The question is often asked, "Does tobacco shorten life?" No evidence has yet been adduced proving that moderate smoking is injurious, though Sir Benjamin Brodie believed that, if accurate statistics could be obtained, it would be found that the value of life in inveterate smokers is considerably below the average; and the early deaths of some of the men whose names are so frequently quoted in defence of smoking, favours the idea that all smoking is injurious. Few literary men live out their days. It is a matter of general belief that Mr. Edward Miall weakened his body and shortened his life through his habit of incessant smoking. "Bayard Taylor," says Mr. James Parton, "was always laughing at me for the articles which I wrote in the _Atlantic Monthly_, one called 'Does it pay to smoke?' and the other, 'Will the Coming Man drink Wine?' I had ventured to answer both these questions in the negative. He, on the contrary, not only drank wine in moderation, but smoked freely, and he was accustomed to point to his fine proportions and rosy cheeks, comparing them with my own meagre form, as an argument for the use of those stimulants. 'Well,' he would say, on meeting me, glancing down at his portly person, and opening wide his arms, with a cigar in his fingers, 'doesn't it pay to smoke? How does _this_ look? The coming man may do as he likes; but the man of the present finds it salutary."' Commenting on Mr. Taylor's early death, Mr. Parton points out that some fifty New York journalists have either died in their prime or before reaching their prime. A similar mortality, he notes, has been observed in England. Dickens died at 58, and Thackeray at 52. A "great number of lesser lights have been extinguished that promised to burn with long-increasing brightness." Mr. Parton asks, "Is there anything in mental labour hostile to life? Was it over-work that shortened the lives of these valuable and interesting men?" He thinks not, but that they died before their time because they did not know how to live. Like Carlyle, William Howitt was scandalised by the tippling habits of some of the literary men whom he met, and equally scandalised by their smoking habits. Replying to a correspondent who urged that most literary men and artists smoke, he said, "No doubt; and that is what makes the lives of literary men and artists comparatively so short. May not too much joviality and too much smoking have a good deal to do with it? I myself, who have not smoked for these seventy years, have seen nearly the whole generation of my literary contemporaries pass away. The other day (Dec. 7, 1878), I ascended in the Tyrol, a mountain of 5,000 feet, inducting a walk of six or seven miles to it, and as many back, in company with some friends. I did it easily, and felt no subsequent fatigue. I would like to see an old smoker of eighty-six do 'that." There can be no doubt that excessive smoking is one of the causes of the early deaths of literary men, though not the