him back to his own room. When I was younger, I could have done it alone. But my health and strength are not what they were-I am afraid I must ask you to help me.' Before they could answer, Miss Verinder called to me softly. She met me at the door of her room, with a light shawl, and with the counterpane from her own bed. "Do you mean to watch him, while he sleeps ?" she asked. "Yes. I am not sure enough of the action of the opium, in his case, to be willing to leave him alone." She handed me the shawl and the counterpane. "Why should you disturb him?" she whispered. Make his bed on the sofa. I can shut my door, and keep in my room." It was infinitely the simplest and the safest way of disposing of him for the night. I mentioned the suggestion to Mr. Bruff and Betteredge-who both approved of my adopting it. In five minutes, I had laid him comfortably on the sofa, and had covered him lightly with the counterpane and the shawl. Miss Verinder wished us good night, and closed the door. At my request, we three then drew round the table in the middle of the room, on which the candle was still burning, and on which writing materials were placed. "Before we separate," I began, "I have a word to say about the experiment which has been tried to-night. Two distinct objects were to be gained by it. The first of these objects was to prove, that Mr. Blake entered this room, and took the Diamond, last year, acting unconsciously and irresponsibly, under the influence of opium. After what you have both seen, are you both satisfied, so far?" They answered me in the affirmative, without a moment's hesitation. 66 had any objection-before we separated for the night-to draw out, and sign, a plain statement of what he had seen. He at once took the pen, and produced the statement with the fluent readiness of a practised hand. "I owe you this," he said, signing the paper, as some atonement for what passed between us earlier in the evening. I beg your pardon, Mr. Jennings, for having doubted you. You have done Franklin Blake an inestimable service. In our legal phrase, you have proved your case." Betteredge's apology was characteristic of the man. "Mr. Jennings," he said, "when you read Robinson Crusoe again (which I strongly recommend you to do), you will find that he never scruples to acknowledge it, when he turns out to have been in the wrong. Please to consider me, sir, as doing what Robinson Crusoe did, on the present occasion." With those words he signed the paper in his turn. Mr. Bruff took me aside, as we rose from the table. "One word about the Diamond," he said. "Your theory is that Franklin Blake hid the Moonstone in his room. My theory is, that the Moonstone is in the possession of Mr. Luker's bankers in London. We won't dispute which of us is right. We will only ask, which of us is in a position to put his theory to the test first." "The test, in my case," I answered, "has been tried to-night, and has failed." "The test, in my case," rejoined Mr. Bruff, "is still in process of trial. For the last two days, I have had a watch set for Mr. Luker at the bank; and I shall cause that watch to be continued until the last day of the month. I know that he must take the Diamond himself out of his bankers' hands-and I am acting on the chance that the person who has pledged the Diamond may force him to do this, by redeeming the pledge. In that case, I may be able to lay my hand on the person. And there is a prospect of our clearing up the mystery, exactly at the point where the mystery baffles us now! Do you admit that, so far?" I admitted it readily. "The second object," I went on, was to discover what he did with the Diamond, after he was seen by Miss Verinder to leave her sitting-room with the jewel in his hand, on the birthday night. The gaining of this object depended, of course, on his still continuing exactly to repeat his proceedings of last year. He has failed to do that; and the purpose of the experiment is defeated accordingly. I can't assert that I am not disappointed at the result -but I can honestly say that I am not surprised by it. I told Mr. Blake from the first, that our complete success in this matter, depended on our completely reproducing in him the physical and moral conditions of last year-and I warned him that this was the next thing to a downright impossibility. We have only partially reproduced the conditions, and the experiment has been only partially successful in consequence. It is also possible that I may have administered too large a dose of laudanum. But I myself look upon the first reason that I have given, as I went to the sofa to look at Mr. Blake. He the true reason why we have to lament a failure, | had not moved since I had laid him down as well as to rejoice over a success.” and made his bed-he lay locked in a deep and quiet sleep. After saying those words, I