Our readers, whom, between ourselves, id without flattery, we take to be as social set of persons as can be, people of an partial humanity, and able to relish hatever concerneth a common good, wheer a child's story or a man's pinch of uff, (for snuff comes after knowledge,) ubtless recollect the famous tale of the armecide and his imaginary dinner in the rabian Nights' Entertainments. We hereby vite them to an imaginary cigar and cup coffee with us in a spot scarcely less iental-to wit, our friend Gliddon's Divan King-street. Not that our fictitious enyment is to serve them instead of the real e. Quite the contrary; our object being advance the good of all parties,-of our aders, inasmuch as they are good fellows their snuffs,-of our friend, who can pply them in a manner different from y body else, and of ourselves, because VOL. II.-49.

the subject is a pleasant one, and brings us all together agreeably. Those who have the greatest relish for things real, have also the best taste of them in imagination. We confess, that for our private eating (for a cigar, with coffee, may truly be said to be meat and drink to us) we prefer a bower with a single friend; but for public smoking, that is to say, for smoking with a greater number of persons, or in a coffeeroom, especially now that the winter is coming on, and people cannot sit in bowers without boots, commend us to the warmth, and luxury, and conspiracy of comforts, in the Cigar Divan.

In general, the room is occupied by individuals, or groups of individuals, sitting apart at their respective little mahogany tables, and smoking, reading, or talking with one another in a considerate under tone, in order that nobody may be dis

turbed. But on the present occasion we will have the room to ourselves, and talk as we please. In the East it is common to see dirty streets and poor looking houses, and on being admitted into the interior of one of them, to find yourself in a beautiful room, noble with drapery, and splendid with fountains and gilded trellices. We do not mean to compare King-street with a street in Bagdad or Constantinople. We have too much respect for that eminent thoroughfare, clean in general, and classical always; where you cannot turn, but you meet recollections of the Drydens and Hogarths. The hotel next door to the Divan is still the same as in Hogarth's picture of the Frosty Morning; and looking the other way, you see Dryden coming out of Rose Alley to spend his evening at the club in Russell-street. But there is mud and fog enough this weather to render the contrast between any thoroughfare and a carpeted interior considerable; and making due allowance for the palace of an effendi and the premises of a tradesman, a person's surprise would hardly be greater, certainly his comfort not so great, in passing from the squalidness of a Turkish street into the gorgeous but suspicious wealth of the apart ment of a pasha, as in slipping out of the mud, and dirt, and mist, and cold, and shudder, and blinking misery of an out-ofdoor November evening in London, into the oriental and carpeted warmth of Mr. Gliddon's Divan. It is pleasant to think, what a number of elegant and cheerful places lurk behind shops, and in places where nobody would expect them. Mr. Gliddon's shop is a very respectable one; but nobody would look for the saloon beyond it; and it seems in good oriental keeping, and a proper sesame, when on touching a door in the wall, you find yourself in a room like an eastern tent, the drapery festooned up around you, and views exhibited on all sides of mosques, and minarets, and palaces rising out of the water,

But here we are inside ourselves, do you think of it?

What

B. This is a tent indeed, exactly as you have described it. It seems pitched in the middle of the Ganges or Tigris; for most of the views are in the midst of water.

J. Yes; we might fancy ourselves a party of British merchants, who had purchased a little island in an Eastern gulf, and built themselves a tent on it to smoke in. The scenes, though they have a pano ramic effect, are really not panoramic daubs. This noble edifice on the left, touched in

that delicate manner with silver, (or is rather not gold ?) unites the reality of archi tecture built by mortal hands, with the fairy lustre of a palace raised by enchant ment. One has a mind to sail to it, and get an adventure. E. And this on the left. What a fine sombre effect that mountain with a building on it has in the background;-how dark yet aerial! You would have a very solemn adventure there,—nothing under speaking stone-gentleman, or the loss o your right eye.

O. Well, this snug little corner for me under the bamboos; two gigantic walking sticks in leaf! A cup of coffee served b a pretty Hindoo would do very well here and there is a temple to be religious in when convenient. 'Tis pleasant to hav all one's luxuries together.

T. If there is any fault, it is in the scene at the bottom of the room, which i perhaps too full of scattered objects. Bu all is remarkably well done; and as the newspapers have observed, as oriental a any thing in the paintings of Daniel Hodges.

C. Are you sure we are not all Mussul men? I begin to think I am a Tur under the influence of opium, who take my turban for a hat, and fancy I'm speak ing English. We shall have the sulta upon us presently.

L. With old Ibrahim to give us the bastinado. I have no fair Persian at ham to offer him; and, if I had, wouldn't d it. But here's ; he shall ha

him.

