A modern writer, one of our own cotemporaries, has also extracted a moral from the same laudable custom, thus— "TO MY LAST CIGAR. "The mighty Thebes, and Babylon the great, To smoke tobacco, then, is evidently a most praiseworthy and moral employment: that is as plain as the nose on one's face. Half an hour's quiet smoking is better for soul and body than would be double the amount of time spent in a lecture-room or spouting-club. Not that these places are altogether badby no means. Some they keep from drunkenness and what is worse, others they do in some degree instruct; but the smoker has the advantage-not, it may be in knowledge, in the mere parrot power of repeating a few scientific terms, but in the incomparably superior power of reflection, in the ability to examine and judge. Need we say that Sir Isaac Newton smokedthat Locke implies that tobacco is as essential as bread—that old Hobbes of Malmesbury, the first and clearest of English philosophers, regularly had his twelve pipes a day, and kept it up till he was almost as old as old Parr. That man must be in the most melancholy condition imaginable who is ignorant of these plain facts. Smoking is a bad habit, a waste of time, do you say? My dear sir, allow me, as a friend of the family,-for be your name Jenkin or Jones, Smith or Brown, to the human family do you, unworthy though you may be, belong- allow me to observe that for a candid man, as most unquestionably you are, you have made a most singularly erroneous remark. Did the venerable, and learned, and most excellent Bishop Burnet, who so constantly smoked that he had a hole for his pipe cut through the broad brim of his hat, did he waste his time, who wrote more on ecclesiastical and general history and theology than you have ever read? Did Dr. Parr, who had more Greek in his little finger than you have, my dear sir, in your whole trunk,—did he waste his time, and did not he smoke "From morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve?" Turn to his works, take down his life, and you will there find the fact admitted, and not merely admitted, but defended. His biographer, a medical man, says the effect of smoking on Dr. Parr was as follows: "It calmed his agitated spirits, it assisted his private ruminations, it was his companion in anxiety, it was his helpmeet in composition." What think you of that, Master Brooks? Could a Turk wish for testimony in favour of tobacco more satisfactory and clear? Somewhat similar is the testimony of that erudite German, the late William Taylor of Norwich. In a letter to Southey, he says, "I once fancied myself in a pulmonary consumption, that I spat the blood sprent suspended mucus, and that I have always willingly ascribed my recovery to the practice of smoking tobacco, which may act, -1, by callosifying lungs too sievelike; 2, by phlogisticating a too pure atmosphere of respiration; 3, by alkalinizing a hyper-oxygenated mass of blood; 4, by permanently stimulating a too irritable system. Dr. Beddoes himself must allow that some one of these theories will do, and might, I think, advise you to take a cigar in Portugal-a cigar, the friend of silent reminiscence, the peculiar incense for the shrines of Hippocrates and Mnemosyne." But we need not stop here; we can summon a cloud of witnesses. Did not Coleridge, through life, look back to the glorious evenings he spent with Lamb, with his pipe, in that old fashioned public-house, whose name the admirers of his genius will never forget? Did not Robert Hall, the most eloquent of English preachers, and John Foster, the most original of English essayists, smoke? If they did not, may we never put pen to paper again. Did not Campbell and Byron constantly patronize the "weed?" And with these facts, my little friend, staring you in your face, can you call smoking a waste of time or a bad habit? Can you not, even though you be a teetotaller, or a member of the Peace Society, understand that the mind as well as the body requires rest? that human value cannot be guaged by the amount of physical work done, or yellow cash secured? that the self meditation of the Brahmin is not altogether a folly? that in some degree it leads upward to the To ayatov and TO xaλov of the Platonists themselves? Every thing depends upon the meaning we attach to the terms we employ: if reflection be a bad habit, a waste of time, we readily admit smoking to be so, and confess that the illustrious names we have taken at random to prop our cause were but sorry fellows after all. One fallacy, with regard to smoking, is too monstrous to be altogether passed over with the contempt it merits, viz., that smoking leads to drinking. Good heavens! that we should have to write thus, in the present highly enlightened and philosophic age. The bare mention of the charge makes us drop our editorial pen, and sit bolt upright, erectis auribus, and with bristled head. The pipe, that all divines have rejoiced in, a procurative to drinking, a pander to the public-house, the bottle's jackall, as it were! the charge'is as ridiculous as it is false. One may as well Or an epitaph." "believe a woman, The first time our reader walks down Regent Street, after seven in the evening, let him drop into Campbell's, in Bean Street, or wherever else he chooses, and let