smoothed the billowy waves of mental strife. As sleep has been called the shadow of death, so may smoking be called the shadow of sleep. The mind is thus accustomed to associate the clouds of smoke with a gentle repose; or a tranquillity of the sensorium, moved only by the rippling flux and reflux of thought, through which men and things shrink into their proper and natural dimensions.

In extenuation of the habit of smoking, if I may not do more, I should say it is healthy, and add, in regard to myself," Behold the sign;" but the logicians would reply that I was begging the question, as I might have had good health "in spite of it." I can only say that I have walked intact through two visitations of the Asiatic cholera, and some scores of influenzas nearly every other year, while most of those around me in my own family were great sufferers. In the year 1802, or 1803-I cannot now say exactly which I was taking a pedestrian tour through the central part of Wales, when an influenza prevailed very generally in England; and after descending from the cairn at the top of Plinlimmon, with a jolly companion, where we drank the health of all the pretty girls of the Principality out of the source of the Severn, we took up our quarters at the village inn of Sputty, kept by two old bachelors-one aged ninety-eight, and the other going ahead of the century. The latter was on the hills minding his sheep, and the other nervous and queer with the prevailing malady. This Boniface "the younger" told us that his brother smoked, and he thought that he should begin to learn it, for the folk said it was wholesome in sickly times. We recommended the habit for his future length of years. In comparing notes with our ancient host of our respective experience, he would not be made to understand that we should come through Wales solely to see the country; he had been a 66 sore traveller" himself in former times. Question "Where had he been?" Answer-“He had been twice to Shrewsbury!" We met with no smoker that bad been afflicted with the very general complaint of that period, though we made it a point to continue our inquiry, and my succeeding experience has served to confirm my opinion that smoking is a healthy practice. Charles Mathews was spending an evening with me in the year 1830, in company with Mr. Robertson, the manager of the Lincoln and Grantham Theatres. He was then living on mutton-chops and brandy-and-water, to stave off the cholera; but I could not per

suade him to give the weed a trial. Brandyand-water was his Catholicon. From a note of his, which I retain in my scrap-book, that related to some paragraph in the local papers, he charged us with getting up a "Joint-stock Cholera morbus Company.'

I might greatly extend my observations in reference to the healthiness of smoking, and adduce examples-though doctors may rejoice in the superior science of drugs. I have no interest in the consumption of tobacco, either as a branch of trade, or as the friend of an enormous revenue derived from the same. The Rev. Canon Hugh Stowell, one of the great guns of the new city of Manchester, was entangled in a paper war with the Manchester Examiner a few weeks ago, by publicly declaring that he would never appoint a curate who "smoked;" when he was reminded that his own father had been a consumer of tabac (en poudre ;) but not being familiar with French, and being oblivious of snuff-ling preachers, he further blundered on a denial of the assertion. He was also equally opposed to the cigar, though, taking the Cuba and the tube in couples, it was only another form, so often deposed to by himself, of committing "dust to dust, and ashes to ashes!" In the next place, it was rather intolerant for a well-paid and rigidly evangelical superior to thus despotically ostracise a class of poor pastors, and deprive them of the means of killing time, while permitting the fragrant cloud to obscure in the mind and the memory the lucky inheritors of the fat stalls, in the distance of station.

With the ladies, in their pride of parlors and drawing-rooms redolent of the perfumes of the East, or with the shrews of conjugal blessedness, who prescribe the habits and amusements of their liege lords, we venture not to contend. It is easy to account for the prevalence of any custom wearing its way into general habitude in a single nation; but not so with a habit that has become universal through the world, both savage and civilized. In all the four hemispheres of the earth, amid the delicious perfumes of the east, the wild woods of the west, the rigors of the north, the golden regions of the south, the blandest of climates and the brightest of skies, the smoke of mundungus bears sovereign sway as a discovered luxury of civilization! We may trace it as a resource from the high pressure of thought among many eminent men of the day. Mr. Brassey, the

* More of Mathews, Liston, and some others of the bygone sock and buskin, at a future time.

greatest railway contractor of the day, is seldom seen without a cigar in his mouth, even while measuring districts with his eye so as to ascertain at what figure he would lay down a railway per mile, through hill and dale, mountain and moor. Kossuth has said that the cigar is the only luxury left him; and in this he incessantly indulges while exploring his mental way with fear and trembling through new projects menacing the imperialism of two of the greatest and most powerful nations of the earth.