put the writing materials before Mr. Bruff, and asked him if he "I am going back to town by the ten o'clock train," pursued the lawyer. "I may hear, when I get back, that a discovery has been madeand it may be of the greatest importance that I should have Franklin Blake at hand to appeal to, if necessary. I intend to tell him, as soon as he wakes, that he must return with me to London. After all that has happened, may I trust to your influence to back me?" Certainly!" I said. Mr. Bruff shook hands with me, and left the room. Betteredge followed him out. While I was still looking at him, I heard the Once more, Miss threshold, in her bedroom door softly opened. Verinder appeared on the pretty summer dress. "Do me a last favour," she whispered. "Let me watch him with you." I hesitated-not in the interests of propriety; only in the interest of her night's rest. She came close to me, and took my hand. "I can't sleep; I can't even sit still, in my own room," she said. "Oh, Mr. Jennings, if you were me, only think how you would long to sit and look at him. Say, yes! Do!" Is it necessary to mention that I gave way? Surely not! She drew a chair to the foot of the sofa. She looked at him, in a silent ecstasy of happiness, till the tears rose in her eyes. She dried her help me through what is left of the end of my life. Mr. Blake is to write, and tell me what happens in London. Miss Verinder is to return to Yorkshire in the autumn (for her marriage, no doubt); and I am to take a holiday, and be a guest in the house. Oh me, how I felt it, as the grateful happiness looked at me out of her eyes, and the warm pressure of her hand said, "This is your doing!" My poor patients are waiting for me. Back again, this morning, to the old routine! Back again, to-night, to the dreadful alternative between the opium and the pain! God be praised for his mercy! I have seen a little sunshine-I have had a happy time. A CUP OF TEA. eyes, and said she would fetch her work. She LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE. fetched her work, and never did a single stitch of it. It lay in her lap-she was not even able to look away from him long enough to thread her needle. I thought of my own youth; I thought of the gentle eyes which had once looked love at me. In the heaviness of my heart, I turned to my Journal for relief, and wrote in it what is written here. So we kept our watch together in silence. One of us absorbed in his writing; the other absorbed in her love. Hour after hour, he lay in his deep sleep. The light of the new day grew and grew in the room, and still he never moved. Towards six o'clock, I felt the warning which told me that my pains were coming back. I was obliged to leave her alone with him for a little while. I said I would go up-stairs, and fetch another pillow for him out of his room. It was not a long attack, this time. In a little while, I was able to venture back and let her see me again. I found her at the head of the sofa, when I returned. She was just touching his forehead with her lips. I shook my head as soberly as I could, and pointed to her chair. She looked back at me with a bright smile, and a charming colour in her face. "You would have done it," she whispered," in my place!" * * A CUP of tea! Blessings on the words, for they convey a sense of English home comfort, of which the proud Gaul, with all his boulevards and battalions, is as ignorant as a turbot is of the use of the piano. What refinement or gentleness could there have been in those times when our rude ancestors in the peascod doublets and trunk hose and our rugged ancestress in the wheel ruff and farthingale sat down to breakfast over a quart of humming ale or a silver tankard of Canary? There was no pleasant tea-table for Shakespeare to talk wisely at, no cup of fragrant Souchong for Spenser to recite poetry over. No wonder that wise men then ignored the fairer sex, shrank from the bottle, and got together in taverns where wit might lighten and wisdom thunder. Lucky Milton-lucky because he over smoking Bohea no doubt saw visions of the golden gates of Paradise and the amaranthine meadows of Eden. But seriously, has not tea ministered vastly to our tranquil home pleasures and calm home life, and was it not a kindly providence that raised the tea-cup to our tired lips just as our City life grew more busy and more sedentary? Happy the brave brain-workers who were born after the coming in of the sweet herb of China! It was for a long time supposed that the use of tea began in Tartary, and was not introduced into China till the empire was conquered by the Tartars, ten years before the Restoration of Charles the Second; but this is entirely an error, as Bontius, a Leyden professor, who flourished in the reign of James the First, mentions the general use of tea by the Chinese twenty years before the Tartars