those sable volumes which testify in our island to the activity of the kitchen, and the hospitality of the house. You would suppose that the French lived upon fruits and flowers, particularly in their delicious autumn, when Flora vies with Pomona to deck their hotels and furnish their desserts-when they might actually sweep their streets with roses and chinaasters, and barricade them, if need were, with peaches and grapes. But, alack! Paris is not the smokeless city which its chimneys proclaim it; far from it; we have only to come down from the house-top and enter the house itself, to discover by two offended senses that the lower region of her atmosphere is polluted by a more obnoxious vapour than the smoke of coal. How many cigars of Paris are equivalent to one chimney of London in the quantity of smoke issued, and the amount of public nuisance caused, let the Michael Cassios investigate; but it is certain that the cigar-smoking grievance has become a serious one in France. You have only to pass through the Palais-Royal, or take a turn on the tumultuous Boulevards, to see with your eyes and smell with your nose the universal use and abuse (convertible terms!) of tobacco in all its forms. Hear the poet of the pipe himself; hear Barthelemy proclaiming that the progress of the age and of his country is not more signal in the march of steam and railways than in the march of the cigar. Deux grands événements signaleront cette ère This is the testimony of a poet of the day; but let any one who doubts the progress of smoking, visit Paris, and convince his own nose and eyes. He will find that these are truly piping times of peace for "la belle France." We have always courted her alliance, but she never promised to be so great "at a pinch" before. The Frenchman was always a taker of snuff, but never such a smoker of pipes and consumer of cigars as now. The spirit of the age is the fume of tobacco; to look into the estaminets one would imagine that the dark ages had come again. There is to be seen the once enlightened Frenchman, ambitious as the sun to illuminate the world, enveloped in an impenetrable cloud of narcotic vapour, propagating darkness instead of diffusing light ;-the apostle of freedom and equality caring only to make converts to cigars and proselytes to the pipe! Tobacco is the true Roi des Français! With his coffee, his beard, and his cigar, the Parisian seems to have made the Turk his model, and conceived the idea of advancing civilization by copying Constantinople. It is to be presumed that the tobacco-leaf will immediately succeed the lily in the arms of the French nation. They would seem, indeed, to have been fighting of late under the auspices of the smoky weed, if we may judge from the puffs that record their little sieges. Seeing the prints already executed of the French ships engaged with the batteries of Tangiers and Mogador, it was impossible to avoid remarking, “Possibly it is only the Prince de Joinville and his comrades smoking." The French smoke is more formidable than the French fire;— -we could face their carbines easier than their cigars;-can it be possible that they meditate another war of propagandism, and design to tobacconize, as they formerly sought to republicanise Europe? Approaching the Rhine, the cigars of Germany offer them a powerful alliance; they would have, too, the southern states of North America on their side, and the Ottomans would support them with ten thousand houkas. Perhaps the object of the attack on Morocco (if the bombardments were not mere smoking-matches, as has been already suggested,) was to force the Moors into the confederacy. If not, it was probably, like many other enterprises of the kind, a struggle for a pinch of snuff! Time was, too, when the smoker was but of one sex, when nothing smoked that wore a petticoat, but now there is the fumeuse as well as the fumeur, and the gallant and inventive nation has contrived and executed a cigare de dames for the lips of the female French. Now what unsexes a woman like tobacco? Tobacco grew not in Cyprus, nor is it related that Venus cultivated the weed in the parterres of Paphos. Joan of Arc was a woman, although she wielded the sword and the battle-axe, but a single cigar, or a cigarette, nay, one cigare de dames, would have changed her gender. Let a woman do any thing human or inhuman, but smoke!-if the work-box and the dressing-box are not sufficient for her, if even the box of bon-bons will not content her, if she must assume the habits of a man, let her put on a white coat and take to the coach-box, or a red coat and take to the letter-box, or a black coat and take to the pill-box, but there are two boxes that she must not meddle with, which are forbidden her by the nature of things, amongst the other propria quæ maribus,-the cigar-box and the snuff-box. The box of Pandora was in all probability either one or the other of the two boxes last mentioned. Madame or Mdlle. Pandora took snuff or smoked; hence the ancients represented her box to be as full of plagues as is the budget of a chancellor of the exchequer of impositions. Let the fair French take warning from Pandora. Mesdames, and mademoiselles, if play the deuce you must, lay your pretty hands upon a luciferbox, and set the world on fire, but touch not the tabatière,-eschew chewing, and of all seductions, avoid the seduction