In Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley,” after the Baron had shaken Edward heartily by the hand in the English fashion, he embraced him _à-la-mode Françoise_, and kissed him on both sides of his face; while the hardness of his gripe, and the quantity of Scotch snuff which his accolade communicated, called corresponding drops of moisture to the eyes of his guest. Among the Germans it is no uncommon sight to find two great, bearded and mustached giants, kissing each other like a pair of turtle doves. In July, 1888, when the Emperor William met the Russian Czar at St. Petersburg, the two rulers embraced and kissed each other several times. There is no doubt, however, that Germans fully appreciate osculation between members of the opposite sex. In a well-known German novel, this passage occurs: “Sophia returned my kiss and the earth went from under my feet; my soul was no longer in my body; I touched the stars; I knew the happiness of Seraphim.” And it may be added, that an enthusiastic old German beau of former times declared, as the result of practical experience, that kissing was an infallible cure for the toothache! Among the English the custom has become obsolete. As for women kissing each other, the modern rhymster says: Men scorn to kiss among themselves, And scarce will kiss a brother; Women often want to kiss so much, They smack and kiss each other. As to the custom of kissing the Pope’s toe, Matthew of Westminster writes that it was customary at one time to kiss the hand of His Holiness, but that a certain woman in the eighth century not only kissed the Pope’s hand, but squeezed it. The Pope, seeing the danger to which he was exposed, cut off his hand, and afterwards offered his foot. But another authority says that kissing the Pope’s toe was a fashion introduced by one of the Leos, who had mutilated his right hand and was too vain to expose the stump. In Charles Reade’s “Cloister and the Hearth,” there is a short dissertation on some curious kissing customs. Fra Colonna, enamored of the pagan days, overwhelms Brother Jerome with copious quotations, showing the antiquity and pagan origin of many modern ecclesiastical customs. “Kissing of images and the Pope’s toe is Eastern paganism,” said Fra Colonna. “The Egyptians had it of the Assyrians, the Greeks of the Egyptians, and we of the Romans, whose Pontifax Maximus had his toe kissed under the Empire. The Druids kissed their High Priest’s toe a thousand years B.C. The Mussulmans who, like you, professed to abhor heathenism, kissed the stone of the Caaba—a pagan practice. The priests of Baal kissed their idols.”