CHEMICAL, MEDICAL AND DIETICAL PROPERTIES. 231 



Tea was Johnson's only stimulant, he loved it as much 

 as Person loved gin, drinking it all times and under all 

 circumstances, in bed and out, with his friends and alone, 

 more particularly while compiling his famous dictionary. 

 Boswell drank cup after cup, as if it had been the " Heli- 

 conian spring." While Hazlet, like Johnson, was a 

 prodigous tea-drinker, Shelley's favorite beverage was 

 water, but at the same time tea was always grateful to 

 him. Bulwer's breakfast was generally composed of dry 

 toast and cold tea, and De Quincy states that he invari- 

 ably drank tea from eight o'clock at night until four in 

 the morning, when engaged in his literary labors, and 

 knew whereof he spoke when he named tea " the bever- 

 age of the intellectual." Kent usually had a cup of tea 

 and a pipe of tobacco, on which he worked eight hours 

 at a stretch, and Motley, the historian tells us that he 

 " usually rose at seven, and with the aid of a cup of tea 

 only, wrote until eleven." And Victor Hugo, as a 

 general rule, used tea freely, but fortifying it with a little 

 brandy. Turning from literature to politics, we find that 

 Palmerston resorted to tea during the midnight sessions 

 of Parliament. Cobden declaring " the more work he had 

 to do the more tea he drank," and Gladstone himself 

 confesses to drinking large quantities of tea between 

 midnight and morning during the prolonged parliamentary 

 sittings, while Clemenceau, the leader of the French 

 Radicals, admits himself to be "an intemperate tea- 

 drinker " during the firey discussions of debate. 



In moderation, tea is pre-eminently the beverage of the 

 twilight hour, when tired humanity seeks repose after 

 a day of wearying labor. Then the hot infusion 

 with its alluring aroma refreshing and stimulating, 

 increasing the respiration, elevating the pulse, softening 

 the temper, producing tranquility in mind and body, 



