his waistcoat, or his nose itself, or all three, in the style of a man who has done his duty, and satisfied the most serious claims of his wellbeing. What should we say to this custom among the inhabitants of a newly-discovered island? And to provoke the poor nose in this manner and call people's attention to it! A late physician, whom we had the pleasure of knowing, and who had a restless temperament, used to amuse us, as he sat pondering in his chair, with taking up a pair of scissors, and delicately poking the tip of his tongue with it, thus taking delight in the borders of an uneasy sensation, for want of a better. We have often thought, that a snuff-taker, fond of a potent snuff, might as well addict himself to the doctor's scissors; or puncture any other part of his face with a fork at once. Elegant fork-takers might have boxes with little instruments made accordingly, and politely offer them to the company to poke their cheeks with. Or they might hover about the eyes; or occasionally practise some slight scarification. Bleeding is accounted cephalick. It is curious to see the various modes in which people take snuff. Some do it by little fits and starts, and get over the thing quickly. These are epigrammatic snuff-takers, who come to the point as fast as possible, and to whom the pungency is everything. They generally use a sharp and severe snuff,-a sort of essence of pins' points. Others are all urbanity and polished demeanour; they value the style as much as the sensation, and offer the box around them as much out of dignity as benevolence. Some take snuff irritably, others bashfully, others in a manner as dry as the snuff itself, generally with an economy of the vegetable; others, with a luxuriance of gesture, and a lavishness of supply, that announces a moister article, and sheds its superfluous honours over neckcloth and coat. Dr. Johnson's was probably a snuff of this kind. He used to take it out of his waistcoatpocket instead of a box. There is a species of long-armed snuff-taker, that performs the operation in a style of potent and elaborate preparation, ending with a sudden activity. But smaller and rounder men sometimes attempt it. He first puts his head on one side; then stretches forth the arm, with pinch in hand; then brings round his hand, as a snuff-taking elephant might his trunk; and, finally, shakes snuff, head, and nose together, in a sudden vehemence of convulsion. His eyebrows all the while are lifted up, as if to make the more room for the onset; and when he has ended, he draws himself back to his perpendicular, and generally proclaims the victory he has won over the insipidity of the previous moment, by a sniff, and a great "Hah!" XXIII. A PINCH OF SNUFF. CONCLUDED. FROM the respect which we showed in our last to scented snuffs, and from other indications which will doubtless have escaped us in our ignorance of his art, the scientific snufftaker will have concluded that we are no brother of the box. And he will be right. But we hope we only give the greater proof thereby of the toleration that is in us, and our wish not to think ill of a practice merely because it is not our own. We confess we are inclined to a charitable regard, nay, provided it be handsomely and cleanly managed, to a certain respect, for snuff-taking, out of divers considerations: first, as already noticed, because it helps to promote good-will: second, because we have known some very worthy snuff-takers: third, out of our regard for the snuff-taking times of Queen Anne, and the wits of France: and last, because in the benevolence, and imaginativeness, and exceeding width of our philosophy (which fine terms we apply to it, in order to give a hint to those who might consider it a weakness and superstition,)-because we have a certain veneration for all great events and prevailing customs, that have given a character to the history of society in the course of ages. It would be hard to get us to think contemptuously of the mummies of Egypt, of the ceremoniousness of the Chinese, of the betel-nut of the Turks and Persians, nay, of the garlic of the South of Europe; and so of the tea-drinking, coffee drinking, tobaccosmoking, and snuff-taking, which have come to us from the Eastern and American nations. We know not what great providential uses there might be in such customs; or what worse or more frivolous things they prevent, till the time comes for displacing them. "The wind bloweth where it listeth;" and so, for aught we know, doth the "cloud" of the tobaccopipe. We are resolved, for our parts, not to laugh with the "scorner," but even to make merry with submission; nay, to undermine (when we feel compelled to do so) with absolute tenderness to the thing dilapidated. Let the unphilosophic lover of tobacco (if there be such a person), to use a phrase of his own, "put that in his pipe and smoke it." But there is one thing that puzzles us in the history of the Indian weed and its pulverisation; and that is, how lovers, and ladies, ever came to take snuff. In England, perhaps, it was never much done by the latter, till they grew too old to be "particular," or thought themselves too sure of their lovers; but in France, where the animal spirits think less of obstacles in the way of inclination, and where the resolution to please and be pleased is, or was, of a fancy less nice and more accommodating, we are not aware that the ladies in the time of the Voltaires and Du Chatelets ever thought themselves either too old to love, or too young to take snuff. We confess, whether it is from the punctilios of a colder imagination, or the perils