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. HUSBANDS AND WIVES.