clambered over the Great Wall or marched past the great blue-tiled Pagodas. The Chinese have two curious old legends, which are worth repeating, as first contributions to the mythology of the teapot. The first relates to the Origin of the Teaplant. Darma, a very religious prince, son of Kasinwo, an Indian king, and the twentyeighth descendant of Tiaka, a negro monarch 1 can be no doubt about the story, for the tops of the highest rocks of Mauvi are still visible at low water; and moreover, if any further proof was needed, divers often venture down into the blue depths, when the sharks are asleep above in the sun, and recover old teapots, shaped like small barrels, with short narrow necks, and of a greenish-white colour. They used to be worth about seven thousand pounds apiece when cracked, and fissured, and having shells sticking to them. An old Dutch writer computes the price of the large and sound at five thousand thails. Now, a thail is ten silver maas, and ten maas are equal to seventy Dutch stivers, and twelve stivers are worth thirteenpence of our currency, and all that makes a heap of money. (1023 B.C.), landed in China in the year A.D. 510. The legend seems to prove that from the earliest times tea was known among students and austere people as a dispeller of drowsiness. Its first use was no doubt accidental, as was that of coffee, the virtues of which, the Arab legend says, were discovered by some goats who had browsed on leaves of the coffee plant, and became unusually lively after their meal. It is a singular fact, too, that Jesuit writers who visited China in the reign of James the First expressly state that they used the herb tea common among the Chinese, and found that it kept their eyes open and lessened the fatigue of writing sermons and hearing absolutions that lasted late into the night. No doubt the figure of Darma and his reed could be found on old China. Our second Boheatic Myth is a legend about The island of Mauvi, now sunk deep in the Many antiquarians (but not Dreikopf-oh, no, no!) are of opinion that the Arabian Malobathron-mentioned by the writer of the Periplus (or first survey) of the Black Sea, supposed to be Arrian, the learned preceptor of Marcus Antoninus-is tea, as the golden fleece broth coffee; but we do not hold to this belief, for, as Dreikopf knows, and Horace shows, people put malobathron on their hair, not in their stomachs. Ramusio, a Venetian writer on geography, who died in 1557, mentions tea; and so does Giovanni Botero, who, in 1589, particularly praises tea as a "delicate juice which takes the place of wine, and is good for health and sobriety;" so also does Olearius, whom the Duke of Holstein sent to Russia and Persia. Gerard Bontius, a Leyden professor, who invented diabolical Pills known as Tartarean," and went to China in 1648, gave a drawing of the plant. We hear of tea in Europe in 1557 (the last year of the reign of Queen Mary), and yet it was not till 1660 (the year of the Restoration) that we find tea in pretty free use in England. In 1660 (12 Carl. 2, c. 23) a duty of eightpence a gallon was laid on all tea sold and made in coffee-houses (started in London by Pasqua Rosee, 1652). The tax-collectors visited the houses daily, to ascertain what quantity of tea had been made in the day. That same year Thomas Garraway, landlord of Garraway's Coffee House, near the Royal Exchange, started as "tobacconist, and seller and retailer of tea and coffee." "That the virtues and excellencies of this leaf and drink," said Garraway in a circular, "are many and great, is evident and manifest by the high esteem and use of it (especially of late years) among the physicians and knowing men of France, Italy, Holland, and other parts of Christendom; in England it hath been sold in the leaf for six pounds, and sometimes for ten pounds, the pound weight; and in respect of its former scarceness and dearness, it hath been only used as a regalia in high treatments and entertainments, and presents made thereof to princes and grandees, till the year 1657. The said Thomas Garraway did purchase a quantity thereof, and first publicly sold the said tea in leaf and drink made according to the directions of the most knowing merchants and travellers in those eastern countries, and upon knowledge and experience of the said Garraway's continued care and industry in obtaining the best tea, and making the best tea, and making drink thereof, very many noblemen, physicians, and merchants, and gentlemen of quality, have ever since sent to him for the said leaf, and daily resort to his house in Exchange Alley aforesaid, and drink the drink thereof; and to this intent, &c., these are to give notice that the said Thomas hath tea to sell from sixteen to fifty shillings the pound." Fifty shillings the pound, forsooth; and now we get good Souchong, that deadly