176 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 



good feeling between both parties as effectually as 

 masonry itself, perhaps more so, because boozing being 

 no necessary adjunct the snuff-taking brethren are 

 not frequently inclined for a quarrel. 



Ever since the powder of the Indian weed was 

 brought into notice by that vilest of women but primest 

 of snuff-takers, Catharine de Medicis, it has extended 

 its dominion over the whole inhabitable globe as an 

 article of luxury, necessity or consolation ; and like 

 most forbidden things it has been sought after in pro- 

 portion to the difficulty experienced in obtaining it. 

 The Italians would take snuff, though Pope Urban 

 VIII. threatened to excommunicate all who did so; 

 Sultan Amnrath IV. was unable to prevent his liege 

 Turks from tickling their nostrils, though he made it 

 a capital offence ; the Russians would persist in using 

 snuff as a substitute for caloric, though such an act 

 rendered them liable to the loss of the most important 

 part of their physiognomy under the executioner's 

 knife, and the bold Britons also would continue the 

 enjoyment of a pipe and a pinch, though Jamie, the 

 British Solomon issued forth his " counterblaste to 

 Tobacco, " At length however the Sovereign Princes, 

 priests and physicians who were the most obstinate 

 opposers of this luxury, seeing that their efforts were 

 vain, shifted ground and smoked and took snuff them- 

 selves with all imaginable zeal. His late most gracious 

 Majesty of England, peace to his manes, was a magni- 

 ficent snuffer ; Napoleon, Newton, Hobbes, Pan*, 

 with innumerable other generals, divines and philo- 

 sophers, whose names have grown immortal, lux- 

 uriated in tobacco. In short, look where we will, the 

 glorious plant of Oronoko is prized as a precious 

 treasure ; from the praries of the red-skinned Sioux 

 to the divan of the swarthy Turk, from the regions of 

 thick-ribbed ice where the diminutive Laplander vege- 

 tates to the dreary dwelling place of the collossal 

 Patagonian ; among palace-sheltered Britons and 

 houseless Australians savage Tartars and polished 

 Parisians temperate Switzers and voluptuous Italians, 



