with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.'" "Is there no lesson to be learned from this view ?" enquired the Interpreter.

66 'And

"I think it teaches us not to want to have our own way," said Lowly. "If that prodigal son had not left his father's house he would not have almost perished with hunger, nor have been obliged to feed swine." "And," continued Fearless, "if he had not made up his mind to return and confess his sins to his father, he would have died of hunger." then again," said Earnest, "if his father had not been very merciful and forgiving, he would not have received him again and rejoiced at his return." "Yes, my dear little ones," said the Interpreter, "He is more ready to hear than we are to call upon Him." "I think, Sir," said Lowly, "I have read in my book, 'If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."" Yes, my child, it is written so in your

book."

I

"Surely that elder brother deceived himself when he said, 'Neither at any time transgressed I thy laws?"" said Fearless. "I wonder he could speak so boldly." Ah, my boy," said their friend, "the heart is deceitful. wonder how anybody could say, 'I do well to be angry.'" Fearless said no more, but hung down his head and sighed deeply. Their guide then shewed them a lovely group of children of all ages, clustered around that same gracious Lord, and there were mothers and nurses bringing their little ones for Him to bless them, and His disciples rebuked those that brought them; but the Lord said"Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven;" and He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them, and blessed them.

Another view represented the Lord Jesus, seated on the top of a mountain, and a vast multitude around Him. He had been preaching to the

people, and they had listened for a long time till they were very hungry, and the Lord had compassion on them, and fed them all with seven loaves and a few little fishes, and they all ate and were filled, and they took up seven baskets full of what was left. There were four thousand men there, besides women and children. Then they saw (through another of the glasses) some men in a little ship on the sea; there was a fearful storm, and the poor men were in danger of being lost; when, in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. The men were very frightened, and cried out for fear. But Jesus spoke to them directly, saying "Be of good cheer, it is I-be not afraid." Then one of them (whose name was Peter) said-"Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water;" and He said " Come." And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and, beginning to sink, he cried, saying-" Lord! save me." And immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand, and caught him, and said unto him-" O! thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ?" And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased, and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went. The children were filled with wonder and admiration at this scene. Then they saw a grand wedding procession going out at midnight to meet the bridegroom, and there were ten virgins amongst the followers. They all had lamps burning brightly. But after awhile, when they arose and trimmed their lamps, five of the virgins had no oil in their vessels with their lamps. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those that were ready went in with him, and the door was shut. Afterwards came the other five, crying-" Lord! Lord! open unto us." But it was too late, they were not admitted. The children were very sorry for the poor outcasts, but their guide told them this picture was shewn as a warning to pilgrims. "Let it be a warning to you, my children. Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh."

WARM BEVERAGES: INTRODUCTION OF TEA THE TEA PLANT THEINE: иммоDERATE USE OF TEA TEETOTAL-DRUNKENNESS: TEA-DINNERS: TANNIC ACID : COFFEE: THE COFFEE PLANT CAFFEINE : CHICORY: ADULTERATIONS: COCOA: THE THEOBROMA: PREPARATION: CHOCOLATE : NUTRITIVE PRINCIPLES OF COCOA: CONCLUSION.

ALREADY we have spoken of the two most important natural liquids,-water and milk; but there remain other and artificial drinks to be considered, which are popular alike with civilized and semi-barbarous nations. Those which we are about to examine as to their history, nature, and effects, are tea, coffee, and cocoa.

In the first place let us remark, that a love for warm drinks seems universal. As a rule, fermented drinks are taken cold, and infused drinks hot, and it is in the latter we are just now peculiarly interested. Not only does the practice of taking heated beverages prevail in cold climates, as would seem only natural and expedient, but in warm temperatures also. In arctic and tropical regions, there is the same deep-seated cravings for warm infused beverages, whether we consider the North American tribes with their native teas, or the indigenous warm drinks of Central Africa. The beverages the world infuses are many, those with which we English-folk are most familiar are those just mentioned -tea, coffee, and cocoa. And these three are indeed types of all others, since tea represents all those drinks which are infusions of leaves, coffee, those which are infusions of seeds, and cocoa, those which are really of the nature of soups or gruels, as they aremade rather by diffusion than infusion.

but

The nations of antiquity knew nothing about tea. They all regarded alcohol as a cherished luxury, and from the days of Noah were no strangers

to its seductive influence; but to "the cup that cheers but not inebriates," they were unfortunately strangers. Tea and coffee were unknown in Europe till the 17th century, now they are in universal repute, and poor indeed, almost at starvation climax, is the fireside where the homely teapot is not regularly seen; coffee is almost as popular, and cocoa is extensively patronized, particularly by teetotallers. In each of these is a special property and active principle. Tea contains volatile oils and tannin; coffee, empyreumatic oils and caffeine; cocoa, fifty per cent. of a fixed oil, which is solid at one temperature, and theobromine.