incidental to a warmer one, that although we are interested in comprehending the former privilege, we never could do the same with the latter. A bridegroom in one of the periodical essayists, describing his wife's fondness for rouge and carmine, complains that he can never make pure, unsophisticated way to her cheek, but is obliged, like Pyramus in the story, to kiss through a wall,-to salute through a crust of paint and washes: "Wall, vile wall, which did those lovers sunder." This is bad enough; and, considering perhaps a due healthiness of skin, worse; yet the object of paint is to imitate health and loveliness; the wish to look well is in it. But snuff! Turtle-doves don't take snuff. A kiss is surely not a thing to be " sneezed at." Fancy two lovers in the time of Queen Anne, or Louis the Fifteenth, each with snuff-box in hand, who have just come to an explanation, and who in the hurry of their spirits have unthinkingly taken a pinch, just at the instant when the gentleman is going to salute the lips of his mistress. He does so, finds his honest love as frankly returned, and is in the act of bringing out the words, "Charming creature," when a sneeze overtakes him! We have nothing to say against the sneeze abstract. In all nations it seems to have been counted of great significance, and worth respectful attention, whether advising us of good or ill. Hence the "God bless you," still heard among us when people sneeze; and the "Felicità" (Good luck to you) of the Italians. A Latin poet, in one of his most charming effusions, though not, we conceive, with the delicacy of a Greek, even makes Cupid sneeze at sight of the happiness of two lovers : Hoc ut dixit, Amor, sinistram ut ante, who have ever thought themselves warranted in taking liberties which they do not allow their gentler friends; and we cannot call to mind any passage in the writings of the French or English wits in former days, implying the least distrust of his own right, and propriety, and charmingness in taking snuff, on the part of the gentleman in love. The "beaux," marquisses, men of fashion, Sir Harry Wildairs, &c., all talk of, and use, and pique themselves on their snuff-boxes, without the slightest suspicion that there is anything in them to which courtship and elegance can object; and we suppose this is the case still, where the snuff-taker, though young in age, is old in habit. Yet we should doubt, were we in his place. He cannot be certain how many women may have refused his addresses on that single account; nor, if he marries, to what secret sources of objection it may give rise. To be clean is one of the first duties at all times; to be the reverse, or to risk it, in the least avoidable respect, is perilous in the eyes of that passion, which of all others is at once the most lavish and the most nice-which makes the greatest allowance for all that belongs to it, and the least for whatever is cold or foreign, or implies a coarse security. A very loving nature, however, may have some one unlovely habit, which a wise party on either side may correct, if it have any address. The only passage which we remember meeting with in a book, in which this licence assumed by the male sex is touched upon, is in a pleasant comedy translated from the French some years ago, and brought upon the stage in London-the "Green Man." Mr. Jones, we believe, was the translator. He also enacted the part of the lover, and very pleasantly he did it. It was one of his best performances. Luckily for our present purpose, he had a very sweet assistant, in the person of Miss Blanchard, a young actress of that day, who after charming the town with the sprightly delicacy of her style, and with a face better than handsome, prematurely quitted it, to their great regret, though, we believe, for the best of all reasons. In the course of her lover's addresses, this lady had to find fault with his habit of snufftaking, and she did it with a face full of such loving and flattering reasons, and in a voice also so truly accordant with the words which the author had put into her mouth, that we remember thinking how natural it was for the gentleman to give up the point as he did, instantly, and to pitch the cause of offence away from him, with the exclamation, "Ma tabatière, adieu." (Farewell, snuff-box.) Thus the French, who were the greatest sinners in this matter, appear, as they ought, to have been the first reformers of it; and openly to have protested against the union of love and snuff-taking, in either sex. We merely give this as a hint to certain snuff-takers at a particular time of life. We are loth to interfere with others, till we can find a substitute for the excitement and occupation which the snuff-box affords, fearing that we should steal from some their very powers of reflection; from some their goodtemper, or patience, or only consolation; from others their helps to wit and good-fellowship. Whenever Gibbon was going to say a good thing, it was observed that he announced it by a complacent tap on his snuff-box. Life might have been a gloomier thing, even than it was, to Dr. Johnson, if he had not enlivened his views of it with the occasional stimulus of a pinch. Napoleon, in his flight from Moscow, was observed one day, after pulling a log on to a fire, impatiently seeking for his last chance of a consoling thought, and he found it in the corner of his snuff-box. It was his last pinch; and most imperatively he pinched it! digging it, and fetching it out from its intrenchment. Besides, we have a regard for snuff-shops and their proprietors, and never pass Pontet's, or Killpack's, or