In Turkey there is one very fine tobacco, which comes from Salonichi, in ancient Thrace.  It is of a light yellow colour, and may be compared to very good Madeira.  These are the choicest tobaccos in the world.  The finest Kanaster has a poor, flat taste after them.

The sheesha nearly resembles the hookah.  In both a composition is inhaled, instead of the genuine weed.  The nargilly is also used with the serpent, but the tube is of glass.  In all three, you inhale through rose-water.

The scientific votary after due experience, will prefer the Turkish chibouque.  He should possess many, never use the same for two days running, change his bowl with each pipe-full, and let the chibouque be cleaned every day, and thoroughly washed with orange flower water.  All this requires great attention, and the paucity and cost of service in Europe will ever prevent any one but a man of large fortune from smoking in the Oriental fashion with perfect satisfaction to himself.—­New Monthly Magazine.

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NOTES OF A READER.

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BUILDING A SCHOOL IN THE HIGH ALPS.

[We find the following “labour of love” recorded by the Rev. W.S.  Gilly, in his Life of Felix Neff, Pastor of the French Protestants in these cheerless regions.  Its philanthropy has few parallels in the proud folio of history, and will not be lessened in comparison with any record of human excellence within our memory.]

It was among the grandest and sternest features of mountain scenery, that Neff not only found food for his own religious contemplations, and felt that his whole soul was filled with the majesty of the ever present God, but here also he discovered, that religious impressions were more readily received and retained more deeply than elsewhere by others.  In this rugged field of rock and ice, the Alpine summit, and its glittering pinnacles, the eternal snows and glaciers, the appalling clefts and abysses, the mighty cataract, the rushing waters, the frequent perils of avalanches and of tumbling rocks, the total absence of every soft feature of nature, were always reading an impressive lesson, and illustrating the littleness of man, and the greatness of the Almighty.

The happy result of his experiments, made the pastor feel anxious to have a more convenient place for his scholastic exertions than a dark and dirty stable; and here again the characteristic and never-failing energies of his mind were fully displayed.  The same hand which had been employed in regulating the interior arrangements of a church, in constructing aqueducts and canals of irrigation, and in the husbandman’s work of sowing and planting, was now turned to the labour of building a school-room.  He persuaded each family in Dormilleuse to furnish a man, who should consent to work under his directions, and having first