Some men of mark in their day were notorious for their Tea-drinking predilections. Dr. Johnson himself may be fairly set down as a Tea-gourmet. Then returning to more modern times, see how the genial Leigh Hunt bursts forth into rapture when describing the virtues of the beneficent plant, free from the cunning transformation practised upon it by unprincipled traders. Surely this gifted writer must have had a cup of Messrs. Horniman and Co.’s spécialité served to him when he could elaborate upon it thus: “It was not green tea; it was not black tea; neither too young, nor too old; not unpleasing with astringency on the one hand, nor with the insipid, half-earthy taste of decayed vegetable matter on the other; it was tea in its most perfect state, full charged with aroma, which, when it was opened, diffused its fragrance through the whole apartment, putting all other perfumes to shame.... Oh heavens! to sip that most exquisite cup of delight, was bliss almost too great for earth; a thousand years of rapture all concentrated into the space of a minute, as if the joy of all the world had been skimmed for my peculiar drinking, I should rather say imbibing, for to have swallowed that liquid like an ordinary beverage, without tasting every drop, would have been sacrilege.” Professor James F. W. Johnston likewise bears testimony to the value of this tropical beverage. He remarks: “In the life of most persons a period arrives when the stomach no longer digests enough of the ordinary elements of food to make up for the natural daily waste of the bodily substance. The size and weight of the body, therefore, begin to diminish more or less perceptibly. At this period tea comes in as a medicine to arrest the waste, to keep the body from falling away so fast, and thus to enable the less energetic powers of digestion still to supply as much as is needed to repair the wear and tear of the solid tissues.”