That tea was first brought into Europe from China no one doubts, but, the exact date is involved in some obscurity. Some writers believe that the Portuguese have the merit of first introducing the Oriental herb, for as early as the year 1577 they had commenced a regular trade with China; and Edmund Waller, the poet, in some complimentary lines addressed to the Queen of Charles II. favours this idea. Tea was probably first used in China about the eighth or ninth century of the Christian era, and the tea-plant is a native of China, but has been introduced into Japan, and cultivated with much success. The tea-plant thrives best in the cooler parts of the torrid zone, but will grow in temperate latitudes, as far north as forty degrees.

The plants are evergreen shrubs of the same family as the well-known Camellia Japonica of our greenhouses. There are several varieties, as Thea Bohea, or the black tea plant, which also produces the inferior kinds of green that are made about Canton. Thea viridis of more northern growth from which are made the finest green teas, and Thea stricta. But botanists have now recognised these several varieties as all belonging to a single species, owing their difference in ap.

pearance and habit, to cultivation, soil, and climate. There are some very costly teas, used only by persons of rank in China, and never brought to Europe.

Tea in its native country is generally taken unmixed. Our mode of drinking it, with sugar and cream or milk, arose probably from its introduction as a beverage among people whose tastes were already formed, and who required something to make the bitter infusion palatable. And the practice thus commenced lasts till this day, and phisiologically considered, is decidedly an improvement on the Oriental fashion. In Russia, a squeeze of lemon often takes the place of cream, and in Germany they make weak tea, and flavour it variously, as with vanilla, and cinnamon, and even rum.

The effect of tea is to exhilarate without intoxicating. It excites the brain to increased activity and produces wakefulness, hence its value to hard students, and to persons who are compelled to keep vigil during the night; nor must we forget that it will often diminish, and sometimes cure, a nervous headache. Besides Theine and Tannic Acid, tea contains water, caseine, aromatic oil, gum, sugar, fat, woody fibre, and mineral matter.

By the consumption of a certain quantity of tea, the health and strength of the body will be maintained in an equal degree upon a smaller supply of ordinary food. Tea may be said to save food, while at the same time it soothes the nerves and brightens up the intellect. We cannot, therefore, wonder that it should be a favourite with the poor, that the little brown teapot should be standing on the hob, at almost every hour from dawn to bedtime, for by its aid they can afford better to dispense with the substantial meal, and yet find themselves cheerful, comfortable, and ready for their work.

The reason of this is that theine, even in very minute proportions taken into the stomach, possesses the quality of diminishing the waste of tissues which regularly goes on in every healthy person; and if the waste be lessened, the necessity for food to regain it is of course lessened in the same proportion. In the case of very old people, whose digestive powers have lost nearly all their vigour, tea is of incalculable use, since by arresting the waste which must be the sequence of diminished

nourishment, it prevents the body from falling so rapidly away, there being less demand on the failing organs of digestion. Well may tea be called "the old woman's luxury."

Still there is something to be said on the other side of the question, an im moderate use of tea is infinitely worse than total abstinence from the exhilarating draught. There are some per sons who drink tea very much as others drink alcoholic liquors-exces. sively, injuriously, sinfully. There are those who will drink strong tea not once or twice but many times a day, living almost entirely on the stimulus, the artificial strength it produces. I speak advisedly when I say that such are committing actual sin, for they are indulging certain tastes to the injury of the powers given by God Himself, impairing physical vigour, shattering the nervous system, and bringing on divers pains and infirmities of the flesh, as certainly as the lover of port wine, and ardent spirits, is consuming these beverages, not as God's good gifts, but as the devil's lures to soul and body's loss. I believe it quite possible that a rabid-I do not use the word disrespectfully or sneeringly-a rabid teetotaller may become a drunkard in the sight of God, while men extol him as an apostle of the holy cause of temperance. The quantity of three or four grains of theine, which is sufficient to prevent undue waste of the tissues, &c., is contained in less than half an ounce of good tea, for Professor Johnston tells us that an ounce of really good tea contains about ten grains of theine. Now half an ounce of tea may be taken by most full-grown persons daily without any bad results, but if twice this quantity, involving eight grains of the alcoloid theine be taken, the pulse becomes more rapid and intermittent, the heart beats more strongly, trembling and nervous irritability are induced, and the victim becomes a dyspeptic fretful invalid.

