inated edicts of
excommunication against all who used tobacco in any form; from which we
may conclude that the new habit was spreading rapidly over Christendom.
And not only the successors of St. Peter, but those also of the Prophet,
denounced the practice, the Sultan Amurath IV. making it punishable with
death. The Viziers of Turkey spitted the noses of smokers with their own
pipes; the more considerate Shah of Persia cut them entirely off. The
knout greeted in Russia the first indulgence, and death followed the
second offence. In some of the Swiss cantons smoking was considered a
crime second only to adultery. Modern republics are not quite so severe.

It is not to be supposed that in England the royal pamphlet had its
desired effect. For we find that James laid many rigid sumptuary
restrictions upon the practice which he abominated, based chiefly upon
the extravagance it occasioned,--the expenses of some smokers being
estimated at several hundred pounds a year. The King, however, had the
sagacity to secure a preemption-right as early as 1620.

Yet how could the practice but have increased, when, as Malcolm relates
the tradition, such men as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Hugh Middleton
sat smoking at their doors?--for "the public manner in which it was
exhibited, and the aromatic flavor inhaled by the passengers, exclusive
of the singularity of the circumstance and the eminence of the parties,"
could hardly have failed to favor its dissemination.

The silver-tongued Joshua Sylvester hoped to aid the royal cause by
writing a poem entitled, "Tobacco battered, and the pipes shattered,
(about their ears who idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at
least-wise overlove so loathsome a vanity,) by a volley of holy shot
thundered from Mount Helicon." If the smoothness of the verses equalled
the euphony of the title, this must have proved a moving appeal.

Stow contents himself with calling tobacco "a stinking weed, so much
abused to God's dishonor."

Burton exhausts the subject in a single paragraph. Ben Jonson, though
a jolly good fellow, was opposed to the habit of smoking. But Spenser
mentions "divine tobacco." Walton's "Piscator" indulges in a pipe at
breakfast, and "Venator" has his tobacco brought from London to insure
its purity. Sweet Izaak could have selected no more soothing minister
than the pipe to the "contemplative man's recreation."

As the new sedative gains in esteem, we find Francis Quarles, in his