Three years after the first introduction of coffee upon the statute books, the increase of houses for its sale had become so great, that by the Act passed in 1663, “For the better ordering and collecting the duty of excise, and preventing the abuses therein” (15 Chas. II., cap. 11, sect. 15), express provision is made for the licensing of all coffee-houses at the quarter sessions, under a penalty of 5_l._ for every month during which any person should retail coffee, chocolate, or tea, without having first procured such license from the magistrates. From that time to the revolution, coffee-houses multiplied so rapidly that, when Ray published his “History of Plants” in 1688, he estimated that the coffee-houses in London were at that time as numerous as in Cairo itself; whilst similar places of accommodation were to be met with in all the principal cities and towns in England. There are now in London alone more than 1500 coffee-houses, besides confectioners’ shops, and other places where coffee is vended. For half a century at least Arabia furnished all the coffee that Europe consumed, which, therefore, must have been very trifling. It was, in fact, long the luxury of a few fashionable people, with whom, however, it must have been in general use sixty years after its introduction, as we find from the well-known passage of the “Rape of the Lock,” published in 1712, in which politicians are described as seeing through it “with half-shut eyes.” Le Grand d’Aussy, in his “Vie Privée des Français,” gives a curious and interesting account of the first introduction of the use of coffee in France. As early as 1658 some merchants of Marseilles introduced the use of coffee into that city, and Thévenot, after his return from his Eastern travels, about the year 1658, regaled his guests with coffee after dinner.