We all perceive that smoking has made bold and rapid encroachments of late years. It is said that the absurdly situated young man who passes in the world by the undescriptive name of the Prince of Wales smokes in drawing-rooms in the presence of ladies. This tale is probably false; scandalous tales respecting conspicuous persons are so generally false, that it is always safest and fairest to reject them as a matter of course, unless they rest upon testimony that ought to convince a jury. Nevertheless, it is true that smoke is creeping toward the drawing-room, and rolls in clouds where once it would not have dared to send a whiff. One reason of this is, that the cigar, and the pipe too, have "got into literature," where they shed abroad a most alluring odor. That passage, for example, in "Jane Eyre," where the timid, anxious Jane, returning after an absence, scents Rochester's cigar before she catches sight of his person, is enough to make any old smoker feel for his cigar-case; and all through the book smoke plays a dignified and attractive part. Mr. Rochester's cigars, we feel, must be of excellent quality (thirty cents each, at least); we see how freely they burn; we smell their delicious fragrance. Charlotte Brontë was, perhaps, one of the few women who have a morbid love of the odor of tobacco, who crave its stimulating aid as men do; and therefore her Rochester has a fragrance of the weed about him at all times, with which many readers have been captivated. "Jane Eyre" is the book of recent years which has been most frequently imitated, and consequently the circulating libraries are populous with smoking heroes. Byron, Thackeray, and many other popular authors have written passages in which the smoke of tobacco insinuates itself most agreeably into the reader's gentle senses.