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 au-
thority of Addison,-a scullion term-washerwoman-
ish-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.
sides, 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 blue-
stocking who loves-

"To part her time 'twixt reading and Bohea;
To muse, and spill her solitary tea."

Be

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

naturally so prosaic as to be enabled to say, with Benedick" I can find out no rhyme to lady but baby,—an innocent rhyme," I defy him to persevere in the use of this verse-compelling beverage, without committing poetry. Even a tea-board will convert and stimulate the most inert. Look you there! I am unconsciously lapsing into rhyme-an involuntary Improvisatore!-Tea, I was going to state, inspires such warm poetical desires.-Lo, where it comes again! One would imagine I had dipped my pen in Souchong instead of ink. It absolutely runs away with me, perpetrating bouts rimés in its course, and forcing me to commit to paper the following

ADDRESS TO MY KETTLE.

Leaving some operatic zany
To celebrate the singers many,
From Billington to Catalani,
Thy voice I still prefer to any,―

MY KETTLE!

Some learned singers, when they try
To spout, become embarrass'd, dry,
And want thy copious fluency,-

MY KETTLE!

They, when their inward feelings boil,
Scold, storm, vociferate, turmoil,

And make a most discordant coil,

MY KETTLE!

You, when you 're chafed, but sing the more;
And when just ready to boil o'er,

In silent steam your passions soar,—

MY KETTLE!

To hear their strains, one needs must bear
Late hours, noise, lassitude, hot air,

And dissipation's dangers share,—