O. (grinding with aughter.) What, i woman's clothes, to beguile him, and pla the lute?

L. No; as a fair dealer; no less a pre digy, especially for a bookseller, Yo should save your head every day by a ne joke; and we would have another ne Arabian Nights, or the Adventures of Su tan Mahmoud and the Fair Dealer. Ya should be Scheherezade turned into a man Every morning, the prince's jester should say to you, "Brother Scratch-his-head, I you are awake, favour his Majesty with handsome come-off."

E. I cannot help thinking we are Calenders, got into the house full of ladies and that we shall have to repent, and m our faces with ashes, crying out, $ The is the reward of our debauchery: This the reward of taking too many cups coffee: This is the reward of excessive g and tobacco."

L. But, alas! in that case we sho

have the repentance without the lady, which is unfair. No ladies, I believe, are admitted here, Mr. Gliddon?

Mr. G. No, sir; it has been often observed to me, by way of hint, that it was a pity ladies were not admitted into English coffee-houses, as they are on the continent; but this is a smoking as well as a coffee-room. Ladies do not smoke in England, as they do in the East; and then, as extremes meet, and the most respectable creatures in the world render a place, it seems, not respectable, I was to take care how I risked my character, and made my Divan too comfortable.

0. And we call ourselves a gallant nation! We also go to the theatres to sit and hear ourselves complimented on our liberal treatment of women, and suffer them all the while to enjoy the standingroom!

C. Women are best away, after all. We should be making love, while they ought to be making the coffee.

L. Women and smoking would not do together, unless we smoked perfumes, and saw their eyes through a cloud of fragrance, like Venus in her ambrosial mist. This room, I confess, being full of oriental scenes, reminds one of other things oriental of love and a lute. I could very well fancy myself Noureddin, sitting here with my fair Persian, eating peaches, and sendng forth one of the songs of Hafiz over those listening waters.

J. The next time Mr. Gliddon indulges as with a new specimen of his magnificence, he must give us animate instead of nanimate scenes, and treat us with a series of subjects out of the Arabian Nightsovers, genii, and elegant festivities.

Mr. G. Gentlemen, here is a little fesivity at hand, not, I hope, altogether nelegant. Your coffee and cigars are eady.

C. Ah, this is the substantial picturesque. was beginning to long for something riental to eat, elegant or not; an Eastlumpling for instance.

H. I wonder whether they have any puns n the East.

J. To be sure they have. The elegancies of some of their writers consist of a sort f serious punning, like the conceits of ur old prosers; such as, a man was " deerted for his deserts;" or graceless, hough full of gracefulness, was his grace, nd in great disgrace."

C. But I mean proper puns; puns worthy of a Pundit.

L. You have it. It is part of their daily

expunditure. How can there be men and not puns?

Το pun is human; to forgive it, fine.

H. There's an instance in Blue Beard; in a pun set to music by Kelly;

Fatima, Fatima, See-limbs here!

C. Good. I think I see Kelly, who used to stick his arms out, as if he were requesting you to see his limbs; and Mrs. Bland, whom he used to sing it to a proper little Fatima. Come; I feel all the beauty of the room, now that one is "having something." This is really very Grand, Signior; though to complete us, I think we ought to have some Sublime Port.

Mr. G. Excuse me: whining is not allowed to a true Mussulman. C. Some snuff, however.

Mr. G. The best to be had. W. Take some of mine; I have cropped the flower of the shop.

J. You sneeze, C. I thought you too old a snuff-taker for that.

C. The air of the water always makes me sneeze. It's the Persian gulf here.

W. This is a right pinch, friend C. I'll help you at another, as you've helped

me.

C. Snuff's a capital thing. I cannot help thinking there is something providential in snuff. If you observe, different refreshments come up among nations at different eras of the world. In the Elizabethan age, it was beef-steaks. Then tea and coffee came up; and people being irritable sometimes, perhaps with the new light let in upon them by the growth of the press, snuff was sent us to support uneasy thoughts." During the Assyrian monarchy, cherry-brandy may have been the thing. I have no doubt Semiramis took it; unless we suppose it too matronly a drink for So-Mere-a-Miss.

66

(Here the whole Assyrian monarchy is run down in a series of puns.)

H. Gentlemen, we shall make the Tour of Babel before we have done.

L. Talking of the refreshments of different ages, it is curious to see how we identify smoking with the Eastern nations; whereas it is a very modern thing among them, and was taught them from the west. One wonders what the Turks and Persians did before they took to smoking; just as the ladies and gentlemen of these nervous times wonder how their ancestors existed without tea for breakfast.

