its climax in a century or two,
and has since rather diminished than increased, in proportion to the
population. It probably appeared in England in 1586, being first used in
the Indian fashion, by handing one pipe from man to man throughout the
company; the medium of communication being a silver tube for the higher
classes, and a straw and walnut-shell for the baser sort. Paul Hentzner,
who travelled in England in 1598, and Monsieur Misson, who wrote
precisely a century later, note almost in the same words "a perpetual
use of tobacco"; and the latter suspects that this is what makes "the
generality of Englishmen so taciturn, so thoughtful, and so melancholy."
In Queen Elizabeth's time, the ladies of the court "would not scruple
to blow a pipe together very socially." In 1614 it was asserted that
tobacco was sold openly in more than seven thousand places in London,
some of these being already attended by that patient Indian who still
stands seductive at tobacconists' doors. It was also estimated that the
annual receipts of these establishments amounted to more than three
hundred thousand pounds. Elegant ladies had their pictures painted, at
least one in 1650 did, with pipe and box in hand. Rochefort, a rather
apocryphal French traveller in 1672, reported it to be the general
custom in English homes to set pipes on the table in the evening for
the females as well as males of the family, and to provide children's
luncheon-baskets with a well-filled pipe, to be smoked at school, under
the directing eye of the master. In 1703, Lawrence Spooner wrote that
"the sin of the kingdom in the intemperate use of tobacco swelleth and
increaseth so daily that I can compare it to nothing but the waters of
Noah, that swelled fifteen cubits above the highest mountains." The
deluge reached its height in England--so thinks the amusing and
indefatigable Mr. Fairholt, author of "Tobacco and its Associations"--in
the reign of Queen Anne. Steele, in the "Spectator," (1711,) describes
the snuff-box as a rival to the fan among ladies; and Goldsmith pictures
the belles at Bath as entering the water in full bathing costume, each
provided with a small floating basket, to hold a snuff-box, a kerchief,
and a nosegay. And finally, in 1797, Dr. Clarke complains of the handing
about of the snuff-box in churches during worship, "to the great scandal
of religious people,"--adding, that kneeling in prayer was prevented by
the large quantity of saliva ejected