nippers and the second pair of grinders are shed; and | found its way to Paris, where it was used in the form of the corner nippers, toward the end of the fifth year, are suc- a powder by Catherine de Medici. Tobacco then came ceeded by permanent teeth, when the mouth is considered under the patronage of the Cardinal Santa Croce, the almost perfect, and the colt or filly becomes a horse or a pope's nuncio, who, returning from his embassy at the mare. What is called the mark of the teeth by which a judgment of the age of a horse for several years may be Spanish and Portuguese courts, carried the plant to his formed, consists of a portion of the enamel bending over own country, and thus acquired a fame little inferior to and forming a little pit in the surface of the nipper, the that which, at another period, he had won by piously i inside and bottom of which becomes blackened by the food. bringing a portion of the real cross from the Holy Land. This soon begins to wear down, and the mark becomes Both in France and in the Papal States it was at once shorter and wider, and fainter. By the end of the first year received with general enthusiasm, in the shape of snuff; the mark in the two middle teeth is wide and faint, and but it was some time after the use of tobacco as snuff becomes still wider and fainter till the end of the third year, that the practice of smoking it commenced. This pracby which time the centre nippers have been displaced by the tice is generally supposed to have been introduced into permanent teeth, which are larger than the others, though not yet so high, and the mark is long, narrow, deep, and black. England by Sir Walter Raleigh; but Camden says, in At four years the second pair of permanent nippers will be his Elizabeth,' that Sir Francis Drake and his comup, the mark of which will be deep, while that of the first panions, on their return from Virginia in 1585, were pair will be somewhat fainter, and that of the corner pair "the first, as far as he knew, who introduced the Innearly effaced. At this age, too, the tushes begin to appear. dian plant, called Tabacca or Nicotia, into England, Between the fourth and fifth year, the corner nippers have having been taught by the Indians to use it as a remedy been shed, and the new teeth come quite up, showing the long deep irregular mark; the other nippers bearing evident against indigestion. And from the time of their retokens of increasing wearing. At six years the mark on turn," says he, "it immediately began to grow into very the centre nippers is worn out, but there is still a brown hue general use, and to bear a high price; a great many in the centre of the tooth. At seven years the mark will be persons, some from luxury, and others for their health, worn from the four centre nippers, and will have completely being wont to draw in the strong-smelling smoke with disappeared at eight years from them all. It may be added, insatiable greediness through an earthenware tube, and that it is the lower jaw of the horse that is usually examined, then to puff it forth again through their nostrils: so and which is here described. The changes of the teeth that tabacca-taverns (tabernæ tabaccana) are now as taking place in both jaws about the same time, but the generally kept in all our towns, as wine-houses or beercavity of the teeth in the upper jaw being somewhat deeper, the mark lasts longer, though the exact period is a matter of houses." No doubt the tobacco-taverns of Queen controversy. According to what may be considered good Elizabeth's times were not unworthy predecessors of authority, however, it may be stated that at nine years the the splendid cygar divans of the present day. It apmark will be worn from the middle nippers, from the next pears from a note in the Criminal Trials, vol. i. pair at ten, and from all the upper nippers at eleven. p. 361, that in 1600 the French ambassador, in his During all this time the tushes (the extremities of which despatches, represented the Peers, on the trial of the are at first sharp-pointed and curved) become gradually Earls of Essex and Southampton, as smoking tobacco blunter, shorter, and rounder. For further information on this subject, the volume on the Horse, published by the copiously while they deliberated on their verdict. Sir Society, may be advantageously consulted. Walter Raleigh, too, was accused of having sat with his pipe at the window of the armoury, while he looked on at the execution of Essex in the Tower. Both these is stories are probably untrue, but the mere relation of them by contemporaneous writers shows that they were not then monstrously incredible, and they therefore prove the generality of the practice of smoking at that time amongst the higher class of society. After a time, however, the practice of smoking tobacco appears to have met with strenuous opposition in high places, both in this country and other parts of Europe. Its principal opponents were the priests, the physicians, and the sovereign princes; by the former its use was declared sinful; and, in 1684, Pope Urban VIII. published a bull, excommunicating all persons found guilty of taking snuff when in church. This bull was renewed in 1690, by Pope Innocent; and, about twenty-nine years afterwards, the Sultan Amurath IV. made smoking a capital offence. For a long time smoking was forbidden in Russia, under pain of having the nose cut off; and in some parts of Switzerland, it was likewise made a subject of public prosecution-the police regulations of the canton of Berne, in 1661, placing the prohibition of smoking in the list of the Ten Commandments, immediately under that against adultery. Nay, that British Solomon, James I., did not think it beneath the royal dignity to take up his pen upon the subject. He accordingly, in 1603, published his famous Counterblaste to Tobacco,' in which the following remarkable passage occurs:-"It is a custom loathesome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." But notwithstanding this regal and priestly wrath, the use of the plant extended itself far and wide; and tobacco is, at this moment, perhaps the most general luxury in existence. The allusion to the practice in the following lines, taken from the Mar

