in all directions. In view of such
formidable statements as these, it is hardly possible to believe
that the present generation surpasses or even equals the past in the
consumption of tobacco.

And all this sudden popularity was in spite of a vast persecution which
sought to unite all Europe against this indulgence, in the seventeenth
century. In Russia, its use was punishable with amputation of the
nose; in Berne, it ranked next to adultery among offences; Sandys, the
traveller, saw a Turk led through the streets of Constantinople mounted
backward on an ass with a tobacco-pipe thrust through his nose. Pope
Urban VIII., in 1624, excommunicated those who should use it in
churches, and Innocent XII., in 1690, echoed the same anathema. Yet
within a few years afterwards travellers reported that same free use
of snuff in Romish worship which still astonishes spectators. To see
a priest, during the momentous ceremonial of High Mass, enliven the
occasion by a voluptuous pinch, is a sight even more astonishing, though
perhaps less disagreeable, than the well-used spittoon which decorates
so many Protestant pulpits.

But the Protestant pulpits did their full share in fighting the habit,
for a time at least. Among the Puritans, no man could use tobacco
publicly, on penalty of a fine of two and sixpence, or in a private
dwelling, if strangers were present; and no two could use it together.
That iron pipe of Miles Standish, still preserved at Plymouth, must have
been smoked in solitude or not at all. This strictness was gradually
relaxed, however, as the clergy took up the habit of smoking; and I
have seen an old painting, on the panels of an ancient parsonage in
Newburyport, representing a jovial circle of portly divines sitting pipe
in hand around a table, with the Latin motto, "In essentials unity, in
non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." Apparently the tobacco
was one of the essentials, since there was unity respecting that.
Furthermore, Captain Underhill, hero of the Pequot War, boasted to the
saints of having received his assurance of salvation "while enjoying a
pipe of that good creature, tobacco," "since when he had never doubted
it, though he should fall into sin." But it is melancholy to relate
that this fall did presently take place, in a very flagrant manner, and
brought discredit upon tobacco conversions, as being liable to end in
smoke.

Indeed, some of the most royal wills that ever lived in the world h