"May he be promoted to great powers! We acquaint you that the foreign opium, the dirt which is used for smoking, is prohibited by command. It is not permitted that it shall come to Canton. We beg you, good brother, to inform the honoured president of your country of the circumstance, and to make it known, that the dirt used for smoking is an article prohibited in the celestial empire."--_Paunkbyquia Mowqua, &c. Kai Hing, 22nd year, 5th Month, 22nd day, Canton, May 22nd, 1818._ _Sir Isaac Newton._--This illustrious individual was remarkable for smoking and temporary fits of mental abstraction from all around him; frequently being seized with them in the midst of company. Upon one occasion, it is related of him, that a young lady presenting her hand for something across the table, he seized her finger, and, quite unconsciously, commenced applying it as a tobacco-stopper, until awoke to a sense of his enormity by the screams of the fair one. _Extraordinary Match._--Some years ago, in a public room at Langdon Hills, in Essex, the conversation chancing to turn on smoking, a farmer of the name of _Williams_ boasting of the great quantity of tobacco he could consume at a sitting, challenged the room to produce his equal. Mr. _Bowtell_, the proprietor of the great boot-shop, Skinner-street, and remarkable for smoking "pipes beyond computation," travelling his round at that time, chanced to be present, and immediately agreed to enter the lists with him for five pounds a-side. A canister of the strongest shag tobacco was placed by the side of each at eight o'clock in the evening, when they began the match. Smoking very fast, by the time the clock had struck twelve, they had each finished sixteen pipes, when the farmer, through the dense atmosphere, was observed to turn pale. He still continued, however, dauntlessly on, but, at the end of the eighteenth pipe, fell stupefied off his chair, when the victory was adjudged to his opponent, who, calling for an extra glass of grog, actually finished his twentieth pipe before he retired for the night! DIVANS. Nor ball, nor concert, nor theatre can boast, With all their frippery and senseless fun; Nor broiling taverns, when they shine the most, By hot unruly spirits overrun;-- In dance, or song, or drunken laugh, and toast, With elegance and comfort, cheaply won,-- To cheer the spirits and to refine the man: Hail! books and mocha,--cigars and the divan!