1872 Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks (Mixellany)

Tea.

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used to scent Souchong teas. Green teas, as Twankay, Hyson, and Gunpowder (the finest con- sists of the unopened leaf-bud of the green variety of the Thea). Cowslip Hyson is flavoured by mixing with it the berries of Chloranthus, or by alternate layers of tea and dried cowslip flowers, and then sifted. Black tea has more sedative, green more stimulating, properties. "The use of tea and coffee (says Liebig) is not a matter of mere habit, but it is in some degree essential, it being a ques- tion if we had neither tea nor coffee, whether the popular instinct would not soon crave for, and find some substitute/' Raynal observes, " The use of tea has contributed more to the sobriety of the Chinese than the severest laws, the most eloquent discourses, or the best treatise on morality." Its social properties no one understood better than Cowper, who thus eulogizes a comfortable evening at home:—

Now stir thefire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate wait on each; So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

A Chinese legend relates, that a pious hermit, who, in his watchings and prayers, had often been K 2