106 HISTORY OF FRUITS. 



that it was M. Thevenot who taught the French to drink 

 coffee, on his return from the East, in 1657. It was 

 made fashionable and more known in Paris, in 1669, by 

 Soliman Aga, ambassador from Sultan Mahomet the 

 Fourth, who gave coffee at all his parties with great 

 magnificence ; and it could not fail to be pronounced an 

 agreeable beverage by the Parisian ladies, after they had 

 received it from his slaves on bended knee. If it were a 

 matter of policy with the Turks to get coffee introduced 

 into France, the ambassador's splendid porcelain, equi- 

 page, and gold-fringed napkins, were the best recommen- 

 dation that could have been given to a people who are so 

 naturally fond of show. 



Two years after, it was sold in public at the Foire St. 

 Germain, by Pascal, an Armenian, who afterwards set 

 up a coffee-house on the Quai de FEcole ; but, not being 

 encouraged in Paris, he left that city, and came to Lon- 

 don. However, soon after this, some spacious rooms were 

 opened in Paris for the sale of coffee, and they soon in- 

 creased to upwards of three hundred. 



It is said to have been first brought to England by Mr. 

 Nathaniel Conopius, a Cretan, who made it his common 

 beverage, at Baliol College, at Oxford, in the year 1641 ; 

 but it must evidently have been a few years prior to this 

 date, as Evelyn says in his Diary, 1637, " There came in 

 my tyme to the Coll: one Nathaniel Conopios out of 

 Greece, from Cyrill the Patriarch of Constantinople, 

 who, returning many years after, was made (as I under- 

 stand) Bishop of Smyrna : he was the first I ever saw 

 drink coffee, w ch custom came not into England till 30 

 years after." 



The first coffee-house in England was kept by one 

 Jacob, a Jew, at the sign of the Angel in Oxford^ in 

 1650. Coffee was first publicly known in London in 



