280 SENTIMENT. 



ply on the Thames, conveying the pride of the city to Grave- 

 send and Margate, no smoking is allowed abaft the funnel, 

 and where, in public-houses ashore, no gentleman is permitted 

 to smoke in the parlor before two o'clock in the afternoon, 

 A pipe of tobacco, or a cigar, after a day's hard exercise, 

 whether mental or bodily, and after the cravings of hunger 

 and thirst are appeased, may be fairly ranked amongst the 

 most delightful and most harmless of all earthly luxuries. It 

 fills the mind with pleasing visions, and the heart with kindly 

 feelings. A hard-working laborer, smoking by the side of 

 his hearth at night, presents a perfect picture of quiet enjoy- 

 ment. I see him now in my mind's eye. He is seated in an 

 old high-backed, cushionless arm-chair, but an easy one, nev- 

 ertheless, to him, who from dawn till sunset, has been en- 

 gaged in ploughing, thrashing, ditching, or mowing. With 

 one leg thrown over the other, he quietly reclines backward, 

 and with an expression of perfect mental composure, he gazes 

 on the smoke that ascends from his pipe. There is a senti- 

 ment-exciting power* in the smoke of tobacco when perceived 

 by the eye, as well as a pleasing sedative effect when inhaled ; 

 and those smokers who have any doubt of the fact should 

 take a pipe with their eyes closed. A person who smokes 

 with his eyes shut cannot very well tell whether his cigar is 

 lighted or not. How soothing is a pipe or a cigar to a wearied 

 sportsman, on his return to his inn from the moors ! As he 

 sits quietly smoking, he thinks of the absent friends whom 

 he will gratify with presents of grouse ; and, in a state of per- 

 fect contentment with himself and all the world, he deter- 

 mines to give all his game away. Full of such kindly feel- 

 ings, he retires to bed ; but, alas, with day-light, when the 

 effect of the tobacco has subsided, the old leaven of selfishness 

 prevails, and his good intentions are abandoned. ' Mary,' 

 said an old Cumberland farmer to his daughter, when she 

 was once asking him to buy her a new beaver, i why dost 

 thou always tease me about such things when I'm quietly 

 smoking my pipe ?' ' Because ye are always best-tempered 

 then, feyther,' was the reply. 1 1 believe, lass, thou's reet,' 

 rejoined the farmer ; ' for when I was a lad, I re'member that 

 my poor feyther was just the same ; after he had smoked a 

 ipe or twee he wad ha' gi'en his head away if it had been 



oose.' " 



The smoke ascending from the innff of a candle could excite a sentimental feeling la 

 the minds of Wordsworth and Sir George Beaumont, though It seems to have had no Bach 

 effect on the mind of Crabbe. Lockharl's Life of Sir Walter Scott. 



