In moderation, tea is pre-eminently the beverage of the twilight hour, when tired humanity seeks repose after a day of wearying labor. Then the hot infusion with its alluring aroma refreshing and stimulating, increasing the respiration, elevating the pulse, softening the temper, producing tranquility in mind and body, and creating a sense of repose peculiarly grateful to those who have been taxed and tormented by the rush and routine of business cares and vexations. What a promoter of sociability, what home comforts does it not suggest, as, when Cowper, on a winter’s evening, draws a cheerful picture of the crackling fire, the curtained windows, the hissing urn and “the cup that cheers?” When, however, tea drinking ceases to be the amusement of the leisure moment or resorted to in too large quantities or strong infusions as a means of stimulating the flagging energies to accomplish the allotted task, whatever it might be, then distinct danger commences. A breakdown is liable to ensue in more than one way, as not infrequently the stimulus which tea in time fails to give is sought in alcoholic or other liquors, and the atonic dyspepsia which the astringent decoction produced, by overdrawing induces, helps to drive the victim to seek temporary relief in spirits chloral or the morphine habit, which is established with extraordinary rapidity. For it is a truth that as long as a person uses stimulants simply for their taste he is comparatively safe, but as soon as he begins to drink them for effect he is running into great danger. This may be stating the case too forcibly for stimulants, but if this rule was more closely adhered to we should have fewer cases of educated people falling into the habit of secret intemperance or morphomania. TEA AND THE POETS. The subdued irascibility, the refreshed spirits, and the renewed energies which the student and the poet so often owed to tea has been the theme of many an accomplished pen, eminent writers of all times and all countries considering it no indignity to extol the virtues of this precious and fascinating beverage. What Bacchanalian and hunting songs, cavalier and sea songs, rhapsodies and laudations of other subjects have been to our literature, such was tea to the writers, poets, artists and musicians of China and Japan, theirs being confined to the simple subject—Tea. Each plantation was supposed to possess its own peculiar virtues and excellences, not unlike the vineyards of the Rhine, the Rhone and the Moselle, each had its poet to sing its praises in running rhymes. One Chinese bard, who seemingly was an Anacreon in his way, magnifying the product of the Woo-e-shan mountains in terms literally translated as follows:—