J. Coffee is a modern thing too in the East, though the usual accompaniment of

their tobacco. "Coffee without Tobacco," quoth the Persian, as our friend's learned placard informs us," is like meat without salt." But coffee is of Eastern growth. It is a species of jasmin. I remember, in a novel I read once, the heroine was described in grand terms, as "presiding at the hysonian altar;" that is to say, making tea. This lady might have asked her lover, whether before his hysonian recreation, he would not "orientalize in a cup of jessamine."

W. I met with a little story in a book yesterday, which I must tell you, not because it is quite new or very applicable,

A quotation from a prospectus published by Mr. Gliddon. As this prospectus is written in the "style social," and contains some particulars of his establishment, which our article has not noticed, we lay a few passages from it before our readers :

"The recreation of smoking, which was introduced into this country in an age of great men, by one of the greatest and most accomplished men of that or any other age, was for a long time considered an elegance, and a mark of good-breeding. Its very success gradually got it an ill name by rendering it too common and popular; and something became necessary to give it a new turn in its favour,-to alter the association of ideas connected with it, and awaken its natural friends to a due sense of its merits. Two circumstances combined to effect this desirable change. One was the discovery of a new mode of smoking by means of rolling up the fragrant leaf itself, and making it perform the office of its own pipe; the other was the long military experience in our late wars, which have rendered us so renowned; and which, by throwing the most gallant of our gentry upon the hasty and humble recreations eagerly snatched at by all campaigners,

opened their eyes to the difference between real and imaginary good-breeding, and made them see that what comforted the heart of man under such grave circumstances, must have qualities in it that deserved to be rescued from an ill name. Thus arose the cigar, and with it a reputation that has been continually increasing. There is no rank in society into which it has not made its way, not excepting the very highest. If James the First, an uncouth prince, unworthy of his clever, though mistaken race, and who hated the gal lant introducer of tobacco, did not think it beneath his princely indignation to write in abuse of it, George the Fourth, who has unquestionably a better taste for some of the best things in the world, has not thought it be neath his princely refinement to give the cigar his

countenance.

"The art of smoking is a contemplative art; and being naturally allied to other arts meditative, hath an attachment to a book and a newspaper. Books and newspapers are accordingly found at the Cigar Divan; the latter consisting of the principal daily papers, and the former of a PROFUSE COLLECTION OF

THE MOST ENTERTAINING PERIODICALS. The situation of the house is unexceptionable, being at an equal distance from the city and the west end, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the great theatres. Writers of the most opposite parties have conspired to speak in the highest terms of the establishment, on their own personal knowledge; and should any authority be wanting to induce a reader of this paper to taste all the piquant advantages of fragrance, and fine drinks, and warmth, and quiet, and literature, which they have done the proprietor the honour to expatiate on, he may find it, if a man of wit and the town, in the person of Fielding; if a philosopher, in that of Hobbes; if a divine, in that of Aldrich; and if a soldier, seaman, patriot, statesman, or cavalier, in the all-accomplished person of sir Walter Raleigh."-See also an article in the New Monthly Magazine, for January, 1826.

but because it is Eastern, and made me laugh. I don't know whether it is in the jest-books; but I never saw it before. A fellow was going home through one of the streets of Bagdad with a forbidden bottle of wine under his cloak, when the cadi stopped him. "What have you got there, fellow?" The fellow, who had contrived to plant himself against a wall, said, “No thing, sir." "Put out your hand, sir." The right hand was put out; there was nothing in it. "Your left, sir." The left "You see, was put out, equally innocent. sir," said the fellow, "I have nothing." "Come away from the wall," said the cadi. "No, sir," returned he, "it will break."

H. Good. That is really dramatic. It reminds me that I must be off to the play. J. And I.

C. And I.

0. And I. We'll make a party of it, and finish our evening worthily with Shak speare; one of the greatest of men, and most good-natured of punsters.

L. By the by, Mr. Gliddon, your room is not so large as in the lithographic print they have made of it; but it is more Eastern and picturesque.

W. We'll have a more faithful print to accompany this conversation, for I am resolved to be treacherous for this night only, and publish it. It is not a proper specimen of what my friends could say; but it is not unlike something of what they do; and sociality, on all sides, will make the best of it.

LAURENCE-KIRK SNUFF-BOXES.

James Sandy, the inventor of these pocket-utensils, lived a few years ago Alyth, a town on the river Isla, in Per shire, North Britain. The genius and e centricity of character which distinguished him have been rarely surpassed. Deprived contrived, by dint of ingenuity, not only at an early age of the use of his legs, he to pass his time agreeably, but to render himself an useful member of society.

Sandy soon displayed a taste for me chanical pursuits; and contrived, as workshop for his operations, a sort of cir cular bed, the sides of which being raised about eighteen inches above the clothes were employed as a platform for turni lathes, table-vices, and cases for tools of kinds. His talent for practical mechanik was universal. He was skilled in all so of turning, and constructed several ve