Tea at Trianon: Why We Like Coffee

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 31, 2017

Why We Like Coffee

From Food and Wine:

Sometimes people just have a soft spot for certain kinds of coffee—and that doesn’t necessarily mean one brand is better or worse in quality or taste. Everyone's taste is so particular to their experience, civet coffee can the very best coffee in the entire world, or just coffee. Same as any other brew. In the end, what you like just kinda depends. Your preferences rest not only the way you taste, but your emotional ties to coffee as well. You could have the world's most “advanced palate," but if you grew up in a household where coffee is synonymous with, say, blinding pain and emotional trauma, you’re gonna hate it, no matter what kind of hoity-toity blend it is. (Read more.)