enemy to beer and wine, at three shillings a pound. Soon after this Pepys, that rarest of gossips, whose curiosity for novelties was insatiable, mentions tasting tea in September, 1660. "Tea -a Chinese drink, of which I had never drank before." But it does not seem to have made much impression on the worthy admiralty clerk, for in 1667, he says again, "Came in and found my wife making tea, a new drink which is said to be good for her cold and defluxions." The Earl of Clarendon, that grand party historian, writes in his diary, "Père Couplet dined with me, and after supper we had tea; which he said was really as good as any he had drank in China." Sir Kenelm Digby mentions with great emotion a way of preparing tea used by the Jesuits when coming in tired and waiting for a meal. "The priest that came from China," he says "told Mr. Waller that to a pint of tea they frequently take the yolks of two new-laid eggs and beat them up with as much fine sugar as is sufficient for the tea, and stir all well together. The water must remain upon the tea no longer than while you can say the Miserere psalm very leisurely, you have then only the spiritual part of the tea, the proportion of which to the water must be about a drachm to a pint." In 1688 the Court of Directors, writing to their factory agents at Bantam, in Java, ordered them to send back home one hundred pounds weight of the best tea they could get, and the next year there arrived their first consignment of tea, in two canisters of one hundred and forty-three pounds and a half each. The directors had previously presented Charles's Portuguese queen, who had learnt to like the Chinese beverage at home, on the shores of the Tagus, with twentytwo pounds of tea on her birthday. It was on this presentation that courtly Waller wrote his verses: Venus her Myrtle, Phoebus has his Bays, Nicholas Tulp, the same eminent Professor of Amsterdam, whom Rembrandt painted with his pupils gathered round him over the dissecting-table, had already, about 1670, written on tea, and collected opinions of eminent physicians on the subject of the new liquor. But in 1671 tea found a champion, indeed, in Cornelius Bontekoe, a Leyden doctor, who upheld the chemical theory of Dubois, and considered tea a panacea against all the ills that flesh is heir to. He pronounced it an infallible cause of health, and thought two hundred cups daily not too much even for a moderate drinker. The Dutch East India Company is said to have made it worth his while to uphold this opinion. By Queen Anne's time tea had come into full use, and tea parties were much what they are now; indeed, there is now to be seen at Leeds a picture painted before 1681, which represents a tea party which strictly resembles one at the present day, except that the kettle stands by the side of the lady on a sort of tripod stove. In 1763, Linnæus had the satisfaction of receiving a living tea-plant from China. He seems to have believed it possible to grow tea in Europe, for he says he looked upon nothing to be of more importance than to shut the gate through which so much silver went out of Europe. In the time of the amiable Lettsom, who died in 1815, And if they dies, I Lett's-em tea-plants were introduced into England, and The plant resembles a camellia. In France, at they are now common in our conservatories. to prepare the leaves for sale, but the scheme one time, hopes were entertained of being able was soon abandoned. It must not be supposed that this Chinese stranger forced his way to our tables without opposition from the timid, the prejudiced, and the interested. Hundreds of rival herbs and spices were tried as the basis of refreshing beverages. Medical men have gone alternately mad after sage, marjoram, the Arctic bramble, the wild geranium, veronica, wormwood, juniper, sloe, goat-weed, Mexican goosefoot, speedwell, saffron, carduus benedictus, trefoil, wood-sorrel, pepper, mace, scurvy-grass, plantain, and and Dr. Solander (Captain Cook's companion) betony. Sir Hans Sloane invented a herb-tea, another, but nothing has displaced the Chinese leaf sprung from the eyelids of King Darma. Cowper (circa 1782) did much in one of his poems to associate tea with home comfort, and to sanctify it with memories of domestic happiness; what a pleasant interior he paints with the firelight pulsing on the ceiling: "Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, urn, The Chinese, it is now well known, do not use the flowers of the tea plant, fragrant though the yellow blossoms are. The different sorts of tea are easily discriminated. The Pekoe consists of the first downy leaflets, picked from young trees in the earliest spring. In May, the growth succeeding these forms the Souchong. The third gathering is the strong flavoured Congou. Bohea is a late leaf from a special district. In green teas, the Hyson