HAVING, De Quincey used to say, was a grand difficulty. He allowed his beard to grow, not as some men do, because it kept him out of many a painful "scrape," but simply because he could not be troubled shaving himself. Southey belonged aiso to the class who, with Leigh Hunt, look upon shaving as a " villainous and unnecessary custom." And yet he tells us that if he could boast of a beard, he "would cherish it as the Cid Campeador did his, for my pleasure." He would regale it on a summer's day with rose-water, and without making it an idol, he would sometimes offer incense to it with a pastile or with lavender and sugar. His children, when they were young enough for such blandishments, would delight to comb and stroke and curl it, and his grandchildren in turn would succeed to the same course of mutual endearment. But Southey probably employed the razor as Cervantes advised in the case of Sancho-in order to secure a comely appearance. Or perhaps, like Martin Luther, he believed in the intimate connection between shaving and sinbelieved that the beard is ingrained in man like evil itself: that neither can be eradicated, but that both must be resisted and unceasingly cut down.

Such a notion is not likely to have ever entered into the head of the historian of England, who as a rule mortified the flesh by shaving himself. When Macaulay went

to a barber, and after an easy shave asked what he had to pay, the shaver replied, "Just what you generally give the man who shaves you, sir." "I generally give him," said the historian, "a couple of cuts on each cheek." Some men are not so niggardly to themselves, and these are probably the cynics who look upon the beard as the penalty incurred by the eating of the forbidden fruit. And this is a theory that is at least plausible, for the daily labour of rooting out the martial growth that fringes the cheek of the genus home, is a labour in which the sweat of the brow is not altogether unfamiliar, while even the tears have been known to flow as from a heart "bowed down beneath a load of sin." It is certainly disquieting to think that Eve may be at the bottom of that twenty-seven feet of hirsute stubble which the German scientist calculates that a man has mowed down by the time he is eighty! But there is the other theory, favoured by the disciples of Darwin, that the beard is merely the survival of a primitive decoration. Man, according to this view, was originally as hairy as the opossum itself, but as he rolled down the ages, he wore the hair off in patches by sleeping on his sides and sitting against a tree. Of course the hair of the dog is not worn off in this way, but a great theory is not to be set aside by an objection so trifling. By and by our ancestors "awoke to the consciousness that they were patchy and spotty," and resolving to "live down" all hair that was not ornamental, they, with remarkable unanimity, seem to have fixed on the eye

may be excused if they reject it in favour of the more likely theory that the beard is one of the punishments entailed on man with the curse of toil. The one theory, it is true, may be less scientific than the other, but then what mortal man thinks of science while he is shaving?

The mental eye of the beard historian has certainly a very fine field to scan—a vista of beards, broad, pointed, and stubbled. If one were to begin on the history, he would probably lead off with a definition, in which he might or might not be assisted by the old Latin author who thus quaintly queried and answered: "What is a beard? Hair. And what is hair? A beard," which reminds one of Punch's "What is matter? Never mind. What is mind?

No matter." A clearer

definition would be that of the lecturer who Isaid of the beard that "in its full extent it comprehends all hair visible on the countenance below the eyes, naturally growing down the sides of the face, crossing the cheeks by an inverted arch, fringing the upper and lower lips, covering the chin. above and below, and hanging down in front of the neck and throat-moustaches and whiskers being merely parts of a general whole." This would be comprehensive enough to go on with, although the present day young man, whose delight is in the upward curl, would probably

object to the moustache being regarded as part of the beard. But the young man might have his consolation in thinking of the fact that the Celts of Britain, as described by Julius Cæsar, shaved everything except the upper lip. It is true that people still in middle life can look back to the time when-male England being mostly smooth-faced the appearance of a moustache at once declared the wearer, in the eyes of the mob, to be either a cavalry officer, an Italian fiddler, a billiard sharper, or a foreigner of some sort. It has been recorded that even in Edinburgh, most cultured and cosmopolitan of Caledonian cities, a distinguished scientist on first appearing in the streets with a moustache some fifty years ago, was followed by a rabble of rude urchins shouting "Frenchy! Frenchy!" though he was no nearer being a Frenchman than Taffy is of being a Turk. Leech's picture, representing "the dismay of the British

swell on seeing the postmen with moustaches," is well known; for even in 1854 not to use the razor on the upper lip was regarded as extreme dandyism. But when the police appeared about the end of that year with their faces uncropped, the masculine world began to realise that a new era had arrived. Mr. Muntz was among the first of the prominent men who ventured to abjure the razor; and a certain Royal Academician, James Ward by name, followed suit immediately after sending to the printer a kind of Apologia pro barba sua, in the shape of a pamphlet showing eighteen sound scriptural reasons why a man might let his beard grow and yet not forfeit his title to Paradise!

