From Chapter 11:
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.

It was in the latter years of his life that Tennyson told Sir William Harcourt one day that his morning pipe after breakfast was the best in the day—an opinion, by the way, to which many less distinguished smokers would subscribe—when Sir William laughingly replied, "The earliest pipe of half-awakened bards."

The companion burlesque line, "The earliest pipe of half-awakened birdseye" appears, with one from Homer and one from Virgil, at the head of Arthur Sidgwick's poem in Greek Iambics, in "Echoes from the Oxford Magazine," 1890.

From Chapter 14:
Nowadays, if smoking takes place in church at all, it can only be done with intentional irreverence; and it is painful to think that even at the present day there are people in whom a feeling of reverence and decency is so far lacking as to lead them to desecrate places of worship. The Vicar of Lancaster, at his Easter vestry meeting in 1913, complained of bank-holiday visitors to the parish church who ate their lunch, smoked, and wore their hats while looking round the building. It is absurd to suppose that these people were unconscious of the impropriety of their conduct.