the whim of a traveller; neither the thing itself, nor its appearance,
was inviting: it was probably attributed by the gay to the humour of a
vain philosophical traveller. But ten years afterwards a Turkish
ambassador at Paris made the beverage highly fashionable. The elegance
of the equipage recommended it to the eye, and charmed the women: the
brilliant porcelain cups in which it was poured; the napkins fringed
with gold, and the Turkish slaves on their knees presenting it to the
ladies, seated on the ground on cushions, turned the heads of the
Parisian dames. This elegant introduction made the exotic beverage a
subject of conversation, and in 1672, an Armenian at Paris at the
fair-time opened a coffee-house. But the custom still prevailed to sell
beer and wine, and to smoke and mix with indifferent company in their
first imperfect coffee-houses. A Florentine, one Procope, celebrated in
his day as the arbiter of taste in this department, instructed by the
error of the Armenian, invented a superior establishment, and introduced
ices; he embellished his apartment, and those who had avoided the
offensive coffee-houses repaired to Procope's; where literary men,
artists, and wits resorted, to inhale the fresh and fragrant steam. Le
Grand says that this establishment holds a distinguished place in the
literary history of the times. It was at the coffee-house of Du Laurent
that Saurin, La Motte, Danchet, Boindin, Rousseau, &c., met; but the
mild streams of the aromatic berry could not mollify the acerbity of so
many rivals, and the witty malignity of Rousseau gave birth to those
famous couplets on all the coffee drinkers, which occasioned his
misfortune and his banishment.

Such is the history of the first use of coffee and its houses at Paris.
We, however, had the use before even the time of Thevenot; for an
English Turkish merchant brought a Greek servant in 1652, who, knowing
how to roast and make it, opened a house to sell it publicly. I have
also discovered his hand-bill, in which he sets forth, "The vertue of
the coffee-drink, first publiquely made and sold in England, by Pasqua
Rosee, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, at the sign of his own
head."[185]

For about twenty years after the introduction of coffee in this kingdom,
we find a continued series of invectives against its adoption, both for
medicinal and domestic purposes. The use of coffee, indeed, seems to
have excited more notice, and to have had a greater i