Were it possible amid the teasing, paltry cares, as well as the more poignant griefs of life, to find a mere material soother and tranquillizer productive of no evil after-effects and accessible alike to all—to the desolate and the outcast equally with him who is rich in a happy home and the felicity of sympathising friends—who so heartless as to wonder or regret that millions of the world-chaffed should flee to it for solace? I confess, however, that in tobacco I have never found this soothing effect. This no doubt is constitutional, for I cannot presume to ignore the united testimony of the millions of mankind who assert from their own experience that it does produce such effects. He draws attention to the effects of tobacco on the Turks, and speaking of the drowsy reverie they fall into under its influence, asks if it is really a peculiarity of the Turkish temperament that makes tobacco act upon them as it does, sending the body to sleep while the mind is alive and awake. That this is not its general action in Europe (he remarks) the study of almost every German writer can testify. With the constant pipe diffusing its beloved aroma around him the German philosopher works out the profoundest of his results of thought. He thinks and dreams, and dreams and thinks, alternately; but while his body is soothed and stilled, his mind is ever awake. From what I have heard such men say, I could almost fancy they had in practice discovered a way of liberating the mind from the trammels of the body, and thus giving it a freer range and more undisturbed liberty of action. I regret that I have never found it act so upon myself. These reflections of the sympathetic Professor may be very grateful to the habitual smoker, who influenced by a natural feeling of attachment, looks lovingly on his pipe and pouch, as he would on old friends grown dearer with time; the older and more worn the closer he clings to them, till by-and-by he talks to them as would primitive man to his fetish. But this amiable weakness needs to be looked firmly in the face, and if it cannot bear scrutiny, if the indulgence be found hurtful to body or mind, it must go; thrown out of the window if need be, with a resolve not to go out and look for it, to restore it to its old niche, though the old pouch may contain Mr. J. M. Barrie’s beloved, Arcadia Mixture.