TEA-DRINKING.
There is a certain class of people who take every opportunity of sneering at their neighbours for indulging in the “folly” of drinking tea, which they tell you is poisonous, and for the use of which the Chinese, as they say, make a point of laughing at us. I have generally remarked, that those who in this manner condemn the use of tea are themselves addicted to the drinking of intoxicating liquids of some kind or other, and that, in most instances, they are not a bit more healthful or more innocent than the unhappy tea-drinkers whom they affect to pity. In the way that tea is usually made, with a large mixture of sugar and cream, both which ingredients are highly nutritious, it is fully more salutary, and a great deal more refreshing, than any other light liquid that could be poured into the stomach. With all due deference to Cobbett, milk, even entirely divested of its creamy particles, isheavy; and though it may be used with advantage as a meal, when work is done in the open air, it can never suit the appetites of the great mass of the people, who are confined by sedentary employments. Milk is the food of men in a rude state, or in childhood; but tea or well-made coffee is their beverage in a state of civilisation. It would seem that the civilised human being must use a large quantity of liquid food. Perhaps solid meat is more nutritious; but there are cases in which a small degree of nutriment is quite sufficient. A lady or a gentleman of sedentary habits does not require to feed like a ploughman, or a fancy man training for a pedestrian excursion. They can subsist in a healthful state with a small quantity of solid food, but they do not do well unless with a large quantity of liquids, and these of a light quality. Good beer has been recommended as a substitute for tea; but beer is at the best a cold ungenial drink, except to robust people who have much exercise. Beer maycertainly be made almost as light as water itself, but in that case it is filled with gaseous matter or confined air, and it cannot be drunk with comfort as a simple refreshment.
It will always be remembered that there are different kinds of tea, and that some are more salutary than others. Green tea ought by all means to be avoided by persons of weak nerves. Black tea is the preferable for general use, and, if properly made, will prove anti-spasmodic, and relieve pains or cramps in the bowels. In some instances tea does not suit the particular state of the stomach, and it should then be abandoned, the taste naturally pointing out when it should be taken. But no species of prepared fluid seems so suitable to the palates and the stomachs of the people of this country. No kind of drink is so refreshing after a journey or fatigue as tea. It restores the drooping spirits, and invigorates the frame for renewed exertion. No other kind of liquid with which we are acquainted has the same remarkable influence morally and physically. Fermented or distilled liquors, taken under the same circumstances, either induce intoxication or sleep. It is preposterous to say that tea is poisonous. As there is an astringency in its properties, I believe it would be most injurious were we to live upon nothing else, or drink it as a tincture. But who does either? As it happens to be prepared and used, it answers merely as a refreshing and pleasing drink, either to the solid bread and butter taken along with it, or after a recent dinner of substantial viands. How idle it is to say that this harmless beverage is ruining the constitutions of the people of this country! The very reverse can be demonstrated. The inhabitants of Britain use nearly twenty-seven millions of pounds weight of tea annually, which is about one pound nine ounces on an average for every individual. From thirty to forty years ago they used a great deal less than the half of this quantity, yet the average length of human life has been greatly extended since that period. The English and Scotch now use more tea than all the rest of Europeput together, and yet they are the healthiest nation on the face of the earth. The North Americans are also great tea-drinkers, and human life among them is of nearly an equal value. Who would for a moment compare the thin wretched wines of France and Germany, or the sour krout of Russia, to the “comfortable” tea of Great Britain, and who would lose time in calculating the different effects of these liquids on the constitution?
Tea has other excellent properties. At this present moment it is putting down the pernicious practice of dram-drinking, and evidently limiting the extent of after-dinner potations. It seems to be impossible that a regular drinker of tea can be a lover of ardent spirits; and it is generally observed, that, as a man (or woman either) slides into the vice of tippling, he simultaneously withdraws from the tea-table; so true it is that the brutalised feelings of the drunkard are incompatible with the refined sentiments produced by
“The cup which cheers, but not inebriates.”
“The cup which cheers, but not inebriates.”
“The cup which cheers, but not inebriates.”
“The cup which cheers, but not inebriates.”
It is hence to be wished that tea, or some other equally simple prepared fluid, should be still more brought into use. Do not let it be urged as an objection, that tea is expensive; for even under its excessive dearth, compared with its original cost, it is the cheapest beverage in use. With respect to price, it should not be placed against water or milk. It comes in place of some other indulgence—intoxicating liquors for instance—respecting the price of which we never heard any complaints from the lower walks of life. Tea is thus not entirely a superfluity. The clamours as to its fostering habits of evil and light speaking, are so antiquated as hardly to deserve notice. Formerly, when tea was exclusively a luxury among women, the tea-table was perhaps the scene where scandal was chiefly discussed. But while I suspect that the same amount of scandal would have been discussed if there had been no tea-tables whatever, I must observe, that tea is now partaken of under greatly different circumstances.From being the favourite indulgence only of women, it is now an ordinary domestic meal, and there is no more disposition to draw forth the failings of our neighbours over tea than over roast beef or punch, at seven o’clock any more than at five. In the upper classes of society, what with late dinners, routs, and frivolities of every description, tea-drinking may be put aside as a vulgarism; but as being, in point of fact, a powerful agent in humanising the harsh feelings of our nature, and cultivating the domestic affections, I trust it will long hold a place in the dietetics of the respectable middle and lower classes of Great Britain.