278 MORAL INFLUENCE. 



expression, that "if Queen Elizabeth had breakfasted 

 upon coffee and hot rolls, instead of beer and bacon, 

 Queen Mary would never had been beheaded." We find 

 in bygone ages a perversity of temper, an impetuosity of 

 will, a violence of the passions which has led some moral- 

 ists to consider the later generations of the human race 

 as decreasing in vital force, while indeed the phenomenon 

 might be explained as the single result of an over-stimu- 

 lating and too exciting a diet and a lack of temperance. 

 Let the people begin to indulge once again in drinking 

 wine, ale or other intoxicating beverages at the morning 

 meal instead of tea or coffee, and we will soon have the 

 same amount of vital force back again. It is not the 

 power of passion which has decreased, but the power 

 of restriction which has increased, and a comprehensive 

 consideration of historical facts seem to justify the con- 

 clusion that this increased power of the reason is due as 

 much to a more proper feeding of the body as to a better 

 system of education. 



The mental exhilaration and physical activity and buoy- 

 ancy which coffee causes explains the fondness which has 

 been shown for it by so many men of science, poets, scholars 

 and others devoted to writing or thinking at all times, 

 and for which reason it has been styled the " intellectual 

 beverage." Preachers, orators, editors and lawyers find- 

 ing a cup of good coffee the gentlest, most harmless and 

 effective of brain-bracers, but it does not appear to be 

 generally known that nearly all men of literary habits 

 who exhaust much nerve force use it constantly. It 

 supported Voltaire in his old age and enabled Fontenelle 

 to pass his hundred years. It was Voltaire who replied, 

 on being informed by his physician "that coffee was a slow 

 poison',' " Yes, I know it is a very slow poison ; it has 

 been poisoning me for over seventy years;" and Sydney 



