By the end of the nineteenth century the snuff-box which once upon a time stood upon the mantelpiece of every club, had disappeared.  The habit of snuffing had long been falling into desuetude.  The cigar dealt the snuff-box its death-blow and the cigarette was chief mourner at its funeral.

As in other periods, men of letters and artists ignored the social prejudices and conventions about tobacco, and laughed at the artificial distinctions drawn between cigars and pipes.  It is said that the late Sir John Millais smoked a clay pipe in his carriage when he was part of the first Jubilee procession of Queen Victoria—­a performance, if it took place, which would certainly have horrified her tobacco-hating Majesty.  Tennyson and his friends smoked their pipes as they had always done—­and old-fashioned clay pipes too.  Sir Norman Lockyer, referring to a period about 1867, mentions Monday evenings in his house which were given up to friends “who came in, sans ceremonie, to talk and smoke.  Clays from Broseley, including ‘churchwardens’ and some of larger size (Frank Buckland’s held an ounce of tobacco) were provided, and the confirmed smokers (Tennyson, an occasional visitor, being one of them) kept their pipes, on which the name was written, in a rack for future symposia.”

Of the other great Victorian poets Morris was a pipe-smoker, and so was Rossetti.  Browning also smoked, but not, I think, a pipe.  Swinburne, on the other hand, detested tobacco, and expressed himself on the subject with characteristic extravagance and vehemence—­“James I was a knave, a tyrant, a fool, a liar, a coward.  But I love him, I worship him, because he slit the throat of that blackguard Raleigh who invented this filthy smoking!” Professor Blackie, in a letter to his wife, remarked:  “The first thing I said on entering the public room was—­’What a delightful thing the smell of tobacco is, in a warm room on a wet night!’ ...  I gave my opinion with great decision that tobacco, whisky and all such stimulants or sedatives, had their foundation in nature, could not be abolished, or rather should not, and must be content with the check of a wise regulation.  Even pious ladies were fond of tea, which, taken in excess, was worse for the nerves than a glass of sherry.”

One of the most distinguished of Victorian men of letters, John Ruskin, was a great hater of tobacco.  Notwithstanding this, he sent Carlyle—­an inveterate smoker—­a box of cigars in February 1865.  In his letter of acknowledgment Carlyle wrote—­“Dear Ruskin, you have sent me a magnificent Box of Cigars; for which what can I say in answer?  It makes me both sad and glad. Ay de mi

    ’We are such stuff,
    Gone with a puff—­
    Then think, and smoke Tobacco!’"

In the later years of his life, spent at Brantwood, Ruskin’s guests found that smoking was not allowed even after dinner.

Another and greater Victorian, Gladstone, was also a non-smoker.  He is said, however, on one occasion, when King Edward as Prince of Wales dined with him in Downing Street, to have toyed with a cigarette out of courtesy to his illustrious guest.