I shall not now stay to divide and class the different smokers of the world. We have wits and clever men, who will occasionally discourse on brilliant nonsense-men who know how to "make nonsense respected," as Lamb says: and these are among the glorifiers of the weed. But the masses of the smokers are dull dogs: and it is only by smoking with them that we can qualify their stupid talk, and mitigate our contempt of them. Hence it may be said that smoking is a great moderator of ourselves, and a tolerator of the senseless babble of others.

A short time ago, one of those moral dandies, called a "nice man," as a recommendation to the favor of the ladies, poetized his horror of smoking. One of the fair dames, whom he wished to be considered his "flame" -ignoring smoke himself,-sent us a copy of his rhymes, which we replied to in similar verse; and as the latter had only a limited currency issued, a local few, I send you a selection of the principal stanzas, enumerating two illustrious smokers, and naming a few others on whom smoking might have had a favorable medicinal effect:

Great Doctor Parr, the learned Whig,
Ne'er deemed the smoke-cloud infra dig,
In which you could not see his wig,

Involved in clouds of smoke.

Quaint Lamb his wit would oft enshroud
In smoke-igniting laughter loud,
Like summer thunder in the cloud,-
The lightning in the smoke.

Dean Swift" died at the top:"* his head
Had drifting clauds when wit had fled:
Dull care lurked in his brain, instead

Of blowing out in smoke.

* The Dean's phrase was that, like certain trees, he should "begin to die at the top."

And Cowper mild-no smoker he,
Bard of the sofa and bohea-
Complained his "dear friend Bull"* not free
From lowering Stygian smoke.

Clouds in his non-inebriate nob
Were doomed the tea-tables to rob,
Inflicting many a painful throb

On one who could not smoke!

Smoke on! it is the steam of life,
The smoother of the waves of strife;
Where chimneys smoke, or scolds the wife,
The counteraction-smoke.

We ride, and work, and weave by steam,
Till ages past seem like a dream
In a new world whose dawning beam
Is redolent of smoke.

We travel like a comet wild
On which some distant sun had smiled,
And from his orbit thus beguiled

With a long tail of smoke.

The clouds arise from smoking seas,
And give, with each conveying breeze,
Life to the "weed," and herbs, and trees,

Which turn again to smoke.

All nations smoke! Havannah's pother
Smokes friendly with its Broseley brother:
The world's one end puffs to the other,
In amicable smoke.

When plague and pestilence go forth,
And to diseases dire give birth,
Which walk in darkness through the earth,
1 clothe myself in smoke.

I smoke through desolating years,
Tabooed from fever, void of fears,
And when some dreaded pest appears,
I call in Doctor Smoke.

Go, reader! perfume ladies' hair,
And scent the ringlets of the fair
With eau Cologne and odors rare,

Aloof from healthy smoke.

Go babble at the ball and rout,
And smirk with high-born dames who doubt :
Thy flames are quenched, thy fires are out,
And sinking into smoke.

"Better," said Johnson, great in name,

In illustration of the remarkable historic | scene presented in the accompanying plate, we take the liberty to present the following sketch of it from the letters of the editor of this Magazine, which are now in course of publication in another place, as being the most succinct and perspicuous account easily accessible :

We tarried for a night, and spent a large part of two days industriously occupied in walks and rides and rambles about this ancient city of Blois and its environs, "telling the towers thereof." We looked with a feeling of awe upon its venerable old castle. Its massive walls and towers lift up their heads in imposing grandeur. It is an object of attraction and interest. It forms an instructive chapter in the history of the past. It is the birthplace of memorable events. Some of them were born in daylight-some in deep, impenetrable darkness and guilt. The history of others will, doubtless, never be recorded by human pens. Their bloody and terrible particulars will never be disclosed till the final curtains are drawn aside. There is much in Blois to interest the stranger, and it adds threefold to the attraction to read its history on the spot.