One would think it were quite superfluous to appeal to Scripture in favour of the beard. For have the preachers not found texts on which to hang discourses in its behalf? "It's surely no' that beardless boy that's going to preach to us," said an old lady as John Skinner, the author of Scotland's "Tullochgorum passed through the crowd at the church door to conduct his first service, and shortly afterwards the ancient dame was

listening to an extempore discourse from the words, "Tarry at Jericho till your beards be grown." Not so many years ago some one issued a rhyming dissertation in which we are told that Moses commanded the oppressed of Pharaoh to wear the beard, and so displaced the razors of Egypt. So far as I know Moses never lifted his lip against the razors of Egypt, but there is something very like an injunction to wear the beard and to wear it long in Leviticus-"Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard." It will be remembered how Sir Roger de Coverley, wanted to know "whether our forefathers did not look much wiser in their beards than we do without them," and declared how he loved "to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs and your Jacobs, as we have them in the old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings." Likely enough the

Theodore Beza, Theologian, John Calvin, Theologian, died 1605. died 1564.

The

old patriarchs really rejoiced in an unusual length of beard, but whether the artists are right in carrying the hirsute appendage below the girdle is another matter. ancient Jews considered it the greatest insult that could be offered to a man to pluck his beard, which may account in part for the wonderful state of preserva

tion that tradition has connected with the beard of the old-world male. It was a notion of the Mohammedans that though Noah reached his thousandth birthday no hair of his blessed beard fell off or became white; but the Mohammedans had no more authority for that than for their belief that the devil has but one solitary long hair for a beard. It was, as some say, in order to distinguish themselves from the ancient Israelites that the followers of Mohammed cropped the beard; but Mohammed, as we know, sanctioned the dyeing of the beard, and preferred a cane colour, because that was the traditional hue of Abraham's beard. More than that, have we not the common Moham

for it in 1135, five hundred years after the prophet's death. Where it had reposed during the long interval is as great a mystery as that connected with the Holy Coat of Treves. But at any rate, there it is now, a precious "heir "-loom, kept in a box of gold and crystal, in which small holes have been bored for the purpose of admitting water to float the blessed hair, which is done at an annual festival when the faithful from all parts are gathered together.

There is no human feature that has been more the subject of the changing humours of fashion than the beard, and the historian would assuredly have his work cut out for him-occasionally in a double sense-who should seek to follow its The early vagaries down the ages.

fathers of the Church of course approved of it, and most of them wore it. Father Clement of Alexandria has it that "nature adorned man like the lion with a beard as the index of strength and empire;" and an early Council enacted that "a clergyman shall not cherish his hair nor shave his beard." St. Augustine is figured with a beard, when he comes to make Christians of our ancestors in the sixth century. But men were not long in beginning to be proud of their fine beards, and pride in a

patible with a hairy face, and so popes, cardinals, and priests came to be subjected to the Turk's insulting comparison of the plucked pigeon. Now and again a manly fellow, like Cardinal Pole and Pope Julius II. rebelled. When the latter ascended the Papal throne in 1503, he at once intimated that he would allow his beard to grow "in order to inspire the greater respect among the faithful." The monuments of Roger, Bishop of Sarum, and Andrew, Abbot of Peterborough, show that bishops wore the beard, and abbots and monks shaved in the time of Richard the Lionhearted, who was himself bearded like a lion. Most of the reformers were bearded, John Knox outstripping them all in the patriarchal dimensions of his chin covering. Luther confined himself to a moustache, but Luther, as we have seen, had original ideas regarding the connection of sin and shaving. By and by his plan came

H. Everhard Cratz, 1648. N. G. Raigersburg, 1649. (T beard.)

to be followed somewhat extensively in Germany. There is a Luther pentameter running, "Sigismund commanding, the long beard perished in 1564," the explanation of which is that Archbishop Sigismund in the year named, introduced into Magdeburg the custom of shaving off the full beard and wearing instead a moustache.

