Undoubtedly we have among us, and have had in England since the days when Raleigh introduced the ‘Indian’s herb’ into the royal palace and made it agreeable to his queen and fashionable everywhere, some remarkable examples of great smokers occupying the highest positions in the domain of intellect. Instances crowd the memory. The tall, dark figure of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury presents itself, he whose _Leviathan_ and other philosophical works stirred into activity the intellect of Europe, and who attained the ripe age of ninety-two. Sir Isaac Newton smoked, even in the presence of the lady who honoured him with well-meant attentions. Seated one day quietly by his side, happy in anticipation of what the future might bring forth, Sir Isaac suddenly seized her hand—now the blissful moment had arrived!—but, instead of tenderly pressing it within his own, he probed her little finger into the bowl of his pipe to remove some obstruction. The story told by Sir David Brewster points a moral—ladies should be chary of lavishing their affection on philosophers, they are so very absent-minded. Divinity furnishes a host of devotees to the pipe. Leading the throng are Dr. Henry Aldrich, of Christ Church, Oxford; Dr. Parr, whose Greek was the admiration of ripe scholars and the terror of little boys; who overwhelmed his friends with torrents of eloquence and clouds of tobacco-smoke; Robert Hall, England’s greatest pulpit orator, and many another divine burned incense continually at the shrine of Nicotiana; while towering in the forefront of the great tobacco-smokers of the Victorian age are the figures of Carlyle and Tennyson. But these illustrious examples of great tobacco smokers are, in respect to the whole community, altogether exceptional, and may be regarded as having no more bearing on any general rule applicable to all men than had their individual capacity for imbibing, say, ‘sweet waters.’ It may be observed, however, that those who pass severe censure on the smoking habit seem to overlook the fact that men do not eat or drink tobacco; that the prudent smoker is quite contented if its ambient fumes gently float about him, regaling his olfactory sense. It can never satisfy reasonable inquiry to be told that deadly results follow the administration, not of the smoke, but of a single drop of the essential oil of tobacco to a dog, that dies of old age at fifteen years; or to a rabbit, that breeds seven times a year and dies at the age of five. Far above theorising there is the teaching of experience, and if each would-be smoker will in this, as in other things, be guided by this unfailing monitor, and act upon the dictates of common sense, no harm will come to him.