health and strength, that they may be fit to exhibit themselves to the Londoner again, when the appointed time arrives. "Oh, yes; that is all very well!" say the objectors (they never die), "but what about the dwellers in the capital, who have no time to lounge in the Parks, nor money to spend in the pleasures you represent as being spread for their enjoyment. Pray, how can they enjoy the London season?" With the greatest ease and comfort. Nothing is more simple. Let them take in a newspaper. If they cannot afford even that, let them borrow one. There they can mix in all the pleasures of the hour, without trouble or fatigue. Gentlemen who have made observation and description the study of their lives will depict for them festive scenes with an accuracy their eyes could never compass. Trained intelligences will inform them which tenor, soprano, tragedian, or soubrette is admirable, or the reverse, much better than they would ever find out by listening or looking; and they will discover ever so many more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy, without catching cold, having to put on dress-coats and tight boats, meeting people they do not want to meet, being bored to death and wondering how on earth income and expenditure can be made to fit. To sum up, what is the lesson to be learnt from the London Season? Look, oh, my friend, at the brilliant cortège!—see, Youth on the box, and Pleasure in the dickey! Mark Age endeavouring to overtake them. Behold Beauty in all her pride, Intellect in all its vigour! Consider them well, and say whatever comes uppermost in your mind. And as for moral, there are many in books. Select which you like-you have my full permission.

LL honour to Sir Walter Raleigh for many things, but chiefly for this, that he was the

first to bring tobacco into England and into fashion! We are told by John Aubrey, 1580:"It was then sold for its wayte in silver. I have heard some of our old yeomen neighbours say that when they went to Malmesbury or Chippenham market, they culled out their biggest shillings to lay in the scales against the tobacco," an instance of the high esteem in which the divine weed was held at that time. This gentle plant provides a soothing medicine for man's fretful spirit while on the social rack. It is the student's ally, the philosopher's companion, the invalid's comforter, though, alas! sad to relate, the ladies' foe. Why should it be so? Means this hostility an acknowledgment of a rival? Let us hope not, for nothing is so peaceful in its character and associations as the weed,

"The brain with this infumed, all quarrel ends,
And fiercest foemen turn to faithful friends."

So let the ladies encourage the free use of tobacco, if only in the hope of doing something to reclaim the outcast man. But be moderate. Beware of surfeit in any enjoyment, for there delight ends. Do your smoking gently, and be careful what you smoke. The cigarette is a pretty toy, but hardly

worth the trouble of playing with. Moreover, be it remembered by those who are particular about trifles that the cigarette is injurious to the complexion. The cigar is something finer, and "food for men." To smoke a nicely-finished, well-built, and well-kept Havannah is a joy that has few equals in this world; but of the three classifications, commend to us the pipe. The pipe is like an old friend; in its society you well know what pleasure you are about to enjoy, and you treat it with the confidence of experience. But with a cigar there is the risk of encountering a stranger of lamb-and-wolf combination,-fair without, and false within. Yet Byron, a staunch votary of the weed, sings:

"Sublime tobacco! which from east to west

Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest;
Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides
His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
Tho' not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand;
Divine in hookahs, glorious in a pipe,

When tipped with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
Like other charmers, wooing the caress
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress ;
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties,—give me a cigar!"

Such were the poet's sentiments. "Chacun à son goût." But talking of a "pipe," let us not understand the word to mean a carved enormity in meerschaum or other foreign substance, which is liable to burn, crack, fall, break, and run the risk of multitudinous mischances. I have heard from married men that the bringing-up of two babies is scarcely equal to the anxiety of rearing a good, well-coloured meerschaum! One authority placed the number of babies at three. But that can hardly be accepted as a bona fide statement. Some

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amount of prejudice or misfortune must assuredly have prevailed. But "revenons!" Let not your pipe be a "swell" affair of the treacherous meerschaum. No! nothing equals a soundly-turned, substantial briar, cherry, or bog-oak. These, though humble in quality, are proportionately sincere. Let the mouthpiece be simple in design, and of strong, clear, hard amber, and you are armed against destiny.

Passing away from the surface of the earth, at the present time, by reason of the tyranny and oppression which have sent many a race the same road before him, the Red Indian of North America will yet leave an undying name to posterity as the originator of the art of smoking. When first seen by the early settlers, he was observed to be reverently attached to the mighty "calumet," or peace-pipe. This was his faithful companion in life, and it was laid by him on his buffalo-robe, together with his weapons, at death, to be buried with him, and enjoyed again in the happy huntinggrounds. The Indian's pipe-bowl is always made of steatite, a hard red stone, which is procured at stated times by special delegates from the redpipestone quarry on the Côteau des Prairies, a district hallowed by "Mitche Maniton," and where the Great Spirit made the Red Man's first pipe. Before the advent of tobacco, the Indian smoked a mixture of dried herbs, which he called "k'nickk'neck."

There is no freemasonry in the world like the care-soothing custom of smoking. No matter what the man's condition is, be he prince, peer, or peasant, if he is a smoker he is a man and a brother, ay, Marry! a member of the most powerful brotherhood in the universe, whose lodge is anywhere under the heavens, and whose sign

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manual is the strike upon the fusee-box. tramp upon the road will hesitate to ask a luckier brother of the fraternity for a pinch of the mighty weed, to help him along the rugged road of life, neither will Lord Fitzacres feel a quam in his noble conscience at taking "a light" from the hand of the lowliest plebeian on his estates. Smoking is the greatest and most agreeable leveller in the world. Kingdoms, nationalities, thrones, and birthright pale before the glow of its genial fire. A monarch may think, in certain parts of this benighted world, that he can exile a subject, deprive him of his very country! Be not deceived, my imperial brother. If that man is a smoker, your labour is but lost. You may send him to the remotest reef of the coral seas, but such banishment is powerless to harm him, for by the magic of his pipe his mind will live in countries finer far than any his poor body ever suffered in. Take. for example, our dear old friend Robinson Crusoe. Where would that famous recluse have been, in his desolate state, without a pipe? The sublime philosophy he practised, and the patient spirit he exhibited, were but the outcome of the divine weed. Then what a medicine he made of it! Let the Crusoe-student remember the fever that our hero kept at bay by the use of tobacco steeped in rum. Though it is recorded that "about this time I somehow got out in my reckoning of days," that lapse must be credited to the rum, not the baccy. Then, again, think of that glorious man Walter Raleigh! When about to suffer his cruel death, what was his last earthly pleasure? are assured that "he tooke a pipe of tobacco a little before he went to the scaffold, wch some formall persons were scandalised at; but 'twas well and properly donne, to settle his spirits.”

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