Turner's, without wishing well to the companionable people that frequent them, and thinking of the most agreeable periods of English and French wit. might almost as soon divorce the idea of the Popes, Steeles, and Voltaires, from their wigs and caps, as from their snuff-boxes. Lady Mary Wortley took snuff; Madame Du Bocage also, no doubt; we fear even the charming Countess of Suffolk, and my lady Harvey. Steele in the character of Bickerstaff, speaking of his half-sister, Miss Jenny Distaff, who was a blue-stocking and about to be married, You thinks it desirable that she should not continue to have a nose "all over snuff" in future. He seems, in consideration of her books, willing to compromise with a reasonable beginning. Ladies are greatly improved in this respect. No blue-stockings now-a-days, we suspect, take snuff, that have any pretensions to youth or beauty. They rather choose to realise the visions of their books, and vindicate the united claims of mind and person. Sure of their pretensions, they even disclaim any pretence, except that of wearing stockings like other people; to prove which, like proper unaffected women, they give into the fashion of short petticoats, philosophically risking the chance of drawing inferior eyes from the charms of their talk, to those of their feet and ancles. In the battle of the Rape of the Lock, Pope makes his heroine Belinda conquer one of her gallant enemies by chucking a pinch of snuff in his face; nor does he tell us that she borrowed it. Are we to conclude that even she, the pattern of youthful beauty, took it out of her own pocket? But this bold lord, with manly strength endued, There is more of it, but we cannot stand sneezing all night. (We write this towards bed-time.) What a moment! What a doubt!- Wants to sneeze, and cannot do it! Now it yearns me, thrills me, stings me, (Hang it I shall sneeze till spring) Sneezing, however, is not a high snuff-taking evidence. It shows the author to have been raw to the science, and to have written more like a poet than a professor. As snuff-taking is a practice inclining to reflection, and therefore to a philosophical consideration of the various events of this life, grave as well as gay, we shall conclude the present article with the only tragical story we ever met with in connexion with a snuffbox. We found it in a very agreeable book— "A Week on the Loire." "The younger Cathélineau, devoted with hereditary zeal to the worn-out cause of the Bourbons, took up arms for Madame la Duchesse de Berri; associated in his successes with M. de Suriac, M. Morriset, and The M. de la Soremère, names dear in the annals of fidelity and courage. Orders were given to arrest them at Beaupréau; they took refuge in a château in the neighbourhood. troops surrounded and searched it, but all in vain; not a single human being was found in it. Certain however that the objects of their search were actually within the precincts of the château, they closed the gates, set their watch, and allowed no one to enter, except a peasant whom they employed to show the hiding-places. This watch they kept three days, till, wearied by the nonappearance of the parties, and the bellowing of the cattle, who were confined without water and on short allowance, they were on the point of quitting the spot; one of the officers, however, thought, previous to doing so, he would go over the château once more-the peasant followed close at his heels: suddenly the officer turned towards him, 'Give me a pinch of snuff, friend,' said he. "I have none,' replied the man, 'I do not take it.' "Then who is there in this château that does?' "No one that I know of-there is no one in the château, as you see?' "Then whence comes the snuff which I see here?' said the officer, pointing with his foot to some which was scattered on the ground. "The man turned pale, and made no reply; the officer looked round again, examined the earth more closely, stamped with his foot, and at last thought he felt a vibration, as if the ground below were hollow. He scrutinised every inch, and at length saw something like a loose board; he raised it up, and then, alas ! he beheld Cathélineau, in front of his three companions, with his pistols in his hand ready to fire. The officer had not a moment to deliberate, he fired,—Cathélineau fell dead, and his companions were seized. This story was told us by the keeper of the Musée, and afterwards confirmed by an officer who was one of the party employed." We almost regret to have closed a light article with "so heavy a stone" as this. ("To tell him that he shall be annihilated," saith Sir Thomas Browne, "is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man.") But the snuff-taker, with his magic box in hand, is prepared for chances. As the Turk takes to his pipe, and the sailor to his roll of tobacco, so he to his pinch; and he is then prepared for whatsoever comes,-for a melancholy face with the melancholy, or a laugh with the gay. Another pinch, reader, before we part. XXIV.-WORDSWORTH AND MILTON. "IT is allowed on all hands, now, that there are no sonnets in any language comparable with Wordsworth's. Even Milton must yield the palm. He has written but about a dozen or so, Wordsworth some hundreds-and though nothing can surpass the inspired grandeur of that on the Piedmontese Massacre, the tenderness of those on his Blindness and on his Deceased Wife, the grave dignity of that to a Young Lady, or the cheerful and Attic grace of those to Lawrence and Cyriac Skinner,' as is finely said by the writer of an article in the Edinburgh Review' on Glassford's Lyrical Translations,' yet many of Wordsworth's equal even these and the long and splendid array of his sonnets-deploying before us in series after series-astonishes us by the proof it affords of the inexhaustible riches of his imaginative genius and his moral wisdom. One series on the river Duddon-two series dedicated to Liberty-three series on our Ecclesiastical History miscellaneous sonnets in multitudes-and those last poured forth as clear, and bright, and strong, as the first that issued from the sacred spring !"