COFFEE. 429 



laid in ashes ; the saloons were shut, and their keepers 

 pelted with the fragments of their broken pots and cups. 

 This occurred in 1523 ; but by an order of Selim I. the 

 decrees of the muftis were reversed ; the tumults both in 

 Egypt and Arabia were quashed ; the drinking of coffee 

 was pronounced not to be heretical ; and two Persian doc- 

 tors, who had declared it to be pernicious to the health, 

 were hanged by order of the sultan. From Cairo this 

 contested liquor passed to Damascus and Aleppo, and 

 thence to Constantinople (in 1554), where it encountered 

 and triumphed over the persecution of the dervises, who 

 declaimed vehemently against the impiety of human be- 

 ings eating charcoal, as they called the bean when roasted, 

 which their Prophet had declared was not intended by 

 God for food. 



From the Levant it found its way by degrees to Europe, 

 and was probably imported by the Dutch and Venetian 

 merchants. Pietro della Valle, who travelled in 1615, 

 seems the first that made it known in Italy. Mons. The- 

 venot, on his return from the East in 1657, brought it 

 with him to France as a curiosity, though it appears to 

 have been used privately at Marseilles ten years earlier ; 

 and in 1679 the medical faculty of that city made its dele- 

 terious effects the theme of a public disputation. The first 

 coffee-house opened in Paris was in 1672, by an Armenian 

 named Pascal (or Pasqua), who sold this beverage at 

 2s. 6d. a-cup ; but the want of encouragement obliged him 

 to remove to London. The government of Charles II. 

 attempted in vain to suppress these places of entertain- 

 ment as nurseries of sedition ; and in a few years they 

 became general throughout the country. The first Eu- 

 ropean author that wrote expressly on coffee was Prospero 

 Alpino, a celebrated botanist and physician of Padua, who 

 resided at Cairo in 1580. It is not mentioned by Belon, 

 who has described the most remarkable .plants of Egypt 

 and Arabia (A. D. 1546-49). Lord Bacon, who died in 

 1626, and Dr John Ray, both speak of it; but in a 

 manner which shows that they had a very superficial 

 knowledge of the subject. Its qualities, however, were 

 soon afterwards celebrated both by naturalists and poets. 

 Della Valle insisted that it was the nepenthe of Homer, 

 while Mons. Paschius alleged that it was among the ar- 

 ticles presented to David by Abigail. In France it be- 

 came a theme for the dramatic muse; and in 1694, Le 



VOL. n. 2 D 



