From what has been said about tobacco the reader will imagine, perhaps, that I am an enemy to the noxious weed. Not altogether so; but the reason, if not precisely similar to that which calls forth the article in the London _Examiner_, springs from the same impulse: I love a good cigar, and have been in my day an inveterate smoker, but hope, and am now endeavoring, to overcome the useless and enervating habit, more especially since I have seen the poverty and desolation occasioned in Virginia from the cultivation of tobacco. Still I must confess, that even now, like an old war horse when he smells powder, am I, when I come in contact with the odoriferous exhalation of a good cigar. If he with delight snuffs in his expanded nostrils the fumes of saltpetre and charcoal, I, with no less pleasure, inhale the odor of a good Havana. If he chafes and prances to rush into the battle, in me rises an elate spirit, when, in the midst of a band of smokers, I see through the fog, slowly curling and ascending, a miniature gallery of "long nines" issuing from their port-holes, and hear the puffs, and see the smoke. At such a time it is not safe to offer me a cigar, for then I feel like him of the _Examiner_, that it is not well to be too hard upon an enemy. Snuff I detest, and always have detested, notwithstanding the fact that I once bought a gold snuff-box, upon the lid of which I had my family coat-of-arms engraved. "Off again! Why don't you keep to the point?" doubtless exclaims the reader. The truth is, my position as an assailant of tobacco is somewhat peculiar, such as may be appreciated by one who, having had a friend to whom he is under obligation, has been led, upon meeting that friend, and finding him in discredit, to give him the "cold shoulder." It goes hard with my feeling, if not with my conscience, to speak against tobacco. Yet whatever virtue the weed itself may possess, it is now almost universally conceded, that the cultivation of tobacco will ruin a country. Let any one take a survey of lower Virginia, and he cannot help coming to the conclusion, that it not only impoverishes the land, but if followed up for a number of years, will be very apt to impoverish the children of those who engage in its cultivation. Tobacco, say its advocates, is a very profitable crop,--if by profit is meant a large return in money, without reference to any thing else--granted. Much money has been and will be made by cultivating it, and if the parent, as the money is received, would safely invest it for the benefit of himself and children, so that provision would be made for the time when he grows old and they advance, and the land becomes exhausted and useless, they will do very well. But few are sufficiently considerate to make this provision, since it is naturally supposed that a plantation which for a number of years has yielded a superabundance will not be likely to fail in the future. They cannot see that year after year, slowly but surely,