These feelings aside, the man who carries no snuff-box is a good member of society; that is to say, quite as good a one as the man who does carry a snuff-box. He is in general a good friend (as long as he has the _entree_ of your box), a good parent, a good tenant, a good customer, a good voter, a good eater, a good talker, and especially a good judge of snuff. He knows by one touch, by one sniff, by one _coup d'oeil_, the good from the bad, the old from the new, the fragrant from the filthy, the colour which is natural from the colour which is coloured. If any one should want to lay in a stock of snuff, let him take the man who carries no snuff with him: his _ipse dixit_ may be relied upon with every certainty. He will choose it as if he were buying it for himself, and in return will never forget to look upon it as a property he is entitled to fully as much as you who have paid for it; for, in fact, would you be in possession of the snuff if he had not chosen it for you? As for his complaint, it is like hydrophilia; no remedy has as yet been invented for it; and we can with comfortable consciences predict that, as long as snuff is taken, and men continue to carry it about with them in snuff-boxes, they are sure to be subject to the importunities of the man who carries no snuff box. * * * * * BUFFOON'S NATURAL HISTORY. SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER, who, like Byron, (in this one instance only) "wanted a hero," had the good fortune to lay his hands upon the history of the celebrated George Barrington of picking-pocket notoriety. That worthy, describing the progress he made for the good of his country, related some strange particulars of a foreign bird, called the Secretary, or Snake-eater, which Sir Edward, from his knowledge of the natural history of his friend John Wilson Croker, declares to be the immediate connecting link between the English Admiralty Secretary, or "Toad-eater." * * * * * "NOT EXACTLY." "Have you been much at sea?" "Why no, _not exactly_; but my brother married an admiral's daughter!" "Were you ever abroad?" "No, _not exactly_; but my mother's maiden name was 'French.'" * * * * * FASHIONS FOR DECEMBER. [A letter has found its way into our box, which was evidently intended for the Parisian _Courrier des Dames_; but as the month is so far advanced, we are fearful that the communication will be too late for the purposes of that fashionable journal. We have therefore with unparalleled liberality inserted it in PUNCH, and thus conferred an immortality on an ephemera! It is worthy of remark that the writer adopts the style of our foreign fashionable correspondents, who invariably introduce as much English as French into their communications.] _Rue de Dyotte_, _Derriere les Slommes a Saint Gilles_. MON JOVIAL ANCIEN COQ.