WORKS OF ART. O51 
plainer and decidedly uglier. Rushing into an opposite 
extreme, the most outrageous receptacles for the precious 
dust were devised. Boxes in the 
shape of bibles, boots, shoes, toads, 
and coffins outraged public taste. 
The strangest materials were used 
in their construction ; the public 
taste leaning towards relics possess- 
ing historical interest. Thus the 
mulberry tree planted by Shake- 
speare, the hull of the Royal 
eorge, in which ‘brave Kempen- 
felt went down, with twice four 
hundred men,’ and the deck of the 
Victory, on which Nelson died ‘for 
‘England, home, and beauty, have 
alone been supposed to supply 
material for snufi-boxes to an ex- 
tent which, if known, must con-¢ 
siderably weaken the faith of their * 
* possessors in their genuineness. FANCY SNUFF-BOXES. 
“ Nor has snuff itself been less 
liable to the rule of fashion than the boxes that held it. We 
will give a few familiar instances. In the naval engagement 
of View, in 1703, when a large Spanish fleet was taken or 
destroyed, a great quantity of musty snuff was made prize 
of, and patriotism ran high enough to cause the ‘town’ for 
‘some length of time to resist all that was not manufactured 
to imitate the flavor from which it took its well-known name 
of ‘musty.’ Nearer to our own time, a large tobacco ware- 
house having been destroyed by fire, in Dublin, a poor man 
purchased some of the scorched or damaged stock, and man- 
ufacturing it into coarse snuff, sold it to the poorer class of 
snuff-takers. Forthwith capricious fashion adopted it, endow- 
ing it with fabulous qualities, and Lundy Foot’s Irish Black- 
guard (so it was termed) filled the most fashionable boxes. 
“ Again, during the Peninsular campaigns, in which the 
light division of the British army bore so memorable a part, 
the mixture used by and called after its gallant leader, Gen- 
eral Sir. Amos Norcott, had a more extensive sale than any 
other. When Napoleon was at Elba, and folks began to tire 
of legitimacy, as they soon did, it became fashionable to use 
‘enuff scented with the spirit of violet, and significantly to 
allude to the perfume. Garrick, when he was manager of 