TOBACCO was introduced into Europe from the province of Tabaca in St. Domingo in 1559, by a Spanish gentleman, named Hernandez de Toledo, who brought a small quantity into Spain and Portugal. From thence, by the means of the French ambassador at Lisbon, Jean Nicot, from whom it derived its name of Nicotia, it

row of Compliment,' written in 1654, seems to show | far the popular notion is borne out by the fact. In 1807, the prevalence of smoking at that period

"Much meat doth Gluttony procure
To feed men fat as swine;

But he's a frugal man indeed,

That on a leaf can dine!
He needs no napkin for his hands,
His fingers' ends to wipe,
That hath his kitchen in a box,
His roast meat in a Pipe!"
THE WEEK.

| Petrarch.]
JULY 15.-Saint Swithin.-Swithin, or Swithum, was
a bishop of Winchester who died in 868. He was, if
the tradition connected with his memory is to be believed,
a man of sense; for he was above observing one of the
vain distinctions which exist even in our own day. He
desired that he might be buried in the open church-yard,
instead of the chancel of the minster, where the great
reposed; and Bishop Hall adds, that he wished his body
to be laid "where the drops of rain might wet his grave;
thinking that no vault was so good to cover his grave as
that of heaven." This was a wise and a Christian wish;
for assuredly the desire that the worthless body shall be
entombed beneath the sacred aisles where the living
come to elevate their thoughts with the hopes of immor-
tality, is a poor clinging of the soul to the perishable
garment with which it is clothed. The wish of Swithin
that his ashes should speedily mingle with the elements,
and that the rains of heaven should water his grave,
showed a humble and a truly religious mind. His
monks, says the tradition, thought more highly of worldly
distinctions; and therefore, upon the good bishop being
canonized, resolved to remove his body from the common
cemetery into the choir of their church. This was to
have been done on the 15th of July; but it rained so
violently for forty days that the design was abandoned.
Mr. Howard, in his interesting work on the Climate of
London, says, "The tradition is so far valuable as it
proves that the summers in this southern part of our
island were subject a thousand years ago to occasional
heavy rains, in the same way as at present." The popu-
lar superstition connected with St. Swithin's day is ex-
pressed in a Scotch proverb :-

"Saint Swithin's day, gif ye do rain,
For forty days it will remain;

Saint Swithin's day, an ye be fair,

For forty daies 'twill rain nae mair."

according to him, it rained with us on the day in question, and a dry time followed; and the same in 180s. In 1818 and 1819 it was dry on the 15th, and a very dry time in each case followed. The other summers, occurring between 1807 and 1819, appear to have come under the general proposition, " that in a majority of our summers, a showery period, which, with some latitude as to time and local circumstances, may be admitted to constitute daily rain for forty days, does come on about the time indicated by the tradition of St. Swithin."