is a gathering of tender leaflets. The Gunpowder is a selection of hyson; the coarser and yellower leaves are the Hyson Skin. The Twankay is the last gathered crop. somewhat metaphorically called, drove "the old national kettle, the pride of the fireside," into the kitchen. Nor do we know whether the English urn of classical shape is an imitation of the Russian samovar, which is not heated by a concealed iron, but by a small fire of red hot charcoal, far more efficacious. The urn is an imposing and pleasant summer friend, but is not nearly so useful as it is ornamental. Yet it is a pleasure to see him in the hands of a neat handed Phyllis, thumping, hissing, and throbbing like a little undeveloped locomotive, the whiff of white steam waving like a thin plume from his bronze crest; but when his youthful ardour dies away, and one or two faint sighs are symptoms of the gradual de-surer of a pure unadulterated article than is the clining of the heat, the result upon the second cup of tea is certainly most deplorable. How pleasant to revive recollections of pleasant tea-times long since passed! The meal (generally after a late dinner rather a work of supererogation) used to begin, as far back as we can remember, with a jangle and clatter of spoons and cups, and a stirring of restless saucers in the neighbourhood of the kitchen. We younkers, stirred by the sound, roused ourselves for the impending meal. The tea-tray would at last appear borne in by Susan (we are recalling an especial period of youth), the palladium of the family (the silver tea-pot) conspicuous as a monarch among those lesser retainers the slop-basin, the sugar-basin, the milk-jug, and that regiment of household troops the tea-cups, of Worcester china. It was usually the custom of us younkers to shout at the appearance of the tea-tray, hunger being strong within us, and a meal the chief pleasure of our existence. Then the tea-poy was opened, and the fragrance that arose we always associated with pagodas, willowpattern plates, and pig-tails. When we had an opportunity we used to like to dip small hands and pretend to be Hong merchants sorting teas. Next the kettle arrived on the scene, and this kettle had a strong individuality of its own. It had always a swathe of soot on the side, and beyond that a prismatic streak where the fire had painted rainbows on it. The way it began to softly sing was a perpetual wonder to us, and might have led, if Watt had not been so quick, to the discovery of the steam-engine. A little purring note faint and distant, then grew gradually louder and fiercer till the lid began to vibrate and the water to gallop. The pouring out, too, of the first strong brown cup, gradually paling as it mixed with the milk, the springing of the bubbles from the melting sugar (strong basis, those bubbles, of discrimination touching money) how familiar the sights to us now, how fresh and new and wonderful then. There was a new delight to us children when the pot had to be filled with a jet of steaming transparent water from the kettle, and then, before the dregs of the cups were emptied, we had other divinations to perform with the grounds, that raised us in our own estimation almost to the dignity of magicians. The tea drinker must not think that he is any wine drinker. Tea in its finest state never reaches, never can reach, England. It is overdried for our market, and the over-drying destroys the aroma, which is still further impaired by the sea voyage. Canton bohea is composed of last year's refuse mixed with fresh inferior sorts, all over-dried to fit them for transportation. The Chinese not only adulterate tea with other leaves, but they give the leaf an artificial bloom with indigo and gypsum, and scent it with resinous gums and buds of fragrant plants. They turn damaged black leaves into green by drying them over charcoal fires and colouring them with turmeric and indigo. Then comes the English cheat. In 1828 a manufactory was discovered where ash, sloe, and elder leaves, were dried to imitate tea, and then coated with white lead and verdigris to give colour and bloom. If tea can only be grown in Assam, there may be soon found a remedy for all this cheating. In 1835 tea was found growing wild in Upper Assam-a country which we took from the Burmese. The climate is like that of China. At present, the tea from Assam rather resembles a coarse strong Congo, and is better for dilution with inferior growths that have more flavour, than to be used by itself. We can only blame the use of tea when carried to excess. Tea is but an infusion of a herb in warm water, and half a pint of warm water at one meal is enough for any one. WINIFRED. I. SWEET Winifred sits at the cottage door, The rose and the woodbine shadow it o'er, And turns to the clear blue summer skies II. The rose on her cheeks is rose too red, |