Animal gelatine has been placed in the same class with tea by Liebig, Dr. John W. Draper, and others, and it is asserted that it conserves waste without itself entering into the substance of human tissue. It is an accepted physiological law that nothing taken as food or drink can support expenditure of human energy in sensible motion, in heat, or in the nervous waste of mental or emotional exercise without first being built up into living tissue; the breaking down or chemical decomposition of which tissue, and subsequent oxidation of less complex compounds or their constituents, is the direct source of bodily energy of every description. This, at least, is our reading of modern authorities, like Foster. If tea and gelatine, and possibly alcohol, are to form exceptions to the law, the law no longer stands. But it would seem more reasonable to amend the hypothesis concerning exceptions, and bring them into line by admitting that they are nutritious in a manner not yet ascertained. All physiological laws are provisional, good until proved insufficient, and then to be amended in the light of accumulating facts. CHAPTER VIII. Meanwhile Hanna the housemaid had closed and fastened the shutters, Spread the cloth, and lighted the lamp on the table, and placed there Plates and cups from the dresser, the brown rye loaf and the butter Fresh from the dairy, and then, protecting her hand with a holder, Took from the crane in the chimney the steaming and simmering kettle, Poised it aloft in the air, and filled the earthen teapot, Made in delft, and adorned with quaint and wonderful figures. LONGFELLOW'S TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN. Many besides those who live principally by the labor of their brains, will subscribe to the sentiment expressed by Thomas De Quincey, in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater, when he said that--"Tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual; and for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum internecinum against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person who should presume to disparage it." The only stimulant that Hazlitt indulged in was strong Black tea, using the very best obtainable. Wordsworth was a lover of tea, and he sweetened his tea beyond the taste of ordinary mortals. Shelly also was a lover of tea. Kant drank tea habitually for breakfast. Motley used either tea or coffee for breakfast, as fancy prompted. William Howitt found great refreshment in both tea and coffee, but he wrote that on his great pedestrian journeys, "Tea would always in a manner almost miraculous banish all my fatigue, and diffuse through my whole frame comfort and exhilaration without any subsequent evil effect. Tea is a wonderful refresher and reviver."