After the dessert comes Coffee, and it is now fitting that I should make a few remarks on the best means of making that agreeable and stimulating beverage.
The coffee tree is a native of Arabia. The use of the berry extended itself to Mecca, Medina, and then to Cairo in Egypt. It continued its progress northward; and in 1554, under the reign of Solyman the Great, became known to the inhabitants of Constantinople. The Venetians introduced coffee to the western parts of Europe. In 1644 it was brought to Marseilles, and in 1657 to Paris. According to Le Grand D’Aussy, the custom of drinking coffee became general in Paris in 1669, through the example of Soliman Aga, ambassador of Mahomet IV. The coffee is an evergreen shrub, rising to twenty feet in height. The fruit is a round, fleshy berry, and great care is taken to conduct little rills of water in small channels to the roots of the trees. The berry grown in Arabia is smaller than that of the East and West Indies, but its flavour is much finer, because in Arabia the soil is rocky, dry, and hot. The trees are watered by artificial means, and therefore the proper quantity of moisture only is imbibed by them. Almost all studious, hard-working men love coffee; and this is not wonderful, as it is, when properly made, a delightful, innoxious, and exhilarating beverage. “It is a slow poison,” said some one to Voltaire, who saw him drinking strong coffee. “It must be a very slow poison indeed,” rejoined the wit, “as I have been taking it now for more than seventy years.” How often must a man who laboured as Voltaire did have required a beverage which excited the nerves and exhilarated the spirits, without producing the baneful effects of those stimulating liquids and narcotic substances which act on the brain? In cases of extreme heat or cold, coffee is the most salutary beverage, as it not only warms and exhilarates the system, but dissipates the languor produced either by fatigue or the influence of the climate or weather.
How many writers are there who have vaunted the good effects of coffee? Delille and Lebrun have praised its virtues in well-tuned verses. The poem entitled “Les Disputes,” by Rulhière, originated in coffee. Fontenelle, who lived more than 100 years, is lavish in its praise. Montesquieu has consecrated to the brown ambrosial berry some eloquent and sounding periods; and Rousseau, and Buffon, the most eloquent of prose writers, have not forgotten to record the brilliant inspirations which they owed to its influence. Nor are these the only triumphs of the brain-clearing beverage. Heroes, and statesmen, and philosophers, have bowed down before the filagree cups; and Frederick of Prussia and Napoleon, Talleyrand and Cambaceres, and Metternich, Portalis, Corvisart, and Cuvier, have all acknowledged and felt the inspiration and good effects of coffee.
One of the virtues, the dissipating the fumes of wine, has also been alluded to by Delille:—
“Le Café vous presente une heureuse liqueur,
Qui d’un vin trop fumeux dissipe la vapeur.”
In another passage, the same poet thus apostrophises the cheering yet not inebriating liquor:—
“Il est une liqueur au poète bien chère,
Qui manquait à Virgile, et qu’adorait Voltaire:
C’est toi, divin café, dont l’aimable liqueur,