8 INTRODUCTION INTO EUROPE. 



enjoyment, a submission not at all uncommon, the 

 political objections were not so easily silenced. The 

 government, first with that instinctive faculty so natural 

 to all despotic rulers of converting to their own ad- 

 vantage the tastes and prejudices of their subjects, laid 

 a heavy tax on the sale and consumption of coffee, 

 from which it derived an enormous revenue. But the 

 ever-trembling apprehensions of such forms of govern- 

 ment, not satisfied with this restriction, found, or rather 

 fancied it found, in the coffee-houses resorts for the 

 disaffected and nurseries of sedition. These " dangerous 

 places " were consequently regarded with a jealous eye, 

 and again proclaimed against by the edict of the Sultan. 

 But not being deemed formidable beyond the precincts 

 of the city, and also being of too much importance to 

 the public revenue, they were suffered to remain open in 

 all other parts of the empire. Scruples of conscience 

 and political objections, however, eventually died out, 

 religious superstition and political opposition being no 

 longer excited against the use of coffee as a beverage, 

 so far as the Turkish empire was concerned. 



I1VTK0DXJCTI03V IIVTO DEUKOPE. 



It is likewise very difficult to determine in what year 



and in what exact manner coffee was first carried from 



y Constantinople to western Europe, but it is generally 



^admitted that the Venetians, on account of the proximity 



/of their dominions and extensive trade with the Levant, 



were the first Europeans to become acquainted with it. 



And it is a noteworthy fact that the three principal dietical 



beverages of the world were introduced into Europe 



within a few years of each other, Cocoa being the first 



of the three which actually appeared there, having been 



