DISQUISITION ON SMOKING. 329 



matter ?" stopped the further display of his rhetoric. 

 " You insult my father and brothers, and then ask 

 what is the matter ! " indignantly replied the lady. 

 Her relatives had distinguished themselves in the 

 army and navy, had risen by their own merit, and were 

 most exemplary in every act of their lives, men whose 

 honourable public career was most probably owing to 

 that moral discipline, in which they trained them- 

 selves by constant attention to their home-duties. The 

 loud and sweeping generalisations of reproach are, in 

 nearly every instance when individually tested, found 

 to be unjust. Many great smokers we have found to 

 be men of particularly energetic minds,* and capable 

 of doing much mental and physical work ; and they 

 declare that smoking, with water and coffee, or with- 

 out either, enables them to sustain an extra exertion 

 of mind and body, when the effect of wine, beer, and 

 spirits would weaken or wholly incapacitate them. As 

 for longevity, whether it may be attributed to general 

 temperate habits, or to smoking, or to both, it is not 

 for us to say ; but we could enter into a long list of 

 smokers remarkable for retaining to extreme old age, 

 brightness of intellect and strength of limb.f Some 

 member of the Statistical Society may probably be 

 induced to follow up this not unimportant branch of 



* Instances may be found in pp. 146, 149. 



*j* We may refer to p. 147 for the names of several. In p. 10 is a more 

 familiar instance falling under the author's experience ; to which he may 

 here add the late Canon Bennett of Canterbury, a very great smoker, who, 

 when nearly 80, walked from thence to London as a joke, and when past 

 80, went into Wales fishing. 



