But whether at bull-fight or theatre, be he lay or clerical, every Spaniard who can afford it, consoles himself continually with a cigar, sleep--not bed--time only excepted. This is his _nepenthe_, his pleasure opiate, which, like Souchong, soothes but does not inebriate; it is to him his “Te veniente die et te decedente.” [Sidenote: SMUGGLED CIGARS.] The manufacture of the cigar is the most active one carried on in the Peninsula. The buildings are palaces; witness those at Seville, Malaga, and Valencia. Since a cigar is a _sine quâ non_ in every Spaniard’s mouth, for otherwise he would resemble a house without a chimney, a steamer without a funnel, it must have its page in every Spanish book; indeed, as one of the most learned native authors remarked, “You will think me tiresome with my tobacconistical details, but the vast bulk of readers will be more pleased with it, than with an account of all the pictures in the world.” They all opine, that a good cigar--an article scarce in this land of smoking and contradiction--keeps a Christian hidalgo cooler in summer and warmer in winter than his wife and cloak; while at all times and seasons it diminishes sorrow and doubles joy, as a man’s better half does in Great Britain. “The fact is, Squire,” says Sam Slick, “the moment a man takes to a pipe he becomes a philosopher; it is the poor man’s friend; it calms the mind, soothes the temper, and makes a man patient under trouble.” Can it be wondered at, that the Oriental and Spanish population should cling to this relief from whips and scorns, and the oppressor’s wrong, or steep in sweet oblivious stupefaction the misery of being fretted and excited by empty larders, vicious political institutions, and a very hot climate? They believe that it deadens their over-excitable imagination, and appeases their too exquisite nervous sensibility; they agree with Molière, although they never read him, “Quoique l’on puisse dire, Aristote et toute la philosophie, il n’y a rien d’égal au tabac.” The divine Isaac Barrow resorted to this _panpharmacon_ whenever he wished to collect his thoughts; Sir Walter Raleigh, the patron of Virginia, smoked a pipe just before he lost his head, “at which some formal people were scandalized; but,” adds Aubrey, “I think it was properly done to settle his spirits.” The pedant James, who condemned both Raleigh and tobacco, said the bill of fare of the dinner which he should give his Satanic majesty, would be “a pig, a poll of ling, and mustard, with a pipe of tobacco for digestion.” So true it is that “what’s one man’s meat is another man’s poison;” but at all events, in hungry Spain it is both meat and drink, and the chief smoke connected with proceedings of the mouth issues from labial, not house chimneys.