July 20.-The birth-day of Francis Petrarch, one of the three renowned fathers of the literature of modern Italy. He was born in 1304, at Arezzo, in the Florentine territory, the same district which had the glory of giving birth to his immediate predecessor Dante, and also to the other member of the illustrious trio, his contemporary and friend Boccaccio. Petrarch's father had been a notary in the city of Florence, but had, like Dante, been banished some time before the birth of his son in consequence of one of the political convulsions then so frequent. Being intended by his father for his own profession, he was sent to study first at Montpellier and afterwards at Bologna; but he soon became deeply smitten with the charms of the newly-revived literature of antiquity, Virgil and Cicero stealing most of the hours which were professedly devoted to more rugged pages. His father is related to have been so much displeased on discovering how his son employed his time, that he took his favourite authors from him and threw them into the fire. This severity, however, failed to make a lawyer of Petrarch. His father died when he was about two and twenty, and he immediately abandoned the law altogether. He then chose the church for his profession; but he never was ordained, although in the latter part of his life some valuable clerical preferments were bestowed upon him by the patrons whom he had gained by his poetical fame. The remainder of Petrarch's life took much of its colour from an incident which happened to him in his twenty-seventh year, his meeting at Avignon, in Provence, with the celebrated Laura, whose name he has rendered in so many beautiful verses as immortal as his own. the researches of a long succession of biographers and critics, all is still uncertainty as to who or what this lady really was. Many have even believed that Petrarch spent his life in pouring out his passionate rhymes to a mere ideal being, or vision of his imagination. The same obscurity hangs over the very existence of Laura as over that of Dante's Beatrice. Several succeeding years were spent by the poet in wandering through Italy and other countries. He then retired to Vaucluse, a solitary retreat not far from Avignon, and it was during several studious years which he spent there that he composed his principal works. The most memorable event of his life after this was his coronation, in 1340, as poet-laureat in the Capitol of Rome. "Twelve patrician youths," says Gibbon, were arrayed in scarlet; six representatives of the most illustrions families, in green robes, with garlands of flowers, accompanied the procession; in the midst of the princes and nobles, the senator, Count of Anguillara, a kinsman of the Colonna, ascended the throne; and at the voice of a herald, Petrarch arose. After discoursing on a text of Virgil, and thrice repeating his vows for the prosperity of Rome, he knelt before the throne, and received from the senator a laurel crown, with a more precious declaration, This is the reward of merit.' The people shouted, Long life to the Capitol and the Poet!" A sonnet in praise of Rome was accepted as the effusion of genius and gratitude; and after the whole procession had visited the

66

After

Mr. Howard has taken some pains to ascertain how Vatican, the profane wreath was suspended before the

pleasure by every attentive beholder. But the emotions of different spectators, though similar in kind, differ widely in degree: and to relish, with full delight, the enchanting sensuality, or ambition; quick in her sensibilities; elevated scenes of nature, the mind must be uncorrupted by avarice, in her sentiments; and devout in her affections. He who possesses such exalted powers of perception and enjoyment, may almost say, with the poet

"I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;

You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,

Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living streams, at eve:
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,

And I their toys to the great children leave:

shrine of St. Peter. In the diploma which was pre- | lawn, the shady grove, the variegated landscape, the boundsented to Petrarch, the title and prerogatives of poet-less ocean, and the starry firmament, are contemplated with laureat are revived in the capitol, after the lapse of thirteen hundred years; and he receives the perpetual privilege of wearing, at his choice, a crown of laurel, ivy, or myrtle, of assuming the poetic habit, and of teaching, disputing, interpreting, and composing, in all places whatsoever, and on all subjects of literature. The grant was ratified by the authority of the Senate and people, and the character of citizen was the recompense of his affection for the Roman name." After these honours he made other journeys to different parts of Italy, and also to Paris, in 1860, where he was received with great distinction. An archdeaconry in the church of Parma, a priory in the diocese of Pisa, and a canonry at Padua, were also bestowed upon him, as more substantial rewards of his merit and attestations of the public admiration. Our own Chaucer is supposed to have met with Petrarch either in 1368, at the marriage of Lionel Duke of Clarence with the daughter of the Duke of Milan, or more probably in the beginning of the year 1373, when he is supposed to have gone on an embassy to Genoa. At this interview Petrarch is thought to have communicated to the English poet the beautiful and pathetic tale of Griselda, which he had recently received from his friend Boccaccio, and had translated from the latter's Italian into Latin. This translation, which Warton, in his History of English Poetry, inadvertently affirms never to have been printed, may be found in several of the old folio editions of Petrarch's works. Petrarch, in a letter to Boccaccio, tells us, says Warton, "that on showing the translation to one of his Paduan friends, the latter, touched with the tenderness of the story, burst into such frequent and violent fits of tears, that he could not read to the end."

