LITERARY SOCIETY.

71

Holland is justly celebrated for its public charities. In Rotterdam, before the last war, there were many benevolent institutions, some of which have inevitably languished, and others expired, in consequence of the political convulsions of the country and the usually impoverishing effects of long hostility.

In the streets I was surprised to see the horses shod in the shameful and clumsy manner they are: the shoe is behind elevated to a considerable height, so that the poor animal must suffer from the position into which he is always forced, resembling that of a lady in a high-heeled pair of shoes of the last century.

At my hotel I was much gratified by the whimsical appearance of a meeting called the Society of Variety and Unity, which was held there about eighty Dutchmen of the middling classes of life were assembled in one of the rooms, to discuss philosophical, but more particularly religious questions: when I entered the room, one of their members. was addressing the body upon the subject of death, as I was informed. His eloquence appeared to be as sluggish as the canal opposite: the motto of the fraternity was well illustrated by what appeared-the only variety I saw was in their pipes, and their unity was effected by the fumes of their tobacco, which seemed to blend them in one common mass of smoke.

I had not been two days in Holland without witnessing the abominable custom of introducing a spitting pot upon the table after dinner, into which, like the Kava bowl used amongst the natives of the South-sea islands, each person present who smokes, and that generally comprehends all who are present, discharges his saliva, which delicate depositary is handed round as regularly as the bottle. This custom is comparable in point of delicacy with that of washing the mouth and cleaning the teeth with a napkin after dinner, as in England, or picking the latter with a fork, as in France.

The Dutch are proverbial for smoking. The moment I entered any coffee-house, pipes and tobacco were introduced, as if the waiters were in dread of my imbibing some pestilent disease, without this sort of fumigation, and expressed uncommon surprise, when they remarked that I declined using them. The Dutch will insist upon it that smoking is not only as necessary to preserve their constitutions, as paint is to protect the exterior of their houses from the effects of their moist climate; but that the vapour invigorates the mind, which mounted like an aerial spirit upon a cloud, pours forth treasures of reflection with a brilliancy little short of inspiration.

The Dutch go to an astonishing expence in their pipes,

which assume an endless variety of shapes, and are decorated sometimes with the most coxcombical figures painted upon the head or cup of it, according to the taste of its possessor.

Many of the opulent Hollanders use a pipe, the head of which is made of a clay which is very rare, and found only in Turkey, of so beautiful a colour, that it is called the Meerschaum, or froth of the sea; for this piece of luxury the value of eight and even ten guineas is frequently paid.

The lower orders of society, and many of the higher, carry in their pockets their pipe, a pricker to clear the tube, a piece of tinder made in Germany from the large mushrooms growing on old trees, resembling spunge, a small steel and flint to kindle the fire with, and a box frequently capacious enough to contain a pound of tobacco.

It is curious to observe how naturally a pipe depends from a Dutchman's mouth, and with what perfect facility he smokes without the assistance of either hand: he literally appears to have been formed by nature to breathe through this tube, with which he rides on horseback, drives in a carriage, and even dances. I have seen little boys take this instrument and puff away with an ap

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74

ANECDOTES OF TOBACCO.

parently instinctive predilection for the transatlantic weed. Smoking is a Dutchman's panacea, he thinks it good in all cases, whether of consumptions, or plethora, nervous debility, or fiery fever: as a masticatory, tobacco is but little used even by the fishermen, sailors and boors; and I was surprised to find, that in the social shape of snuff, it seemed to have not many admirers.

Tobacco had many enemies to contend with. In 1610, the smoking of tobacco was known at Constantinople, but it was thought so injurious a custom, that to remove it by ridicule, a Turk who had been found smoking, was conducted about the streets with a pipe transfixed through his nose it was a long time before the Dutch cultivated the plant themselves: previous to that period they purchased it, and that the very refuse of the English. In 1615, tobacco began to be sown about Amsfort in Holland.

By James I. the practice of smoking was severely and most whimsically denounced in a work, called " King "James Sixth's (of Scotland) Counterblast to Tobacco," in which the royal pedant states, "that some gentlemen of "his courts were accustomed to expend no less than three "or four hundred pounds a year upon this indulgence." He also says, that it was used as a powerful aphrodisiac." He particularly deplores the case of delicate, whole

TEMPERANCE OF THE DUTCH.

75

some, clean complexioned wives, whose husbands were not ashamed to pollute them with the perpetual stinking torment of tobacco smoke: the concluding sentence of this extraor"The use of dinary composition is somewhat laughable.

"tobacco," he says, " is a custom loathesome to the eye, "hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to "the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, "nearest resembling the horrid Stygian smoke of the pit "that is bottomless."

Few would wish to withhold from a Dutchman the narcotic enjoyment of his pipe, when they reflect, that he seeks no other species of oblivion to his care; for, I believe, notwithstanding a Dutchman's eulogium upon his pipe, that it produces more oblivion than inspiration: he is scarcely ever seen intoxicated: indeed, drunkenness is held unpardonably infamous in Holland. To keep bad accounts, and to be seen inebriated, are equally disgraceful; and hence the use of wines and spirituous liquors is much less in Holland than in England.

The Dutch agree with Cassio's reasoning

"Oh! that men should put an enemy into their mouths,

"to steal away their brains! That we should with joy, revel, pleasure, and

16 applause, transform ourselves into beasts!"

Othello, Act III. Scene 1.