received from Bristol for me, ere I sank back on the sofa in a sort of swoon rather than sleep.  Fortunately I had found just time enough to inform him of the confused state of my feelings, and of the occasion.  For here and thus I lay, my face like a wall that is white-washing, deathly pale, and with the cold drops of perspiration running down it from my forehead, while one after another there dropped in the different gentlemen, who had been invited to meet, and spend the evening with me, to the number of from fifteen to twenty.  As the poison of tobacco acts but for a short time, I at length awoke from insensibility, and looked round on the party, my eyes dazzled by the candles which had been lighted in the interim.  By way of relieving my embarrassment one of the gentlemen began the conversation with ’Have you seen a paper to-day, Mr. Coleridge?’ ‘Sir,’ I replied, rubbing my eyes, ’I am far from convinced that a Christian is permitted to read either newspapers or any other works of merely political and temporary interest.’  This remark, so ludicrously inapposite to, or rather, incongruous with, the purpose for which I was known to have visited Birmingham, and to assist me in which they were all met, produced an involuntary and general burst of laughter; and seldom indeed have I passed so many delightful hours as I enjoyed in that room from the moment of that laugh till an early hour the next morning.”

All’s well that ends well; but one cannot help wondering what kind of tobacco it was that the Birmingham tradesman used, a half pipeful of which had such a deadly effect—­but perhaps the effect was due to the salt, not to the tobacco.

In the year after that which witnessed Coleridge’s adventure, i.e. in 1796, a tobacco-box with a history was the subject of a legal decision.  This box, made of common horn and small enough to be carried in the pocket, was bought for fourpence by an overseer of the poor in the time of Queen Anne, and was presented by him in 1713 to the Society of Past Overseers of the parish of St. Margaret, Westminster.  In 1720 the Society, in memory of the donor, ornamented the lid with a silver rim; and at intervals thereafter additions were made to an extraordinary extent to the box and its casings.  Hogarth engraved within the lid in 1746 a bust of the victor of Culloden.  Gradually the horn box was enshrined within one case after another—­usually silver lined with velvet—­each case bearing inscribed plates commemorating persons or events.  A Past Overseer who detained the box in 1793 had to give it back after three years of litigation.  A case of octagon shape records the triumph of Justice, and Lord Chancellor Loughborough pronouncing his decree for the restitution of the box on March 5, 1796.  In later days many and various additions have been made to the many coverings of the box, recording public events of interest.