A correspondent of the Daily News is very melancholy about
the future of English tea-drinkers. He says we never get any
first-chop" tea in England, and never shall any more. There is
passion for cheapness in this country, the people will not give the price of good tea, and so the Russians, who like the best tea, buy it all up. He suggests that everybody should give 4s. a pound for tea, and then the importers would have money enough to buy the first " chops " and outbid those Russians. There is ma'ivete in his suggestion, but we have often wondered why .curious teas are not offered in the market like curious wines,— why it should not pay, for example, to import the Himalayan 'brick tea, the best in the world. Is it that the taste for fine tea bag disappeared, or that purchasers from long experience des- pair of discovering any rule of proportion between price and quality in teas? The dealer will accept any price, but his best tea is very seldom better than good Assam at half-a-crown a pound.
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