-Blackwood's Magazine. Most true is this. Wordsworth's untired exuberance is indeed astonishing; though it becomes a little less so, when we consider that his genius has been fortunate in a long life of leisure, his opinions not having rendered it necessary to him to fight with difficulties, and daily cares, and hostile ascendancies, as Milton's did, ་་ Exposed to daily fraud, contempt, and wrong, With darkness and with dangers compass'd round." In that condition sate the great blind epic poet; and after having performed an active as well as contemplative part for his earthly sojourn, still combined action with contemplation in a mighty narrative, and built the adamantine gates of another world. In no invidious regard for one great poet against another do we say it; but in justice to fame itself, and in the sincerest reverence of admiration for both. With the exception of Shakspeare (who included everybody), Wordsworth has proved himself the greatest contemplative poet this country has produced. His facility is wonderful. He never wants the fittest words for the finest thoughts. He can express, at will, those innumerable shades of feeling which most other writers, not unworthy too, in their degree, of the name of poets, either dismiss at once as inexpressible, or find so difficult of embodiment, as to be content with shaping them forth but seldom, and reposing from their labours. And rhyme, instead of a hindrance, appears to be a positive help. It serves to concentrate his thoughts and make them closer and more precious. Milton did | 66 not pour forth sonnets in this manner-poems already exist, in venerable as well as lovely in hundreds of little channels,-all solid and shapes. But how shall we pretend to limit fluent gold. No; but he was venting himself, the vast flood of coming events, or have such instead, in "Paradise Lost." "Paradise Lost," little faith in nature, providence, and the enif the two poets are to be compared, is the lightened co-operation of humanity, as to supset-off against Wordsworth's achievement in pose that it will not adjust itself in the noblest sonnet-writing. There is the "Excursion," to and best manner? In this respect, and in some be sure; but the "Excursion" is made up of others, Mr. Wordsworth's poetry wants unithe same purely contemplative matter. It is versality. He calls upon us to sympathise with a long-drawn song of the nightingale; as the his churches and his country flowers, and his sonnets are its briefer warbles. There is no blisses of solitude; and he calls well; but he eagle-flight in the "Excursion ;" no sustain- wants one of the best parts of persuasion; he ment of a mighty action; no enormous hero, is not reciprocal; he does not sufficiently symbearing on his wings the weight of a lost eter-pathise with our towns and our blisses of society, nity, and holding on, nevertheless, undismayed, -firm-visaged through faltering chaos,-the combatant of all chance and all power,-a vision that, if he could be seen now, would be seen in the sky like a comet, remaining, though speeding,-visible for long nights, though rapidly voyaging,-a sight for a universe,—an actor on the stage of infinity. There is no such robust and majestic work as this in Wordsworth. Compared with Milton he is but as a dreamer on the grass, though a divine one; and worthy to be compared as a younger, a more fluentspeeched, but less potent brother, whose business it is to talk and think, and gather together his flocks of sonnets like sheep (beauteous as clouds in heaven), while the other is abroad, more actively moving in the world, with contemplations that take the shape of events. There are many points of resemblance between Wordsworth and Milton. They are both serious men; both in earnest; both maintainers of the dignity of poetry in life and doctrine; and both are liable to some objections on the score of sectarianism, and narrow theological views. But Milton widened these as he grew old; and Wordsworth, assisted by the advancing light of the times, (for the greatest minds are seldom as great as the whole instinctive mind of society,) cannot help conceding or qualifying certain views of his own, though timidly, and with fear of a certain few, such as Milton never feared. Milton, however, was never weak in his creed, whatever it was; he forced it into width enough to embrace all place and time, future as well as present. Wordsworth would fain dwindle down the possibilities of heaven and earth within the views of a Church-of-England establishment. And he is almost entirely a retrospective poet. The vast future frightens him, and he would fain believe that it is to exist only in a past shape, and that shape something very like one of the smallest of the present, with a vestry for the golden church of the New Jerusalem, and beadles for the "limitary cherubs." Now we hope and believe, that the very best of the past will merge into the future, how long before it be superseded by a still better, we cannot say. And we own that we can conceive of nothing better than some things which | and our reformations of churches (the conse- |