ADVICE GRATIS.—Give up taking snuff; or, if you should propose slight objections to this course, then purchase leaf tobacco, and manufacture your own snuff, and having done so, keep it in a gold snuff-box, or if you have weighty reasons for preferring silver, there is no objection to that metal, or even the homely horn of the Franciscan of Calais. Our forefathers thought of the box, as well as of the snuff, and sometimes paid for their thought. In the early part of the eighteenth century, fashionable snuff-boxes had reached the highest point of luxury and variety. _The Tatler_ of March 7, 1710, notices several gold snuff-boxes which “came out last term,” but that “a new edition would be put out on Saturday next, which would be the only one in fashion until after Easter. The gentleman,” continues the notice, “that gave £50 for the box set with diamonds, may show it till Sunday, provided he goes to church, but not after that time, there being one to be published on Monday that will cost fourscore guineas.” These costly articles, so happily satirized by Steele, are represented as the productions of a fashionable toyman, named Charles Mather, popularly known under the name of “Bubble Boy.” Nor must we forget the amber snuff-box of which Sir Plume, in the “Rape of the Lock,” was so justly vain; in 1711 he “spoke, and rapped the box.” In 1733, Dodsley mentions boxes made of shell, mounted in gold and silver. Latterly we have made the acquaintance of several shell snuff-boxes; some of these were made of the tiger cowry, mounted in silver; of a small species of Turbo, cleaned and polished, and of harp shells, either mounted in silver or in baser metal. In different parts of the globe, tastes differ as to the materials of which snuff-boxes should be composed. A gentleman sent a piece of cannel coal from England to China, to be there carved by the ingenious Chinese into a snuff-box; this task was accomplished, and the box was shown in the Exhibition of 1851; also, in the Turkish department, a snuff-box of bituminous shale. Perhaps in the new Exhibition of 1862, there may be found a similar article, carved out of Gravesend flint, by natives of the Orange River Territory; or one of Suffolk coprolite, executed by rebellious sepoy women imprisoned in the hulks at Portsmouth.