Petrarch spent the last four years of his life at the beautiful mountain village of Arquà, about twelve miles from Padua; and here he died suddenly, in all probability of apoplexy, on the 19th of July, 1374, having just completed his seventieth year. He was found that morning in his library, with his head resting on a book. Here, too, his remains were deposited and are still preserved. Many of our readers will remember Lord Byron's fine lines on this subject :—

"There is a tomb in Arquà ;-reared in air
Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose
The bones of Laura's lover: here repair
Many familiar with his well-sung woes,
The pilgrims of his genius. He arose
To raise a language, and his land reclaim
From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes:
Watering the tree which bears his lady's name
With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame.
"They keep his dust in Arquà, where he died;
The mountain-village, where his latter days
Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride-
An honest pride-and let it be their praise,
To offer to the passing stranger's gaze
His mansion and his sepulchre, both plain
And venerably simple, such as raise
A feeling more accordant with his strain
Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fame.
"And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt
Is one of that complexion which seems made
For those who their mortality have felt,
And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed
In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade,
Which shows a distant prospect far away
Of busy cities, now in vain displayed,
For they can lure no further; and the ray
Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday."

THE ADVANTAGES OF A TASTE FOR
BEAUTIES OF NATURE.

Perhaps such ardent enthusiasm may not be compatible Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave!" with the necessary toils and active offices which Providence has assigned to the generality of men. But there are none to whom some portion of it may not prove advantageous; which is consistent with the indispensable duties of his and if it were cherished by each individual in that degree station, the felicity of human life would be considerably augmented. From this source the refined and vivid pleasures of the imagination are almost entirely derived; and the elegant arts owe their choicest beauties to a taste for the contemplation of nature. Painting and sculpture are express imitations of visible objects: and where would be the charms of poetry, if divested of the imagery and emters, statuaries, and poets, therefore, are always ambitious bellishments which she borrows from rural scenes? Painto acknowledge themselves the pupils of nature; and, as their skill increases, they grow more and more delighted with every view of the animal and vegetable world. But the pleasure resulting from admiration is transient; and to cultivate taste without regard to its influence on the passions and affections, "is to rear a tree for its blossoms which is capable of yielding the richest and most valuable fruit. Physical and moral beauty bear so intimate a relation to tions in the scale of excellence; and the knowledge and each other, that they may be considered as different gradarelish of the former should be deemed only a step to the nobler and more permanent enjoyments of the latter.

Whoever has visited the Leasowes, in Warwickshire, must have felt the force and propriety of an inscription which meets the eye at the entrance into these delightful grounds; "Would you, then, taste the tranquil scene? Be sure your bosom be serene; Devoid of hate, devoid of strife, Devoid of all that poisons life: And much it 'vails you, in this place To graft the love of human race."

Now, such scenes contribute powerfully to inspire that
serenity which is necessary to enjoy and to heighten their
beauties. By a sweet contagion the soul catches the harmony
which she contemplates; and the frame within assimilates
itself to that which is without. For

-Who can forbear to smile with nature?
Can the strong passions in the bosom roll
While every gale is peace, and every grove
Is melody?"

In this state of composure we become susceptible of vir-
tuous impressions from almost every surrounding object;
an equal and extensive benevolence is called forth into
exertion; and having felt a common interest in the grati-
fications of inferior beings, we shall be no longer indifferent
to their sufferings, or become wantonly instrumental in
producing them.

It seems to be the intention of Providence that the lower order of animals should be subservient to the comfort, convenience, and sustenance of man. But his right of dominion extends no further; and if this right be exercised with mildness, humanity, and justice, the subjects of his power THE of living creatures are annually multiplied by human art, will be no less benefited than himself; for various species improved in their perceptive powers by human culture, and is reciprocal between such animals and man; and he may plentifully fed by human industry. The relation, therefore, supply his own wants by the use of their labour, the produce of their bodies, and even the sacrifice of their lives; whilst he co-operates with all-gracious Heaven in promoting happiness, the great end of existence.

[From Dr. Percival's Moral and Literary Dissertations.'] THAT sensibility to beauty, which, when cultivated and improved, we term taste, is universally diffused through the human species; and it is most uniform with respect to those objects, which, being out of our power, are not liable to variation, from accident, caprice, or fashion. The verdant