of a cigar. A cigar to feminine delicacy is a Tarquin or a Lovelace. Its fire is no vestal flame. Perhaps it is because the eastern houris smoke that the Mohammedan faith bars the gates of Paradise against them. It was something to forfeit Eden for an apple, but to hazard it for a cigarette would exceed all the frivolities of woman. We presume not to limit divine mercy there may be forgiveness for her who smokes; but we are assuredly safe in affirming, that the light of a cigar is not the light that leads to heaven, although far as the eye can pierce it, it illuminates the Champs Elysées. There has just appeared a brochure entitled, "De l'Action du Tabac sur la Santé," which is a gratifying proof that there are some Frenchmen not so stupified by smoking as to defend the use of the Virginian poison. The writer is a physician who combats the passion for tobacco by explaining its action, and if a ray of light can penetrate the estaminets, we trust that the pamphlet of "Le Docteur Boussison" will be read in those dim retreats. Dr. Boussison tells us that the origin of tobacco is enveloped in darkness" entourée de ténèbres." Of couse it is smoke from first to lastthe dusky tale of a cigar! It appears that in some countries tobacco, like religion, was propagated by persecution. The doctor tells us of a pope, a grand-duke, a Sophi, and a sultan, who had the good taste and the good sense to proscribe the weed, although they went perhaps too great a length when they made smoking a capital offence. A more reasonable and most appropriate punishment was cutting off the nose, and who will say that a confirmed smoker ought not to have his nose cut off, at the very least? In the present state of France it occurs to us, that smoking might be considerably discouraged by the more merciful penalty. of felling the moustaches. Every customer of the tobacconist ought to be sent to the barber, or better still, there might be a shaving establishment attached to every estaminet, and the deposit of the beard might be made part of the price of a cigar. The doctor enumerates, amongst the agréments of this charming plant, vertigo, derangement of the vision, intoxication, nausea, diarrhoea. Such are the fascinations of an estaminet and the attractions of a cigar-divan. That tobacco is a poison, is a position not overthrown by the fact that men become habituated to the pipe and the snuff-box. There is no poison to which a man may not inure his system by little and little. Such was the method pursued by Mithridates, who lived on poisons to escape being poisoned. We read in Hudibras that The Prince of Cambay's daily food Was asp, and basilisk, and toad. The prince would in due time have been qualified to devour a boaconstrictor and wash it down with a flask of prussic acid. The The rage for tobacco promises utterly to destroy all that constitutes the fame of France. It seems first of all to threaten her cuisine. Kitchen is in danger! This alarming tendency is manifest in its operations on the palate and effects on the stomach. It paralyzes the exquisite sense of taste, mars the appetite, and debilitates the digestive powers, by wasting both the peptic juice and the saliva. In the great affair of life, appetite corresponds with the pleasures of Imagination and Hope, taste with actual enjoyment, digestion with the pleasures of Memory. Appetite is our Akenside and Campbell; digestion our Rogers; we forget the poet-if any-who has sung the intermediate stage of bliss, worth the other two combined. But to the hardened "fumeur" what is palatable but his pipe or his cigar ?-what appétissant but the odour of the estaminet?-what can he digest of more substance than a puff of smoke? The fathers of the French kitchen were not the votaries of tobacco. Their palate was healthy, their appetite vigorous, their stomach perfect, and their brain, consequently, busy, clear, fanciful, inventive. Upon these great and indispensable qualities they founded the culinary eminence of their country. În their days the kitchen smoked and not the cook; the estaminet presumed not to dispute the palm with the restaurant. Now, it is to be feared that France is in the decadence of her gastronomic reputation. Tobacco is, of all divinities, the most jealous, and its votaries end in being its victims Then what is to become of the airy and elastic temperament of the people? The French quicksilver will soon be transmuted into the dull metal of the Dutchman or the Turk. Smoke is light, but those who smoke are heavy. What sunMelancholy marks them for her own. shine can penetrate the cloud in which they wrap themselves; what music awake them from their grim repose? The pipe of the smoker is not the pipe to which swains dance. The fête of St. Cloud will ere long be the only rural festival in France. Summon the moustached Monsieur from the houka to the Polka-summon him you may-but you might just as well invite the Abd-el-Kader to an Irish jig, or ask the Emperor of Morocco to dance Sir Roger de Coverley. Paris, in short, will soon be one vast estaminet, or cigar-divan, a European Algiers, or a French Constantinople; and it will only remain to wear the turban, read the Koran, and take an annual pilgrimage to the black stone of Mecca. THE LAST OF THE CONTRABBANDIERI. BY L. MARIOTTI. It was Sunday afternoon, the hour of vespers at Bedonia, in the Val di Taro. The