I encountered a young lady last year in Belgravia, who in the height of the season actually confessed to having on one, and she could not be sure that it was a solitary occasion, taken tes nine times in the twenty-four hours. Her maid brought a cup to her bedside early in the morning, she took tea at her regular breakfast, and tea again at her luncheon, at two o'clock. Then she attended a "kettle-drum" of a

religious character where I only hope the piety and the tea were in just proportions. She came home to dress for dinner, and drank a cup of tea during the process of her toilet, and another cup as soon as the ladies retired from the dining room. Again she indulged in her favourite beverage on preparing for a ball, and while at the ball, she took yet another cup as refreshment, preferring it to ice and waffles, or white soup, or light wine, or any other food, solid or liquid, at command. Once more, returning home after sunrise, she drank the final cup, and went to bed, to be awakened on the following morning by her maid bring. ing her, according to custom, the first instalment for the day. This is of course an extreme case, and the young lady in question presented every appearance of incipient delirium tremens, though she never tasted wine or any alcoholic stimulant; and I really believe her to be as culpable as another unfortunate lady I once knew, who actually consumed many bottles of eau-de-cologne as a drink when debarred by her sorrowing husband from the best French brandy, and so drank herself into an early and dishonoured grave.

Tea is a great blessing to the poor, the aged, the invalid in certain types of sickness, the student, and the man of literature; also it is a wholesome and comforting drink to nearly every person of full growth, except in peculiar cases, where it cannot at all be taken; but it ceases to be a blessing, and is perverted to a curse, if any of these classes I have spoken of abuse it. Surely it is a great sin to take God's good gifts and turn them into poisons!

One thing more, and I have said all I have space to say concerning tea. Tea dinners, as we call them, are bad things, producing indigestion; for the tannic acid the tea contains is inore astringent in its effect on the contents of the stomach, taken with animal food, than with merely bread and butter; and the practice of taking tea several hours after dinner is by far the best, since by that time the food has proceeded too far in the process of digestion to be interfered with by the tannic acid. Also, the astringence of tannic acid has the effect of diminishing the natural secretions of the mucous membrane of the stomach and bowels, and a tendency to constipation may be increased by tea.

COFFEE was introduced into Europe about the same time as tea. The first coffee house in London was opened, in 1652, by a Greek, named Pasqua. But its use was known in Persia as early as 875, and it was introduced into Arabia in the beginning of the fifteenth century. The tree producing the coffee berry is said to be indigenous to the countries of Enarea and Caffa, in southern Abyssinia, the coffee tree, in these districts, growing wild, like a weed, over the rocky surface of the country. The plant itself belongs to the same natural order as the cinchonas, er quinine-yielding plants, and the coffee plant which produces the greatest amount of the coffee of commerce is the Coffea Arabica. It is an evergreen shrub, or small tree. In some countries it attains a height not exceeding eight or ten feet, in others it averages from ten to fifteen feet. It begins to flower at two years old, and it then comes into full bearing, and it will continue, under favourable circumstances, for twenty years, at all seasons producing flowers and fruit. The blossoms are white and fragrant, and the berry is first red and then purple, and contains two cells, lined with a cartilaginous membrane, and in, each cell there is a single seed, curved at the back, and deeply furrowed in front.

