As a pinch of snuff ends in a sneeze, so sniffing ends in sneezing, and with a hearty sneeze we bring our pinch of snuff to a sudden ending. What comfort and consolation there is sometimes in a hearty sneeze, no one knows better than him who has just made two or three attempts, and ingloriously failed. With half closed eyes, and open mouth, and bated breath—once—twice—thrice—no! it will not be beguiled—psh-h-h-h-haw! “God bless you!” “The year 750,” says a writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, “is commonly reckoned the era of the custom of saying God bless you to one who happens to sneeze.” It is said that, in the time of the pontificate of St. Gregory the Great, the air was filled with such a deleterious influence, that they who sneezed immediately expired. On this the devout pontiff appointed a form of prayer, and a wish to be said to persons sneezing for averting them from the fatal effects of this malignancy. A fable contrived against all the rules of probability, it being certain that this custom has from time immemorial, subsisted in all parts of the known world. According to mythology, the first sign of life Prometheus’s artificial man gave, was by sternutation. This supposed creator is said to have stolen a portion of the solar rays, and filling a phial with them, sealed it up hermetically. He instantly flew back to his favourite automaton, and opening the phial, held it close to the statue, the rays still retaining all their activity, insinuated themselves through the pores, and set the factitious man a sneezing. Prometheus transported with success, offered up a prayer with wishes for the preservation of so singular a being. The automaton observed him, remembering his ejaculations, was careful, on like occasions to offer these wishes in behalf of his descendants, who perpetuated it from father to son in all their colonies. The Rabbis, also, fix a very ancient date to the custom. Pliny says, that to sneeze to the right was deemed fortunate; to the left, and near a place of burial, the reverse. Tiberius, otherwise a sour man, would perform this right of blessing most punctually to others, and expect the same from others to himself. Aristotle has a problem, “Why sneezing from noon to midnight was good, but from night to noon unlucky.” St. Austin tells us that the ancients were accustomed to go to bed again, if they sneezed while they put on their shoe. When Themistocles sacrificed in his galley before the battle of Xeres, one of the assistants upon the right hand sneezed, Euphrantides the soothsayer, presaged the victory of the Greeks, and the overthrow of the Persians. When the Greeks were consulting concerning their retreat in the time of Cyrus the Younger, it chanced that one of them sneezed, at the noise whereof, the rest of the soldiers called upon Jupiter Soter.