the Dutch for their lavish attachment to tobacco, in
the most offensive form in which it can be exhibited, is, that the
smoke of this transatlantic weed preserves them from many disorders
to which they are liable from the moisture of the atmosphere of their
country, and enables them to bear cold and wet without inconvenience."

Fell supports this curious theory by relating that when, soaked by a
storm, he arrived at an inn at Overschie, the landlord offered him
a pipe of tobacco to prevent any bad consequences. Fell, however,
having none of his friend Charles Lamb's affection for the friendly
traitress, declined it with asperity.

Ireland has an ingenious theory to account for the addiction of the
Dutch to tobacco. It is, he says, the succedaneum to purify the
unwholesome exhalations of the canals. "A Dutchman's taciturnity
forbids his complaining; so that all his waking hours are silently
employed in casting forth the filthy puff of the weed, to dispel the
more filthy stench of the canal."

Ireland's view was probably an invention; but this I know, that the
Dutch cigar and the Dutch atmosphere are singularly well adapted to
each other. I brought home a box of a brand which was agreeable in
Holland, and they were unendurable in the sweet air of Kent.

The cigar is the national medium for consuming tobacco, cigarettes
being practically unknown, and pipes rare in the streets. My experience
of the Dutch cigar is that it is a very harmless luxury and a very
persuasive one. After a little while it becomes second nature to
drop into a tobacconist's and slip a dozen cigars into one's pocket,
at a cost of a few pence; and the cigars being there, it is another
case of second nature to smoke them practically continuously. Of these
cigars, which range in price from one or two cents to a few pence each,
there are hundreds if not thousands of varieties.

The number of tobacconists in Holland must be very great, and the
trade is probably strong enough to resist effectually the impost on
the weed which was recently threatened by a daring Minister, if ever
it is attempted. The pretty French custom of giving tobacco licences
to the widows of soldiers is not adopted here; indeed I do not see
that it could be, for the army is only 100,000 strong. In times of
stress it might perhaps be advisable to send the tobacconists out to
fight, and keep the soldiers to mind as many of their shops as could
be managed, shutting up the rest.