The Arabian or Mocha coffee is small, and of a dark yellow colour; the East Indian and Java coffees are larger, but of a paler yellow; while the West Indian, Brazilian, and Ceylon coffees have a bluish or greenish grey tint. The caffeine of coffee is identical with the theine of tea; and has similar properties. Like tea it exhilarates and keeps awake the weary watcher; it counteracts stupor produced by fatigue, or disease, or opium, and imparts a certain sense of comfort and repose. It makes the brain more active, and soothes the system generally; while it makes the waste of matter slower, and the demand for food less. Coffee contains three ingredients:-first, a volatile oil, on which the aroma depends; secondly, the astringent tannic acid, which is changed to some extent in roasting, but still retains a portion of its natural properties; hence coffee, in the prepared berry, is not so constipating as infused tea; indeed, associated, as it is, with the volatile empyreumatic oil, it has a positive tendency in the con

trary direction; and to the same result, the large percentage of fat contained in coffee may contribute; thirdly, the caffeine, which is identical with theine. One pound of unroasted coffee contains, besides water, caffeine, trematic oil, gum, woody fibre, &c., 1 Oz. 17 grs. of sugar, 1 oz. 402 grs. of fat, and 2 oz. 35 grs. of caseine! But as we do not eat the coffee grounds, it is possible that we do not at all take up the gum and woody fibre, and some other constituents. There are various ways of making coffee; some boil the ground berry, others only infuse it, and there are all sorts of patented inventions in the way of coffee pots, for producing an agreeable beverage with an economical expenditure. I am inclined to think, with Dr. Lankester, that "the one great secret of making good coffee is to put enough of the prepared powder into the pot;' a secret that applies equally to teamaking. The doctor thinks that one ounce and a quarter of ground coffee is the least that should be allowed to a pint of water! Chicory, which is not unwholesome, taken in very moderate quantities, is now frequently considered an improvement to the genuine coffee; but it is better to buy pure coffee, warranted as such by a respectable tradesman, and to add chicory to your taste, than to purchase the mixtures which are ordinarily sold. Truly, if you cannot be sure that your chicory is unadulterated, you had better discard it altogether, and be content to use more coffee, for it may happen that, under the guise of chicory, you may get roasted carrots and turnips,-which are, however, innocuous, and also Venetian red,which no one can consider wholesome, -and even brick-dust, with which the unprincipled Venetian red manufacturer sometimes grinds up his colour.

Coffee is a useful and delightful beverage, to be partaken of moderately; its abuse is open to the same objections as those to which intemperance in tea is liable.

We have little time to devote to cocoa, which is prepared from the seed of the Theobroma cocao, a small, but beautiful tree, a native of the West Indies and Central America. It grows spontaneously in Mexico, and on the coast of Caraccas, and in forest-like profusion in Demerara. It is cultivated in the Mauritius and in the

Island of Bourbon. The Spaniards first introduced it as a beverage into Europe in the sixteenth century. Linnæus was so fond of it that he gave to the tree producing it the generic name of Theobroma-" Food of the Gods."

The cocoa bean of commerce is pre pared for use by a gentle roasting in an iron cylinder till the aroma is developed. It then becomes more brittle, and is of a lighter brown, and its natural astringency and bitterness are less perceptible. It is manufactured for the market in three ways:-being beaten into a paste in a hot mortar, and mixed with starch, sugar, &c., and so formed into the granulated, flake, rock, or soluble cocoas of our shops; or the bean is deprived of its husk, which forms about eleven per cent. of its weight, and it is then crushed into fragments, and forms the cocoa-nibs we buy as the purest form in which cocoa can usually be procured from the retail dealer; or, lastly, the shelled bean is ground at once into a paste by means of hot rollers, and then mixed with sugar, and seasoned with vanilla, and sometimes cinnamon and cloves; and this paste forms the familiar, oldfashioned chocolate, which takes its name from the ancient "Chocollatl" of the conquered Mexicans.

It possesses certain exhilarating and sustaining properties, like those of tea and coffee, and is besides eminently nutritious. It contains a volatile oil, a principle resembling theine, but not identical with it, called theobro mine, and a third ingredient which remarkably distinguishes it from tea or coffee, a certain fatty matter, known as cocoa-butter; and it is by reason of this constituent that it not unfrequently disagrees with delicate stomachs; and it is to lessen the sense of this richness that starch, sugar, and fragrant seasoning are so frequently ground up with the roasted bean.

In fact, cocoa is rich in all the important nutritive principles which we value in our ordinary forms of food, and as it contains caseine or gluten, fat, sugar or starch, and mineral matter, as well as theobromine and the volatile empyreumatic oil, it unites, with the strengthening and nourishing qualities of milk, the exhilarating properties of tea and coffee, though the alkaloid of cocoa is certainly milder in its effects than caffeine or theine.