230 PLEASURES OF SMELLING. 



They'll take a pinch before they'll take their fee. 



Then make a step and view the splendid court, 



Where ail the gay, the great, the good resort; 



E'en they, whose pregnant skulls, though large and thick, 



Can scarce secure their native sense and wit, 



Are feeding of their hungry souls with pure 



Ambrosial snuff. * * * * 



But to conclude: the gaudy court resign, 



T* observe, for once, a place much more divine, 



When the same folly's acted by the good, 



And is the sole devotion of the lewd ; 



The church, more sacred once, is what we mean, 



Where now they flock to see and to be seen ; 



The box is used, the book laid by, as dead, 



With snuff, not Scripture, there the soul is fed ; 



For where to heaven the hands by one of those, 



Are lifted, twenty have them at the nose ; 



And while some pray, to be from sudden death 



Deliver'd, others snuff to stop their breath." 



Paolo Mantegazza, one of the most brilliant and witty of 

 Italian writers on tobacco, says of its use and " some of the 

 delights that may be imagined through the sense of smell :" 



" Human civilization has not yet learned to found on the 

 sense of smell aught but the moderate enjoyment derived 

 from snuffing, which, confined within the narrow circle of a 

 few sensations, renders us incapable of entering into the most 

 delicate pleasures of that sense. 



"Snuff procures us the rapture of a tactile irritation, of a 

 slight perfume ; but, above all, it furnishes the charm of an 

 intermittent occupation which soothes us by interrupting, 

 from time to time, our labor. At other times it renders 

 idleness less insupportable to us, by breaking it into the 

 infinite intervals which pass from one pinch of snuff to 

 another. Sometimes our snuff-box arouses us from torpor 

 and drowsiness ; sometimes, it occupies our hands when in 

 society we do not know where to put them or what to do 

 with them. Finally, snuff and snuffing are things which we 

 can love, because they are always with us; and we can season 

 them with a little vanity if we possess a snuff-box of silver or 

 of gold, which we open continually before those who humbly- 

 content themselves with snuff-boxes of bone or of wood. We 

 gladly concede the pleasures of snuffing to men of all condi- 

 tions, and to ladies who, having passed a certain age, or who, 

 being deformed, have no longer any sex ; but we solemnly 



