one, adorned with plates and illustrated by maps; the author, or
rather the compiler, was Keatib Cheleli, a learned doctor of the Turkish
law.

"Coffee," says this enlightened mussulman, who shaking off the stupidity
and indolence of his countrymen, assumes the character of a medical
inquirer, after he had quitted that of an implicit believer, "coffee is
a rejoicer of the heart, an enlivener of conversation, a sovereign
restorative after the fatigues of study, of labour or of love; its
peculiar characteristic is, to comfort the stomach, nourish the nerves,
and to protect the frame against the debilitating effects of a hot
climate and a fiery atmosphere.

"Taken an hour after dinner, it prevents an accumulation of crudities in
the first passages, is an infallible remedy for the horrors of
indigestion, and the megrims."

It was not probable that so wholesome and agreeable an article of diet
would be long confined to Asia; it is said to have been introduced to
the fashionable circles of Paris by Thevenot, in 1669, but had been made
use of in London as an exotic luxury before that time.

The first coffee-house opened in the British metropolis, was in
George-yard, Lombard-street, by Rosqua, the Greek servant of a Turkey
merchant, in the year 1652; its flavour was considered so delicate, and
it was thought by the statesmen of those days (no very reputable
characters) to promote society and political conversation so much, that
a duty of fourpence was laid on every gallon made and sold.

But Anthony Wood earnestly insists, that there was a house, for selling
coffee, at Oxford, two years before Rosqua commenced the trade in
London; "that those who delighted in novelty, drank it at the sign of
the angel, in that university, a house kept by an outlandish Jew."

In another part of his works, he says that Nathaniel Conapius, a native
of Crete, and a fugitive from Constantinople, but residing in the year
1648, at Baliol college, Oxford, made, and drank every morning, a drink
called coffey, the first ever made use of in that ancient university.

This popular beverage is mentioned in a tract published by judge Rumsey,
in 1659, entitled "Organum Salutis, or an instrument to cleanse the
stomach; together with divers new experiments on the virtues of tobacco
and coffee."

It is observed in this work, by a correspondent of the author, "that
apprentices, clerks and others, formerly used to take their morning
draught in ale, beer or