Blois is remarkable alike for the beauty of its situation, its antiquities, its monuments, and the historical events of which it has been the theatre. It stands upon the charming banks of the Loire, elevated upon the slopes of two hills looking eastward down upon the smooth-flowing river, and commanding an extended and picturesque landscape view far up and down the stream, and over the green fields beyond it. At one end of the city, upon an elevation, stands the frowning and gloomy old castle. At the other extremity is the cathedral. It is an immense pile of architecture, built at different epochs along the track of time. The castle for ages was the abode of kings and princes. Here they were born. Here they lived in feudal times in safety within its

strong and massive walls. Here they married, and here they died. Here Marie de Medicis was imprisoned. Here Louis XII. was born, and Margaret of Valois married to Henry IV. Here that arch fiend and female Nero, Catharine de Medicis, lived, contrived and executed her bloody plots of assassination and murder, and here she died and "went to her own place."

We felt an excited interest to visit the memorable scenes in the interior of this old castle. We looked up to the lofty windows which lighted the rooms of Catharine de Medicis, with a feeling more than half expectant to see the form and face, and meet the dark and malignant eye of that marvellous woman, who was the dread of all who approached her. We were fortunate in having the company of a very intelligent gentleman of Blois. He was familiar with the history and scenes of the castle. He kindly volunteered to point out to us all its interesting interior localities. We spent hours in examining the numerous apartments and halls of state in which these stirring events occurred. A fine Gothic portal, on the eastern side, conducts through a strong and massive archway into the court or square of the castle. This court is spacious enough for a regiment of armed men to muster in. The castle is built on the four sides of this court. Three sides are now occupied with the armed legions of Imperial France. In the north wing of the castle, overlooking the city, are the royal apartments. Here are the still gorgeous chambers of Catharine de Medicis. Here that proud and haughty woman once and often walked in these spacious halls. Her cabinet-her drawingrooms-her library—her bed-room, and other private apartments, are still beautiful and magnificent. The walls and rich porcelain floors indicate the taste and luxury of that by-gone age. But those rooms are silent, solitary and lonely, as the chamber of death. They echo only to the footsteps of the stranger and keeper.

We paused in the open court, and looked upon those massive walls, hewn and erected ages ago. Some portions of this castle date back six hundred years. They bear the stamp and wear the garb of antiquity. While the eye gazes upon these ancient memorials, the mind travels back to former days. It leaps the barricades of centuries, to look upon the faces of men who lived five hundred years ago. Here is the workmanship of their hands. Here are the proud productions of their architectural skill. Their hands chiselled these solid columns, these strong walls, these marble arches, and the rich ornaments which embellish them. They are before you. They look you in the face. They are silent and speechless. But they tell you in impressive language, that the architectural minds that contrived and constructed them are gone. The hands that chiselled them have mouldered ages ago. These enduring and ponderous walls of defence could not defend their mortal inmates from the invisible arrow in the last conflict. We went up the antique, but still magnificent staircase of stone, rich and beautiful in ornament. Some of the most exquisite chisellings in stone are the salamanders of Francis I. This winding staircase conducts into the Council-Chamber and halls of state above. In the royal rooms adjoining was consummated the bloody tragedy of the Duc de Guise, on Dec. 23, 1588, and on the following day the Cardinal, his brother, was assassinated by order of Henry III. The former deed was done almost in his presence. It was done in his bed-room, while the King listened in his library to the drama of blood. The whole scene and its minute particulars are pointed out with such life-like description as if the tragedy had been enacted but a week before. The plot had all been contrived and arranged by Catharine de Medicis and King Henry. The Guises had been allured from Paris to attend a council of state. Forty-five assassins, gentlemen-in-waiting, had been engaged as actors in the tragedy. We went into the cabinet of King Henry, where he distributed with his own hand the forty daggers to these royal inmate murderers. We went up and down the private stairs leading to the upper room, where the assassins were con

