It is, perhaps, a pity Mr. Walpole did not feel satisfied with this display of youthful gaiety. Possibly he saw that something was still wanting; that his new-born idea of an Eastern origin for the weed he loved was too weak to stand without support. At that very moment some evil genius whispered in his ear the fun of sending the reader a wool-gathering to the British Museum. Then it dawned upon him that among the marvels of antiquity the excavations of Botta and Layard were laying bare to an astonished world was an Assyrian relic which would bear oracular testimony to the truth of the old Arabic manuscript found at Mosul, and that henceforth Nimrod must be regarded as the paladin of the pipe. So Mr. Walpole goes on to say: ‘If the curious reader will go to the British Museum he will there see an Assyrian cylinder, found at Mosul, and presented to the Institution by Mr. Badger, whereon is represented a king smoking from a round vessel, attached to which is a long reed.’ Hours have been spent in vain at the British Museum in making careful search for this interesting object. Doctor Wallis Budge, who presides over the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities, knows nothing of a cylinder bearing an inscription of a king smoking a pipe. He has, however, a record to the effect that Mr. Badger, on February 8th, 1845, gave the Museum ‘the squeeze of an inscription, the impression of a seal, and a bronze object.’ Doctor Budge warily remarked: ‘I must remind you that in 1845 all sorts of nonsense was talked about Assyrian objects; but that two men [a second writer had been mentioned who had evidently copied, on faith, from Mr. Walpole] should state such a thing without verification is remarkable. I am sorry for your wasted time—and my own!’ Assyrian cylinders in the British Museum are numerous, and interest in them is heightened by written explanations in our own tongue placed by the side of each of the markings upon them, giving also the date or period to which the object belongs. The student is thus enabled to grasp with his senses lessons in history which, without this aid, would be vague and unreal. Yet, so grotesque are some of the figures, that little need for wonder if the eye of faith should discover what it seeks for. The ascetic of the Greek Church, however, can eclipse this story of Nimrod and the Assyrian monarch who loved his pipe, with a tradition carefully preserved in its archives of Noah himself, tempted by the Evil One, having fallen under the intoxicating fumes of tobacco. The ingenuous scribe relates (though this may be apocryphal) that Noah, resting upon the summit of Mount Ararat after his toils on the swollen waters, happened to place his hand on a tobacco-pipe charged with the comforting herb, and Satan, envious of his happiness, urged the patriarch to prolong the indulgence until sleep fell upon his eyes. Where the soil is ready for the seed the merest figment takes root and flourishes abundantly.