If Cowper, with the "sofa" assigned as his subject, could
sing so beautifully of all things social and domestic, what might he
not have done with the tea-table--the rallying-point of social life to
so many who never had a sofa--for his theme?
From the general use of coffee in the cities and large towns of Germany,
we have inferred its general use by the peasantry; but even this is
quite limited, in Upper Bavaria at least; it is found only where the
influence of city-life has penetrated. Sometimes a peasant woman has a
little hid in her chest, from which she stealthily prepares and drinks a
cup when her husband is away; but it is little used. This article was
brought into Western Europe in the seventeenth century, and found beer
in possession of Germany. The monks are said to have preached against
the use of coffee, as anticipating, by the dense black smoke which arose
from burning it, the "fumes of hell." It came from Turkey, and at that
day the Turk was still the hereditary dread of all the peoples on the
middle and upper Danube. He was next thing to the Devil; and what came
direct from the former could be but recent from the latter.
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