"Unfortunately, but very naturally, this extravagance rendered snuff a butt for the wits (who all took it, by the way), to shoot at. Steele, whose weakness for dress and show were proverbial, levelled many of his blunt shafts at its use; and Pope, who himself tells us 'of his wig all powder and all snuff his band,' let fly one of his keener arrows at the beaux, whose wit lay in their snuff-boxes and tweezer cases. As the men laid by, in the Georgian era, much of the magnificence of their attire, so their snuff-boxes became plainer and decidedly uglier. Rushing into an opposite extreme, the most outrageous receptacles for the precious dust were devised. Boxes in the shape of bibles, boots, shoes, toads, and coffins outraged public taste. The strangest materials were used in their construction; the public taste leaning towards relics possessing historical interest. Thus the mulberry tree planted by Shakespeare, the hull of the Royal George, in which 'brave Kempenfelt went down, with twice four hundred men,' and the deck of the Victory, on which Nelson died 'for England, home, and beauty,' have alone been supposed to supply material for snuff-boxes to an extent which, if known, must considerably weaken the faith of their possessors in their genuineness. [Illustration: Fancy snuff-boxes.] "Nor has snuff itself been less liable to the rule of fashion than the boxes that held it. We will give a few familiar instances. In the naval engagement of Viga, in 1703, when a large Spanish fleet was taken or destroyed, a great quantity of musty snuff was made prize of, and patriotism ran high enough to cause the 'town' for some length of time to resist all that was not manufactured to imitate the flavor from which it took its well-known name of 'musty.' Nearer to our own time, a large tobacco warehouse having been destroyed by fire, in Dublin, a poor man purchased some of the scorched or damaged stock, and manufacturing it into coarse snuff, sold it to the poorer class of snuff-takers. Forthwith capricious fashion adopted it, endowing it with fabulous qualities, and Lundy Foot's Irish Black-guard (so it was termed) filled the most fashionable boxes.