Thy fond idolatry, thy blind excess,
And seek with _Him_ that Bower of Blessedness--
Love! _thy_ sole Home is Heaven!


_New Monthly Magazine_.

* * * * *


ORIENTAL SMOKING.


In India a hookah, in Persia a nargilly, in Egypt a sheesha, in Turkey
a chibouque, in Germany a meerschaum, in Holland a pipe, in Spain a
cigar--I have tried them all. The art of smoking is carried by the
Orientals to perfection. Considering the contemptuous suspicion with
which the Ottomans ever regard novelty, I have sometimes been tempted to
believe that the eastern nations must have been acquainted with tobacco
before the discovery of Raleigh introduced it to the occident; but a
passage I fell upon in old Sandys intimates the reverse. That famous
traveller complains of the badness of the tobacco in the Levant, which,
he says, is occasioned by Turkey being supplied only with the dregs of
the European markets. Yet the choicest tobacco in the world now grows
upon the coasts of Syria.

What did they do in the East before they smoked? From the many-robed
Pacha, with his amber-mouthed and jewelled chibouque, longer than a
lancer's spear, to the Arab clothed only in a blue rag, and puffing
through a short piece of hollowed date-wood, there is, from Stamboul