42 COFFEE. 



The correspondent of an American periodical thus comments 

 on the general character of the Paris cafes : 



" Alimentary, and not literary, is the modem cafe. Times are 

 so changed since Voltaire, Diderot, and the rest sang and shouted 

 in the Cafe Procope — ^jested, reasoned, and made themselves im- 

 mortal there — there are so many people who have the means to 

 frequent cafes, and there is such an immense floating population, 

 eager, curious, and bent on sight-seeing, that no clique can live. 

 Its precincts, no matter how hallowed, are invaded by the leering 

 mob and His many-headed Majesty the Crowd. Still, certain 

 cafes are able to boast a clientele, with the military, journalistic, 

 artistic, or commercial element in preponderating force — cafes 

 where the stockbrokers, students, or officers go — but the old his- 

 toric cafe, the cafe of tradition, where you were sure to find some 

 celebrity on exhibition^ — a first-class poet, or a philosopher — ^may 

 be said to be defunct." 



If the cafe of tradition has been transformed in France, it has 

 disappeared altogether in England. Of the old coffee-houses, of 

 which we have read so much, with which the names of Pope, Ad- 

 dison, Steele, Dryden, Johnson, and so many other poets, writers, 

 and public men, stand indissolubly connected in our minds, and 

 which were all in full stir and activity in the time of Queen 

 Anne, nothing remains at the present day ; for who would ven- 

 ture to recognize them in the solemnly magnificent clubs of Pall- 

 Mall? The English, from the point of view of coffee, have rather 

 fallen into bad ways, and tea has far outstripped the Arabian 

 berry in their affections. The term " coffee-house " in England has 

 become hardly more than nominal, the restaurant being the prin- 

 cipal feature, and one hears orders given for " a pint of bitter " or 

 " 'arf and 'arf " much more frequently than for a cup of coffee. 



StiU, that guiding-star of gastronomic England, M. Soyer, in 

 his all comprehensive solicitude for the human stomach, could not 

 overlook coffee. I respectfully transcribe into these pages the 

 directions of the master : 



M. soyee's method. 



"Put two ounces of ground coffee in a stewpan, which set 

 upon the fire, stirring the coffee round with a spoon until quite 