cealed till the fatal moment arrived. We went into the Council-Chamber and stood before the fireplace where the Duc de Guise stood warming himself, and eating prunes, when the King sent for him to his cabinet. We went into the private room of Catharine de Medicis, where she sat waiting and watching behind the scenes, and listening till the foul tragedy should be finished. We went into the oratoire or chapel of Catharine, where the two Romish priests were saying prayers, that King Henry might be pardoned for the bloody deed he was about committing. When all was in readiness, the King sent for the Duc to come to his cabinet. When the Duc pushed aside the rich red damask curtains which were suspended over the arched entrance to the King's apartments, he suddenly met the assassins who waited behind for his approach. The Duc in the struggle with his assassins rushed into the open bed-chamber of the King, pierced with forty daggers, and fell bleeding and dying in front and beside the King's bed. The position of the actors, and the whole process of the tragedy, is minutely and vividly described. The body of the Duc was left dead in the bed-room for two hours. The King then opened the door of his cabinet adjoining, and came out and kicked with his foot the bleeding body of his fallen and murdered foe, his rival, the once mighty Henri le Balafre. He then ordered the body to be burned, and the ashes to be thrown into the river. It is no wonder that this royal murderer should have been horribly agitated by the terrors of a guilty conscience on his death-bed. He was tortured by the bitter recollection of his crimes and deeds of blood. Thirteen days after this tragedy of the Guises, Catharine de Medicis herself died in her own apartment near the scene of murder. Thus ended the guilty and terrible career on earth of Catharine de Medicis. Medicis. She was the prime instigator and moving spirit in the bloody and memorable drama of St. Bartholomew's day, when seventy thousand Huguenots of France fell the victims of bigotry, fanaticisim, and hate. It is her character and history and dark doings which impart such an impressive and almost fearful interest to the scenes and apartments in the old castle of Blois.

We must not add the "nemorumque noctem" which completes the line; for although M. le Baron Maurice does propose that the gabions and fascines for his siege of Plymouth should be cut from the forêt de Dartmoor, we beg to assure him, that Dr. Johnson's walking-stick would there be regarded as a considerable piece of timber. It is exactly the solitude a hermit would have chosen for retiring into from the world; and St. Bruno himself might have been satisfied with its melancholy waste of heather, and its ranges of gray tors, lifting their crests one after another into the remote distance.

The reader need not, however, be reminded that Dartmoor has been supplied with a Chartreuse of a very different character. It was here that the chief prison of war was built in 1806; the sparkle from the roofs of which, in the midst of the surrounding moors and mosses, is one of the few signs of life and occupation occurring throughout the district. The whole character of Dartmoor, with its mysterious circles of unwrought stone, "whose birth tradition notes not," its ancient mining trenches, its rocky fire-beacons, and its deep ferny hollows, once the strongholds of the red deer, insensibly carries the mind far away from "this present now," and calls up many a wild vision of history or romance. And yet, strange enough

as it is to find the events of little more than thirty years since falling in with and adding

* Gray's Ode on the Chartreuse.

to this feeling, so it was before the prisons were reoccupied as a convict station. The buildings, under all the influences of "winter and rough weather," soon became darkened and lichen-spotted, and their open courts. were again covered with the short turf of the moors. Their great extent and utter desertion-yet their evident military aspectcombined with the loneliness of the site to produce a singular impression. They became as "ghaist-alluring" as any roofless old border tower. And to add to the effect, stories were afloat of dismal crimes committed within and around them, not the less striking for being obscurely hinted at, rather than told in full broad daylight detail.

All this is now much changed; but some notice of the early condition of the prisons will, perhaps, be worth recording; and although the present convict establishment is of the highest interest and importance, we shall begin by carrying back the reader to the time of their original occupation. We have before us the narratives of French and American prisoners who were detained here among the rochers sauvages-the montagnes nues et decolorées of Devonshire-sous un ciel sombre et melancholique-in the most unfavored (disgracié) corner of England;a very Siberia, where snow lies through eight months of the year; "a place," according to our friend of New York, "deprived of every thing that is pleasant and agreeable, and productive of nothing but human woe and misery." Perfidious Albion has, no doubt, much to answer for; but in spite of all this "blaming of climates," the placing of the prisons on Dartmoor was scarcely one of her enormities; for although the "ancient moore," as Drayton calls her, may be as barren as Justice Shallow's domain, it is at least entitled to his own quali

* La Prison de Dartmoor; ou Récit Historique

des Infortunes et Evasions des Prisonniers Francais

en Angleterre. Par L. Catel. Paris. 1847.

The Prisoner's Memoirs; or, Dartmoor Prison. An Impartial Narrative, &c. From the Journals of Charles Andrews. New York. 1815.