of the world were introduced into Europe 

 within a few years of each other, Cocoa being the first 

 of the three which actually appeared there, having been 



