No doubt smoking had its ups and downs at the Universities apart from the set of the main current of fashion.  We learn from the invaluable Gunning that at Cambridge about 1786 smoking was going “out of fashion among the junior members of our combination-rooms, except on the river in the evening, when every man put a short pipe in his mouth.”  “I took great pains,” he adds, “to make myself master of this elegant accomplishment, but I never succeeded, though I used to renew the attempt with a perseverance worthy of a better cause.”  About the same time Dr. Farmer was Master of Emmanuel and the Master was an inveterate smoker.  Gunning says that Emmanuel parlour under Farmer’s presidency was always open to those who loved pipes and tobacco and cheerful conversation—­a very natural collocation of tastes.  Farmer’s silver tobacco-pipe is still preserved in his old college, while Porson’s japanned snuff-box is at Trinity.

Dr. Farmer was elected Master of Emmanuel in 1775.  Years before he had held the curacy of Swavesey, about nine miles out of Cambridge, where he regularly performed the duty.  After morning service it was his custom to repair to the local public-house where he enjoyed a mutton-chop and potatoes.  Immediately after the removal of the cloth, “Mr. Dobson (his churchwarden) and one or two of the principal farmers, made their appearance, to whom he invariably said, ’I am going to read prayers, but shall be back by the time you have made the punch.’  Occasionally another farmer accompanied him from church, when pipes and tobacco”—­with the punch—­“were in requisition until 6 o’clock.”  The Sabbath afternoon thus satisfactorily concluded, Farmer returned to college in Cambridge and took a nap, till at nine he went to the parlour of the college where the Fellows usually assembled, and pipes and tobacco concluded a well-spent day.

In the fashionable world the snuff-box was all-powerful.  The Prince Regent was devoted to snuff, but disdained tobacco.  He had a “cellar of snuff,” which after his death was sold, said John Bull, August 15, 1830, “to a well-known purveyor, for L400.”  Lord Petersham, famous among dandies, made a wonderful collection of snuffs and snuff-boxes, and was curious in his choice of a box to carry.  Gronow relates that once when a light Sevres snuff-box which Lord Petersham was using, was admired, the noble owner replied, with a gentle lisp—­“Yes, it is a nice summer box—­but would certainly be inappropriate for winter wear!” The well-known purveyor who bought the Prince Regent’s cellar of snuff, and who bought also Lord Petersham’s stock, was the Fribourg of Fribourg and Treyer, whose well-known old-fashioned shop at the top of the Haymarket, with a bow-window on each side of the door, still gives an eighteenth-century flavour to that thoroughfare.  All the dandies of the period were connoisseurs of snuff, and imitated the royal mirror of fashion in their devotion to the scented powder.  Young Charles Stanhope wrote to his brother on November 5, 1812—­“I have learnt to take snuff among other fashionable acquirements, a custom which, of course, you have learnt and will be able to keep me in countenance.”  But no dandies or young men of fashion smoked.  Tobacco, save in the disguise of snuff, was tabooed.