him see who gets to their fifth glass of grog soonest, the smoker, or the man who does not; who soonest, with a voice increasingly husky and indistinct, indulges in a promiscuous style of conversation, more amusing than convincing,-certainly not the smoker. Not that no smoker is ever overcome in a moment of temporary weakness, the best of us, alas, are but men! To err, is human. We ourselves have risen from our bed with a slight sensation of headache, and a conviction, by no means slight, that we had made fools of ourselves the previous night. But it stands to reason that you, with a cigar in your mouth, should drink slower than the man who has nothing else to do but drink. You can't drink equal. While you have lit your cigar, and drawn half a dozen whiffs, and drank the health, temporal and eternal, of your divine Adêle, or dearly beloved Ellen, your friend who does not smoke has left nothing in his glass but a silver spoon. This is not random assertion, what a gent might term chaff. We have tried the experiment, over and over again, and are quite ready to repeat it, my dear sir,—at your expense. And now what shall we more say? Our reader is a humane man, a man eager to do good; in short, a gentleman. It is no use denying it, my dear sir. We see benevolence in the twinkle of your eye, and hear it in every word you speak. Well, dear sir, notwithstanding the Queen's speech, we are in a bad way; none of us are making money, and our streets are filled with the starving poor. If you subscribe to charitable associations, the best part of the money is swallowed up in salaries and miscellaneous expenditure. If you bestow your charity on beggars, of whom you know nothing, the chances are, that you have given your cash to a man as well off as yourself, and that a few hours after the villain will, over a tripe supper and grog, be laughing at you as a precious flat. What then is to be done? Try smoke: the duty on tobacco is enormous. Every pound of cigars you smoke, pays nine shillings to government. You thus act the part of a true patriot; you enable ministers to Turn tf other taxes, and thus relieve the burdens of the the fact admrive them funds with which they can build churches, ths public parks,-in short, you at once enduty to their country, and their queen. One word more, and we have done. We merely wish to observe, had we a daughter we would give her, cæteris paribus, to the man that smoked in preference to the man who did not. Your true smoker is the true "model husband," and he is the man to keep good hours, and make himself generally useful. Not in his pocket will you find that bane of married life, the latch-key. In the long, long winter evenings, you will find him by his own fireside where he ought to be. Not in "those nasty clubs." As a general rule, the smoker is industrious, economical, and well-behaved, fond of his children, and passionately attached to his wife. Dear madam, read your husband's letters, if you will, cut his friends, if you will, make him give up white-bait dinners at Blackwall, and Epsom races, if you will; but don't take from him his cigar; if you wish he should adore you while living, and revere your memory when dead, don't take from him his cigar; it will make him desperate, it will, indeed. Had we a female friend, whose welfare we particularly desired, and whose happiness in life was more valuable to us than our own, next to marrying her ourselves, we should recommend her to select the man not ignorant of the Virginian weed. We would say,-Dear young friend, with the eye whose "Dark charm 'twere vain to tell, But look on that of the gazelle, you don't know whether to accept Mr. Jones or not,-take him, we know he smokes, never mind his whiskers or his boots,-bear's grease will grow the one, and thirty shillings buy the other. Never mind his protestations of undying love,—the rascal; we heard him say the same thing to Miss Brown at Ramsgate, ten years back. Take him, for he smokes, and where there is smoke, there must be fire. 312 THE MYSTIC CHIMES OF HALLOW-E'EN. MAUD-CHAPEL FARM was a sunny spot, it basked on the green hill side, And its fine old orchards flourished by a river rapid and wide; In the valley lone a grey ruin stood, of ancient monastic time, Whose ivied tower invisibly held a soft and silvery chime. O, those bells rang slowly once in a year, And none could list to the sound without fear. Maud-chapel farm was a healthful spot, young voices rang on the breeze, 'Mid the sunken graves on the far hill-side, all under the mossgrown trees; Young feet bounding in sport were there, and conies from long fern started, A rare play-ground was that sunny spot, where slept the nuns departed. O, those bells rang slowly once in a year, And none could list to the sound without fear. Maud-chapel farm was a lonely spot, no homestead companioned nigh, The arches and isles of the abbey ruins re-echoed the winds' wild sigh: The dark woods round, for many a mile, at the solemn twilight hour, Waved, and whispered, and swang about, with the ivy on the tower. O, those bells rang slowly once in a year, And none could list to the sound without fear. Maud-chapel farm was a mystic spot, when Hallow-e'en tide came round, The inmates listened, both old and young, for the softly-chiming sound; |