232 CHEMICAL, MEDICAL AND DIETICAL PROPERTIES. 



and creating a sense of repose peculiarly grateful to 

 those who have been taxed and tormented by the rush 

 and routine of business cares and vexations. What a 

 promoter of sociability, what home comforts does it not 

 suggest, as, when Cowper, on a winter's evening, draws a 

 cheerful picture of the crackling fire, the curtained win- 

 dows, the hissing urn and " the cup that cheers ?" When, 

 however, tea drinking ceases to be the amusement of the 

 leisure moment or resorted to in too large quantities or 

 strong infusions as a means of stimulating the flagging 

 energies to accomplish the allotted task, whatever it 

 might be, then distinct danger commences. A break- 

 down is liable to ensue in more than one way, as not 

 infrequently the stimulus which tea in time fails to give 

 is sought in alcoholic or other liquors, and the atonic 

 dyspepsia which the astringent decoction produced, by 

 overdrawing induces, helps to drive the victim to seek 

 temporary relief in spirits chloral or the morphine habit, 

 which is established with extraordinary rapidity. For it is 

 a truth that as long as a person uses stimulants simply for 

 their taste he is comparatively safe, but as soon as he 

 begins to drink them for effect he is running into great 

 danger. This may be stating the case too forcibly for 

 stimulants, but if this rule was more closely adhered to 

 we should have fewer cases of educated people falling into 

 the habit of secret intemperance or morphomania. 



TEA AND THE POETS. 



The subdued irascibility, the refreshed spirits, and the 

 renewed energies which the student and the poet so often 

 owed to tea has been the theme of many an accomplished 

 pen, eminent writers of all times and all countries con- 

 sidering it no indignity to extol the virtues of this 

 precious and fascinating beverage. What Bacchanalian 



