Like a sun-gleam seen through a Scotch mist the hoary head and set visage of the veteran thinker, Thomas Carlyle, appears. As a persistent preacher of the gospel of silence he will himself talk and talk on, seemingly oblivious to its application to himself. Turning to his friend, Dr. Calvert, he asks, ‘Why are we here? Really, I think it shocking that we should run to Rome, to Greece, and leave all at home lying buried in nonentity. Were I supreme chief there should be a resurrection of the old English ages. I will pit Odin against Jupiter, and find sea-kings that will put Jason to shame. Ah, tobacco! It is one of the greatest benefits that ever came to the human race. Nobody ever came near me whose talk was half so good as silence with my pipe. I would fly out of the way of everybody, and would much rather smoke a pipe of wholesome tobacco than talk to anybody just now. I saw in the weed the one element in which by European manners men could sit silent together without embarrassment, and no man was bound to speak one word more than he had actually and veritably got to say. Nay, every man was admonished and enjoined by the laws of honour, and even of personal ease, to stop short at that point; at all events, to hold his peace and take to his pipe the instant he had spoken his meaning—if he chanced to have any. The results of which salutary practice, if introduced into constitutional parliaments, might evidently be incalculable. Take for example, the Tobacco Parliament of Friedrich Wilhelm. It had not the least shadow of a constitutional parliament, nor even a privy council, as we understand it, his ministers being mere clerks to register and execute what he had otherwise resolved upon. But he had his _Tabako-Collegium_; his _Tabagie_, or Smoking Congress, and which made so much noise in the world and which in a rough, natural way afforded him the uses of a Parliament on most cheap terms and without the formidable inconveniences attached to that kind of institution. In short, he had a parliament reduced to its simplest expression; instead of parliamentary eloquence he had Dutch clay pipes and tobacco provided in abundance. And this was the essence of what little intellect and insight there was in a parliament; all that can be got out of any parliament. Sedatives gently soothing, gently clarifying tobacco-smoke, with obligation to a minimum of speech, surely give human intellect and insight the best chance they can have.’