Among European nations the want of a beard has usually been a reproach; and the enemies of Njal in ancient Iceland could say nothing worse of him than

that he was beardless. Even a sham beard was considered better than no beard, as when Mehemet Ali bought beards for his Egyptian grenadiers that they might more closely resemble the European model. One author gravely contends that all the leading races of men who have stamped their character on history were furnished with an abundant cheek-covering that, in fact, their hardiest efforts were contemporaneous with the existence of their beards. But this is stretching the beard a little too far. If there were anything in the theory the Turk would have to be extolled as 66 a mighty man of valour." No one has honoured the beard more than he. He holds it to be the noblest ornament of the male sex, and considers it more infamous for a man to have his beard cut off than to be publicly whipped or pilloried. With him a man's testimony used to be so much measured by his beard that in hiring a witness the length of this appendage was made an important con

Cardinal Borromeo, died 1631, Gustavus Adolphus, died 1611, wore a double-tufted beard. and Philip, Earl of Pembroke, died 1650.

never

sideration. The Turkish wife shows her affection for her husband by kissing his beard; when friends meet they salute beards instead of shaking hands; and a form of blessing common as any is, "May God preserve your beard." But all this has not improved the Turk's position among the nations: nay, it is even possible that his beard may have formed a convenient handle for his enemies. One wiseacre of a Sultan wore a smooth chin because his councillors should 66 lead him by the beard as they had done his forefathers" (he must have forgotten that he could still be led by the nose); and Plutarch is probably veracious enough when he tells of a Macedonian conqueror who ordered his soldiers to shave so that their beards should not afford a handle to their enemies. The Greek sword was short, and if the beard was long it would assuredly put a certain advantage on the side of one of the combatants, as indeed we may see from a cartoon of Raphael's, where a warrior is represented as cutting down his antagonist whom he has seized by the beard. Of course we manage things better nowadays, and any one who

should endeavour to get at a modern warrior's beard would inevitably find himself a dead man before he had touched a hair.

This theory of the superiority of the bearded races would hardly have gone down with Schopenhauer. That fine pessimist philosopher knew no such thing as toleration in the matter of beards, his idea being that they put a man's masculinity into greater prominence than his humanity. In all highly-civilised times and countries, so he argued, the shaving of the beard has betokened the desire of men to distinguish themselves from the lower animals; and he even went the length of saying that beards should be forbidden by the police. It was a terrible fulmination truly, but is there one "bearded barbarian" the less for it all?

Liotard.

The king's beard has always been an important affair, not only as regulating the fashion, but in matters of graver import. In the Middle Ages there was a curious custom of embedding three hairs of the royal beard in the wax of the seal in order to give greater solemnity to a document. Sometimes the chin-scrapers cite the ladies as objecting to the hirsute covering, but however this may be now it was not the case in former times. Beatrice, we know, thought that a man without a beard is only fit to be "a waiting gentlewoman"; and the elder Disraeli tells us very explicitly that when the fair sex were accustomed to see their lovers with beards the appearance of a shaved chin excited feelings of "horror and aversion." There was a certain painter named Liotard, who lived in the reign of George I. He had been travelling in the East-probably he "tarried at Jericho" for a time-and came back with

a cheek-covering that fairly captivated the ladies. He surrendered to one of the charmers, but alas ! just after the wedding he got hold of his razors and in the secret of his chamber ruthlessly rooted out the fine martial growth on his cheeks. It was a fatal act. "Directly his wife saw him, the charm of that ideal which every

true

lover was

woman forms of her

broken; for instead of a dignified manly countenance, her eyes fell upon a small pinched face,

'And such a little perking chin

To kiss it seemed almost a sin!""

But abstention from osculation is but a trifling matter after all, as Louis VII. of France would probably have admitted. When that monarch, yielding to the injunctions of his bishops, cropped his hair and shaved his beard, his good Queen, Eleanor, conceived such a dislike to him that she revenged herself to the extent of providing her husband with the title to a divorce. The divorce was obtained and Eleanor became the wife of Henry Duke of Normandy, afterwards Henry II. of England. On this marriage rested the English claim to Guienne and Poitou, a claim which caused the long and bloody wars between the two nations, and all because the French King had been so rash as to part with his beard.