n it up as a commonplace
solace and amusement: it is a reward for doing strenuously the day's
heavy labors, to wind them up in this manner, in quiet society of
friendly human faces, into a contemplative smoke-canopy, slowly
spreading into the realm of sleep and its dreams. Friedrich Wilhelm was
a man of habitudes; his evening Tabagie became a law of Nature to him,
constant as the setting of the sun. Favorable circumstances, quietly
noticed and laid hold of by the thrifty man, developed this simple
evening arrangement of his into a sort of Smoking Parliament, small
but powerful, where State-consultations, in a fitful informal way,
took place; and the weightiest affairs might, by dexterous management,
cunning insinuation and manoeuvring from those that understood the art
and the place, he bent this way or that, and ripened towards such issue
as was desirable.

To ascertain what the true course in regard to this or the other high
matter will be; what the public will think of it; and, in short, what
and how the Executive-Royal shall DO therein: this, the essential
function of a Parliament and Privy-Council, was here, by artless cheap
methods, under the bidding of mere Nature, multifariously done; mere
taciturnity and sedative smoke making the most of what natural intellect
there might be. The substitution of Tobacco-smoke for Parliamentary
eloquence is, by some, held to be a great improvement. Here is
Smelfungus's opinion, quaintly expressed, with a smile in it, which
perhaps is not all of joy:--

"Tobacco-smoke is the one element in which, by our European manners, men
can sit silent together without embarrassment, and where no man is bound
to speak one word more than he has actually and veritably got to say.
Nay, rather every man is admonished and enjoined by the laws of honor,
and even of personal ease, to stop short of that point; at all events,
to hold his peace and take to his pipe again, the instant he has spoken
his meaning, if he chance to have any. The results of which salutary
practice, if introduced into Constitutional Parliaments, might evidently
be incalculable. The essence of what little intellect and insight there
is in that room: we shall or can get nothing more out of any Parliament;
and sedative, gently soothing, gently clarifying tobacco-smoke (if the
room were well ventilated, open atop, and the air kept good), with the
obligation to a MINIMUM of speech, surely gives human intellect and
insight the bes