service had already commenced, and not a soul was to be seen out of church. A stream of female voices gushed out of the open windows of the choir. Outside, not a sound, not a living object astir. It was a scene of ineffable calmness and silence. Only near the portals an instrument of destruction was leaning against the wall-it was the redoubted carabine of Paul Moro, the last of the bandits of the Apennines. Religion in the country is a matter widely different from what it appears to foreign travellers in most of the Italian cities. In town the Italians have hardly any preaching at all, except in Lent, and even in that season attendance on sermons is not among the absolute commandments of the church. High mass is only continued for the edification of a few pious old ladies, and for the amusement of curious English travellers. But for the generality of the faithful every priest celebrates a daily mass, and as priests are tolerably numerous, you may perform your Christian duty at any hour of the day, having only to choose between the old parson, who blunders through the service in an hour, and the lain who glides through it in ten minutes. young chapAccordingly before daybreak, before the opening of the church, a half drowsy crowd is besieging the door, coughing, stamping, storming, for admittance. The doors are thrown open. Enter traveller and his valise, driver and his whip, housemaid and her basket, sportsman and his hound-supposing him to be civil enough to have left his gun at the entrance. Two meagre candles are lighted, a huge folio is open, some buzzing prayers are muttered, and thus ends what is called, "La messa degli affrettati." Exactly at noon, all the ladies' toilets being over, all the new suits or clothes being donned, a large concourse of fine people repair to their fa vourite chapel-generally a small, insignificant building, but from that very cause, secure from vulgar intrusion. The ladies kneel at random on low benches, or are helped to chairs by their cavaliers. These latter stand at the extremity of the nave, a various, gaudy, ever-fluctuating group, bearing some resemblance to the loungers of Fop-alley at the Opera-house-talking and laughing, and from their eye-glasses darting death at the beauties on the right and left. In the interior of a small screened altar, something is going on which nobody sees or hears, and which may be Latin or Greek, prayers or curses, for aught any body cares. When that something is over, off walks the male part of the audience, and ranges itself in two long rows at the church-door, leaving a narrow avenue for the passage of the females, who appear, radiant, edified, sanctified, ready for the promenade. This is the fashionable mass, called "La messa dei belli." Last of all the tradesman, who has been at work behind the halfclosed shutters of his shop, to supply the luxuries of the wealthy, is hurried by the last peals of the bell to the nearest church, where he arrives in time to get his two-thirds of a mass celebrated for the accommodation of the people of his class, and which is called "La messa degli ostinati." In the afternoon, all that the town possesses of proud steeds and gilt chariots, is prancing and glancing up and down the Corso; in the evening the cafes are dazzling with glaring lamps, the theatres are trembling with intoxicating music, the saloons are glowing with social entertain ments. Such is the sabbath in town. In the country, in many a sequestered village of the Lombard plain, in many a parish of the remotest Apennine -nowhere more so than in the unexplored district into which we purpose to introduce our readers-is easily found as true, as pure, as ignorant a piety as could be in the times of the earliest Christianity. The manners of those people are stationary, and know no progress either for good or evil. It is still, therefore, the fashion among them to keep holy the seventh day. No distance, no hardship of road or weather, were ever known to deter the Lombard peasant from his devotional duties. In the morning a long mass, with evangelical preaching; in the evening psalms, hymns, and the Blessing of the Host. The church services are not, however, so long, that before and after them, time may not be left for enjoyment. In the morning there are the sports of the wood; in the afternoon athletic exercises; in the evening, the whole village assemble, in winter in a large parlour, in summer on the threshing-floor by moonlight-and there, with the music of self-taught fiddlers and pipers, seniors and matrons sitting gravely around, they appoint managers and partners, and with jigs, tarantellas, furlanas, and a variety of dances and country-dances, they go on till they feel completely rested and refreshed for the toil of the morrow. In all these sports the pastor is expected to join, and no joy is complete unless he is there to take his share. I must confess I have never seen an Italian minister dance, though a Spanish padre I have, but I have seen more than one on the Apennines, rising very early with a gay company, on a bright Sunday morning, loading and shouldering his gun, and hallooing after his hounds, shooting his hare with tolerable skill, and remarkable good luck, and at the ringing of the bell hurry back to the parsonage at full gallop, wash his oody hands at the vestry, put on in great confusion his surplice, his |