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 Europe put 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.”