these cigarettes and have brooded over much which they will never put on paper.  Here are some of ’the ashes of the weeds of my delight’—­memories of romances whereof no single line is written, or is likely to be written.”  What Balzac said in his “La Cousine Bette” was—­“Penser, rever, concevoir de belles oeuvres est une occupation delicieuse.  C’est fumer des cigares enchantes, c’est mener la vie de la courtisane occupee a sa fantaisie.”  Balzac’s cigars became cigarettes in Lang’s fantasy.  The French novelist seems to have been one of those who praised tobacco without using it much himself.  In his “Illusions Perdues” Carlos Herrera, who was Vautrin, says to Lucien, whom he meets on the point of suicide:  “Dieu nous a donne le tabac pour endormir nos passions et nos douleurs.”  M.A.  Le Breton, however, in his book on Balzac—­“L’Homme et L’OEuvre”—­says:  “Il ne se soutient qu’a force de cafe,” though he would sit working at his desk for twenty-five hours running.

About the time that Lang’s article was written, Sir F.C.  Burnand’s burlesque, “Bluebeard” was produced at the Gaiety Theatre.  In those days a certain type of young man, since known by many names, including the present day “nut,” was called a “masher”; and Burnand’s burlesque included a duet with the refrain: 

    We are mashers, we are,
    As we smoke our cigar
      And crawl along, never too quick;
    We are mashers, you bet,
    With the light cigarette
      And the quite irreproachable stick.

Nowadays the cigarette is in such universal use, that it would be impossible thus to associate it with any particular type of man, sane or inane.

The late Bishop Mandell Creighton, of London, was an incessant smoker of cigarettes.  Mr. Herbert Paul, in his paper on the Bishop, says that those who went to see him at Fulham on a Sunday afternoon always found him, if they found him at all, “leisurely, chatty, hospitable, and apparently without a care in the world.  There was the family tea-table, and there were the eternal cigarettes.  The Bishop must have paid a fortune in tobacco-duty.”  There is a side view of another tobacco-lover in the “Note-Books” of Samuel Butler, the author of “Erewhon.”  Creighton, after reading Butler’s “Alps and Sanctuaries” had asked the author to come and see him.  Butler was in doubt whether or not to go, and consulted his clerk, Alfred, on the matter.  That wise counsellor asked to look at the Bishop’s letter, and then said:  “I see, sir, there is a crumb of tobacco in it; I think you can go.”

Apart from cigarette-smoking, however, the use of tobacco grew steadily during the later Victorian period.  In “Mr. Punch’s Pocket-Book” for 1878 there was a burlesque dialogue between uncle and nephew entitled “Cupid and ’Baccy.”  The uncle thinks the younger men smoke too much, and declares that tobacco “has destroyed the susceptibility, which in my time made youngsters fall in love, as they