it.  We cannot, and never could, talk freely, comfortably, and generally, without a company for talking.  Conversation has always been with us as much a business as railroad-making, or what not.  It has always demanded certain accessories, certain condiments, certain stimulants to work it up to the proper pitch.  ‘We all know’ we are the cleverest and wittiest people under the sun; but then our wit has been stereotyped.  France has no ’Joe Miller;’ for a bon-mot there, however good, is only appreciated historically.  Our wit is printed, not spoken; our best wits behind an inkhorn have sometimes been the veriest logs in society.  On the Continent clubs were not called for, because society itself was the arena of conversation.  In this country, on the other hand, a man could only chat when at his ease; could only be at his ease among those who agreed with him on the main points of religion and politics, and even then wanted the aid of a bottle to make him comfortable.  Our want of sociability was the cause of our clubbing, and therefore the word ‘club’ is purely English.

This was never so much the case as after the Restoration.  Religion and politics never ran higher than when a monarch, who is said to have died a papist because he had no religion at all during his life, was brought back to supplant a furious puritanical Protectorate.  Then, indeed, it was difficult for men of opposite parties to meet without bickering; and society demanded separate meeting-places for those who differed.  The origin of clubs in this country is to be traced to two causes—­the vehemence of religious and political partisanship, and the establishment of coffee-houses.  These certainly gave the first idea of clubbery.  The taverns which preceded them had given the English a zest for public life in a small way.  ‘The Mermaid’ was, virtually, a club of wits long before the first real club was opened, and, like the clubs of the eighteenth century, it had its presiding geniuses in Shakespeare and Rare Ben.

The coffee-houses introduced somewhat more refinement and less exclusiveness.  The oldest of these was the ‘Grecian.’  ’One Constantine, a Grecian,’ advertised in ‘The Intelligencer’ of January 23rd, 1664-5, that ‘the right coffee bery or chocolate,’ might be had of him ’as cheap and as good as is anywhere to be had for money,’ and soon after began to sell the said ‘coffee bery’ in small cups at his own establishment in Devereux Court, Strand.  Some two years later we have news of ‘Will’s,’ the most famous, perhaps, of the coffee-houses.  Here Dryden held forth with pedantic vanity:  and here was laid the first germ of that critical acumen which has since become a distinguishing feature in English literature.  Then, in the City, one Garraway, of Exchange Alley, first sold ’tea in leaf and drink, made according to the directions of the most knowing, and travellers into those eastern countries;’ and thus established the well-known ‘Garraway’s,’ whither, in Defoe’s day, ‘foreign banquiers’ and even ministers resorted, to drink the said beverage.  ‘Robin’s,’ ‘Jonathan’s,’ and many another, were all opened about this time, and the rage for coffee-house life became general throughout the country.