that the "Te veniente die, te decidente," alludes to the morning and evening use of this beverage among the Romans, while the "Te teneam moriens deficiente manu" seems to intimate its being occasionally used as a species of extreme unction among the ancients. The late Emperor of China, Kien Long, of pious memory, composed a laudatory ode upon this fragrant product of his country, and a nephew of the writer's, a Guinea-pig on board one of the East India ships, having occasion to go to Nankin to buy a pair of trowsers for himself, and a piece of Indian rubber for his brother, found means of procuring a copy, of which I submit the first verse to the reader's inspection:"Kou-onen peing-tcho onen-chang, King-tang shoo kin Cong-foo-tse; Chong-choo lee-kee kou-chon whang, To-hi tche-kiang She-whang-te."

The artful allusion to Confucius in the second line, and the happy introduction of the subject beverage in the fourth, will not escape the most careless critic.

Candour requires that we should not disguise, on the other hand, the opinion of Swift, who thus writes in his Journal to Stella:-"I was telling Sir George Beaumont of my head;-he said he had been ill of the same disorder, and by all means forbid me Bohea Tea, which he said always gave it him, and that Dr. Radcliffe said it was very bad. Now I had observed the same thing, and have left it off this month, having found myself ill after it several times; and I mention it that Stella may consider it for her poor own little head.”—This libellous insinuation does not amount to much. Swift was

a splenetic and deficient being, unimpassioned by the beauties of Stella and Vanessa, and therefore naturally unimpressed by the beauties of Bloom,-incapable of Bohea-a Narses or a Menophilus among the lovers of Tea. What! is China, with its 330 millions of inhabitants, a nation of invalids? Rather may we apprehend from the universal potion of Tea an acceleration of the Malthusian dilemma, when the population shall press upon the limits of food, than any debilitation of our national strength. For my own part, I am so persuaded of its benign influences upon vitality, hospitality, conviviality, comicality, and all the other 'alities, that if there be any adventurous spirits abroad, any fellows of pith and enterprize stirring, any champions of the aqueous infusion instead of that of the grape, we will hoist the standard of revolt against the vine-crowned Bacchus, dispossess him of his Pards to yoke a couple of milch cows to his car, twitch from his hand the Thyrsus "dropping odours, dropping wine," to enwreath it with tea-leaves, substitute for the fir-cone at its tip a tiny sugar-loaf, convert Pan into a slop-basin, and Silenus and the Satyrs into cups and saucers.

Fecundi calices quem non fecere Disertum ?

Apply this to tea-cups; and why should we not be as jovial and Anacreontic under their pacific inspiration as if we revelled in the orgies of the rosy god, and were stunned and stimulated by all the cymbals of the Bacchanals? Surely it is more natural to make a toast of our mistresses at tea than at dinner-time; and if upon the authority of the "Navia sex cyathis, sep

tem Justina libatur," we are to toss off a bumper to every letter of her name, be the idol of my heart as interminable as she pleases in her baptismal application, a Polyhymnia or Sesquipedalia at the least, Bacchus will not look the worse in an Anacreontic for combining his old and new attributes, the vine and the tea plant. Let us try

Fill the Tea-pot, fill!

Round my rosy temples twine

A Tea-leaf wreath, that I may sing
Like the conquering God of wine.

When the whole East proclaim'd him king,
When to the sky, with music ringing,
Shouts of "Io Bacche!" flinging,
Each Satyr, nymph, and piping-boy,
Danced around him mad with joy,
Until on Ariadne's breast

His flushing cheek he wildly press'd,
The mingled ecstasies to prove
Of music, wine, Bohea, and love.

Fill the Tea-pot, fill!

Give me a nymph whose lengthen'd name
In longer spells my heart may fetter,
That I may feed, not quench my flame,
By bumper-toasts to every letter.

And so on. As I'm an honest man, and a sober, I think these verses, as flowing, bibulous, and hilarious as any that were ever roared over a magnum of Port, or a beaker of Burgundy, to a shrieking set of three-bottle Corinthians. Falstaff and his followers may bluster about their sherries-sack; but I maintain against all impugners, that it will not mount into the brain and fill

it so full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes as your genuine Souchong, one cup of which. But this reminds me, before I go any farther, to caution all neophytes, or old tea-drinkers, to abstain from the use of the word dish: it is a vile phrase, in spite of the authority of Addison,-a scullion term-washerwomanish-fit only for the gossips of the laundry or the kitchen. Let them take the counsel, moreover, of a not inexperienced practitioner, and prefer the homely kettle to the patrician look and classical pretensions of the urn. All associations connected with the latter are lugubrious and mortuary; it has funeral, cinerary, and lachrymal namesakes, with whom we need not sadden our thoughts in the hours of recreation. Besides, it is like a hollow friend: its heart soon gets cold, it ceases to pour forth its consolations with any warmth of feeling, and so spoils our tea that it may gratify our sight. It is hallowed by no fire-side reminiscences, fit only for some ostentatious tea-tippler, whose palate is in his eye, or for some dawdling and slip-shod bluestocking who loves

"To part her time 'twixt reading and Bohea;

To muse, and spill her solitary tea.”

What revolution in taste can be effected without compromising the interests of some individual or other? Here is a Bardolph-faced friend who tells me it will be very hard for him to have the complexion and reputation of drunkenness without its enjoyment; but there is no help for it-he must look his fortunes in the face, and reflect that it is better to

be accused of a vice, being innocent, than acquitted of it, being guilty. Next comes a punster, who trembles lest his occupation should be gone; assuring me that many of his best jokes would never have been relished, had not his half-tipsy auditors been enabled to hear, as well as to see double; and that the only good hit he ever made at a tea-table, was at a Newmarket party, when incautiously burning his fingers by taking up the toast from the fire, and breaking the plate as he let it fall upon the floor, he observed that it was too bad to lose the plate after having won the heat. My dear sir, as Dr. Johnson said upon another occasion, rest your fame for colloquial excellence upon that, and judge from such a specimen what you may hope to accomplish when you become more copiously saturated with Souchong. Writers as well as utterers of good things will be spiritualised and clarified in their intellects, by substituting libations of tea for those of wine; and, as to the averment of the miscalled Teian bard

"If with water you fill up your glasses,
You'll never write any thing wise;
For wine is the steed of Parnassus,

That hurries a bard to the skies."

I hold it to be a pernicious, false, and Bacchanalian heresy, for which he was deservedly choked with a grape-stone. No; your genuine Apollo sits throned upon a pile of tea-chests instead of Parnassus : your authentic Castaly flows from a tea-pot, your legitimate Muses haunt the plantations of Canton. If a man were