The frequenting of coffee-houses is a custom which has declined within our recollection, since institutions of a higher character, and society itself, have so much improved within late years.  These were, however, the common assemblies of all classes of society.  The mercantile man, the man of letters, and the man of fashion, had their appropriate coffee-houses.  The Tatler dates from either to convey a character of his subject.  In the reign of Charles the Second, 1675, a proclamation for some time shut them all up, having become the rendezvous of the politicians of that day.  Roger North has given, in his Examen, a full account of this bold stroke:  it was not done without some apparent respect to the British constitution, the court affecting not to act against law, for the judges were summoned to a consultation, when, it seems, the five who met did not agree in opinion.  But a decision was contrived that “the retailing of coffee and tea might be an innocent trade; but as it was said to nourish sedition, spread lies, and scandalise great men, it might also be a common nuisance.”  A general discontent, in consequence, as North acknowledges, took place, and emboldened the merchants and retailers of coffee and tea to petition; and permission was soon granted to open the houses to a certain period, under a severe admonition, that the masters should prevent all scandalous papers, books, and libels from being read in them; and hinder every person from spreading scandalous reports against the government.  It must be confessed, all this must have frequently puzzled the coffee-house master to decide what was scandalous, what book was fit to be licensed to be read, and what political intelligence might be allowed to be communicated.  The object of the government was, probably, to intimidate, rather than to persecute, at that moment.

Chocolate the Spaniards brought from Mexico, where it was denominated Chocolati; it was a coarse mixture of ground cacao and Indian corn with rocou; but the Spaniards, liking its nourishment, improved it into a richer compound, with sugar, vanilla, and other aromatics.  The immoderate use of chocolate in the seventeenth century was considered as so violent an inflamer of the passions, that Joan.  Fran.  Rauch published a treatise against it, and enforced the necessity of forbidding the monks to drink it; and adds, that if such an interdiction had existed, that scandal with which that holy order had been branded might have proved more groundless.  This Disputatio medico-diaetetica de aere et esculentis, necnon de potu, Vienna, 1624, is a rara avis among collectors.  This attack on the monks, as well as on chocolate, is said to be the cause of its scarcity; for we are told that they were so diligent in suppressing this treatise, that it is supposed not a dozen copies exist.  We had chocolate-houses in London long after coffee-houses; they seemed to have associated something more elegant and refined in their new term