EARLY HISTORY OF COFFEE. 57 



in 1663, ' For the better ordering and collecting the duty of excise, 

 and preventing the abuses therein ' (15 Chas. II., Cap. II., Sect. 

 15), express provision is made for the licensing of all coffee-houses 

 at the quarter sessions, under a penalty of £5 for every month 

 during which any person should retail coffee, chocolate, or tea, 

 without having first procured such license from the magistrates. 

 From that time to the Kevolution, coffee-houses multiplied so rap- 

 idly that, when E.ay published his ' History of Plants,' in 1688, 

 he estimated that the coffee-houses in London were at that time 

 as numerous as in Cairo itself ; while similar places of accommo- 

 dation were to be met with in all the principal cities and towns 

 in England." 



Indeed, such favorite meeting-places had the coffee-houses 

 become with the politicians and wits of London, " for discussing, 

 theorizing, and general wagging of tongue," imder the exhilara- 

 tion of coffee, that in 1675 the government of Charles 11. came 

 to look upon them as public nuisances, and endeavored to have 

 them prohibited by the courts of law as " hot-beds of seditious 

 talk and slanderous attacks upon persons in high stations." A 

 decision was, in fact, rendered to that effect ; but, in England as 

 in Turkey, coffee rose superior to its foes. The English coffee- 

 houses could not be stifled ; they grew daily in popularity and 

 attained the height of activity and splendor in the first half of 

 the eighteenth century. 



It is curious to contrast this immediate and enthusiastic adop- 

 tion of coffee-drinking in England with its rather slow begin- 

 nings in France — a country which has since become as devoted to 

 coffee as England has grown indifferent to it. A French writer 

 suggests that one of the reasons why the English took so quickly 

 to coffee was that Great Britain, neither at home nor in her 

 colonies, had any cheap and good wines. By the use of the new 

 stimulant not only the British stomach, but British pride was grat- 

 ified ; for England, ever disliking dependence, political or com- 

 mercial, had not to borrow coffee from her continental neighbors, 

 with whom she was on doubtful terms. France, on the contrary, 

 raised an abundance of wines. Coffee found the grape in full 

 possession of the popular heart. The " cabarets," or wine-shops, 

 were resorted to openly and generally by the young nobility, the 



