This was just eleven years after Buckingham met his fate at the hands of Felton. How long the interval between the first and this, the second edition, may have been, I cannot tell. Nor do I know enough of the politics of the time to determine whether anything can be inferred from the fact that the translation is dedicated to William Earl of Salisbury, or to warrant me in saying that these illustrations of the fate of royal favourites may have been brought before the English public with any view to the case of George Villiers. A passage, however, in Mathieu's dedication of the original "to the king," seems to render it not improbable, certainly not inapplicable: "You (Sir) shall therein [in this history] behold, that _a prince ought to be very carefull to conserve his authority entire. Great ones_ [court favourites] _here may learne_, it is not good to play with the generous {216} Lyon though he suffer it, and that _favours are precipices for such as abuse them_." Having referred to this work of Mathieu's, I shall feel obliged to any of your correspondents who will favour me with a notice of it, or of the author. Balliolensis. * * * * * THE ANTIQUITY OF SMOKING. I feel much interested in the Query of your correspondent Z.A.Z. (Vol. ii., p. 41.) I had a "Query" something similar, with a "Note" on it, lying by me for some time, which I send you as they stand.--Was not smoking in use in England and other countries before the introduction of tobacco? Whitaker says, a few days after the tower of Kirkstall Abbey fell, 1779, he "Discovered imbedded in the mortar of the fallen fragments several little smoking pipes, such as were used in the reign of James I. for tobacco; a proof of a fact _which has not been recorded_, that, prior to the introduction of that plant from America, the practice of inhaling the smoke of some indigenous plant or vegetable prevailed in England." (_Loidis and Elmete_.) Allowing, then, pipes to have been coeval with the erection of Kirkstall, we find them to have been used in England about 400 years before the introduction of tobacco. On the other hand, as Dr. Whitaker says, we find _no record_ of their being used, or of smoking being practised; and it is almost inconceivable that our ancestors should have had such a practice, without any allusion being made to it by any writers. As to the antiquity of smoking in Ireland, the first of Irish antiquaries, the learned and respected Dr. Petrie, says: