tles of edifying propriety, grave, temperate, fair gardens, his incomparable rarities of art, and modest, with less hyperbole, and even less his books, and his labors, and all his delightslightness of tone, than Evelyn's own. The goes forth, and is no more. contemporaries seem to change character in Charles, who looks as if he might have been their correspondence; it is the patrician who a heroic king, had he but had the fate to now condescends to playful self-disclosure, be a true one; Oliver, born in the purple, whereas the Samuel of the Diary with all his a man to whom empire and rule were a nawicked vanities, his levity, and self-indulgence, tural heritage; Charles II., poor vicious soul, is lost in the decorous Mr. Pepys, so conscien- whose name it is best to speak softly, and forget; tious as to give up his appointments on the James, unwise and limited, a natural-born serabdication of his royal patron, so learned in vant, not a king; William, who is an instituall the arts and sciences as to qualify him tion, and no person; and lastly, good roundfor the President's place among the philoso- about Queen Anne-all except the last come to phers of the Royal Society, altogether a no- the culmination and conclusion of their reign table and famous man. His old peering cu- and fate during the two contemporary lives riosity, dignified into philosophical research, whose course we have followed. A great resets about inquiries touching the second-sight, bellion-an unnatural usurpation-a happy on which subject there are various letters from restoration-a glorious revolution follow each Lord Reay, and one from no less a name other in these eventful years, and liberties than Clarendon, son of the chancellor, and and crowns lost, gained, and bartered, crowd uncle to the queen, and curious mathemati- upon the pages of history with almost unexcal questions, wherein he has a correspond- ampled speed. History, following Sir Walent no less illustrious than Sir Isaac New-ter's famous prescription, can but make "a ton. With Evelyn, Pepys boasts a frequent great stour" of it all, with here the sworded and most complimentary correspondence; nor arm of Cromwell, and there the austere and does he want the respectful salutations of self-contained figure of William, subduing the learned university doctors, and other mag- vexed and fiery elements; and we are fain to nates of the times; and in his learned lei- turn aside to the lower range of atmosphere, sure at Clapham, a patron of the arts, a be- the homely domestic firmament, which may nefactor of Alma Mater, a notable virtuoso indeed catch a frequent stain and cloud from in his own person, we look with much bewil- those flying thundery vapors, but is still the derment for our ancient friend Samuel, with unchangeable human sky, with its sunrise and his twinkling merry eyes and wicked wishes, its nightfall constant as our own. How the his simple honest vanity, and all his unveiled common life goes on through all the paroxdevices, for good and for evil. Perhaps he is ysms of national existence, how the mightiest only another specimen of the moderating ef- crisis of an empire fails to overset the natufects of old age-perhaps only a shining ex-ral balance of a working-day, how tables are emplar of the facility with which a man can spread and houses erected in spite of wars disguise himself from the observation of his and rumors of wars, how hearts are deeper fellows. Whatever the cause is, Pepys dies touched with the old primitive emotions of at last, full of honors-honors which he might nature than with all the politics of kingdoms have kept for ever, to the edification of pos--is a lesson of singular interest; and nothing terity, but for those guilty volumes in the Pe- can show it more plainly than do the books pysian library, which betray the respectable and the personages before us. Public personSamuel. If Samuel could but have foreseen that ages, good posterity, but human men-living John Smith, illustrious name! hidden afar in their own immediate days one by one, without the profound depths of time and nature, who much thought of your opinion of them, and was destined to bring the hidden record of being no more influenced than they could all his evil ways to light! help by the convulsions of their time. To us With his own decorous and dignified hand who can sit by, and look on, well-bred spectaEvelyn brings his record to a close. A sad tors of a distant battle-growing mightily im record it comes to be in these last years. Au- patient in the mean time, that no battle is tumn and coming winter are darkening over made for our entertainment--it is rather diffithe wood; the leaves and the fruit fall heavily cult to realize the small discomposure which a graveward; one and another passes before battle close at hand gives to the accustomed him into the other country, and solemnly come nerves of the seventeenth century; but it is these birthdays, silent remembrancers of his well to know how soon the grass grew again own approaching end. So the old man sets over the devastated field, how quickly the his house in order, commits himself to God, mounds of the slain were mantled over with and begins to be "exceeding ill, his indispo- the reverent veil of nature, and how little the sition increasing ;" and, thus devout and well daily routine and household use and wont appointed, the master of Wotton goes forth could be disturbed. Nothing among us threatupon his last journey, takes farewell of his ens the return of such a time as that which produced John Evelyn and Samuel Pepy's: which come from this fact, that we do not as a the day is over, and may not come back again; nation rush into the vortex of a great event in but this stout old British land, a sturdy liver, public tumult and frenzy, but that every Briwhich managed to breathe throughout all that tish citizen and member of the commonweal tempest, is hale and strong for many a tem- has his private life as well, and lives it thorpest more; and it would not be, easy to over-oughly, let public commotions fare as they calculate the national strength and equipoise may. From the Westminster Review. be permitted liberty of conscience. So that we neither advocate nor do we oppose its adoption; knowing, however, that after the custom so long, it is difficult to sketch its history (however meagrely) without appearing as its advocate. 1. The Human Hair popularly and physiologi-heavy hand of exclusion has rested on the cally considered, etc. By Alexander Rowland. Piper Brothers & Co. 1853. 2. The Philosophy of Beards. A Lecture. By T. S. Gowing. Ipswich. 3. The Beard. Why do we cut it off? David. London: Bosworth. 1854. By It may be remarked that the beard is at present in what we must venture to call an unnatural position in Europe. Once, the symbol of patriarch and king (and so of the WHEN Erasmus, nearly three centuries and highest kind of order) it is now, it would seem, a half ago, published his "Encomium Moria," that of revolution, democracy, and dissatisfac he thought it necessary to remark, that sports tion with existing institutions. Conservatism were allowable in literature as well as in other and respectability (and after them, plausibility departments of life; and that if he did praise and its companions) shave close. The mus Folly, he did not praise it like a fool. What tachio enjoys military honor, indeed. But the Erasmus condescended to do, modern littéra- beard itself is from sea to sca in disfavor with teurs may well not be ashamed of; and there- power and order. It is hated at once by the fore, if we choose to make a few remarks on King of Naples, and by. Mrs. Grundy. In such a subject as the agitation for the restora- England, too, public opinion (which compention of Beards and Moustachios to their his- sates with us for the smallness of our standing toric position on the English countenance, we army) is perhaps harder on the beard than it hope we shall not incur the imputation of an is anywhere else. All kinds of offices disundue levity. But, indeed, so far from the courage or prohibit it; only a few travellers, beard's requiring an apology in this way,-it artists, men of letters and philosophers wear would not be difficult to show that in every it, and to adopt it places you under the image it has had a philosophical relation to insti-putation of Arianism or dissipation, or sometutions. Thus, once it was a symbol of patri- thing as terrible, with the respectable classes. archal majesty; next, of general manliness; Yet this opposition proves unable to stem the then, of devotion to speculative pursuits. It rising agitation. Pamphlets accumulate on has risen and fallen as empires have risen and the question; and the curiosity about it has fallen. And its being an object of so much reached that degree of liveliness which authocontest and dispute just now, is profoundly rizes us to pronounce it a movement. natural. For what tradition or establishment Of the importance of the beard, in primæ is not pretty much in the same critical state? val periods, no doubt can exist; and enviable So that the more speculative of mankind are is the vision of the fathers of the world with beginning to inquire, in fact, whether the their hoary hair. "By the Jews," says an beard is "used-up" as an institution, and the antiquary, "it was esteemed a great dignity." demand for its revival merely an unhealthy" Ye shall not round the corners of your movement of the nature of romanticism; or heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of whether it has suffered an unjust exile during thy beard." So, it is said in Leviticus. And the last two centuries, and has a right to ex-with regard to priests, specially, it is there pect its recall to its ancient honors? Such prescribed: "They shall not make baldness being the case, a glance at its civil and literary upon their head, neither shall they shave off history may reasonably be expected in our review. We premise distinctly, that we are totally without prejudice in the matter. We approach the subject with the impartiality of Cicero's friends of the New Academy. All that we claim is freedom from tyranny on the one side and on the other; that he who wears a beard, and he who rejects it, may equally *"A Preston firm has hinted to its young men, in the most polite terms, that they are not to wear the moustachio-they are 'requested' not to wear it during business hours."-Spectator, March 18, 1854. Was this spark of humor unconsciously struck out of the flinty capitalist? Or is the an ecdote too good to be true? chio." By John Adey Repton, F.S.A. the corner of their beard." The dignity so wont to speak of their ancestors as "bearded," preserved, was no doubt part of that general when they praised them. It would seem, then, dignity of age, which is to be reverenced. that the most patriotic Romans of the shaven "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, period (to waive any mention of the barbula and honor the face of the old man." (Leviti- or goatee, of which, presently!) looked back cus xix. 32.) The natural feeling of early with a certain tenderness and reverence to periods seems to be in favor of it as an object the beards of their progenitors; as if there of dignity; and the imagination does not toler- were something naturally worshipful in those ate the thought of a patriarch or prophet with objects. a razor in his hand. Thus, with the classics: The heart of the matter (as Mr. Carlyle -the gods were bearded. So, with early would say) is thus expressed by Becker in his England. When Gray would depict the ex-"Charicles," where he lays it down, that "the treme misery of his bard, he says— but beard was not looked on as a troublesome "On his white beard, and form majestic gazed- the beard's honor. Not unrelenting" It appears to be generally agreed that shav ing was introduced into Greece in Alexander much of that reverence must have been owing the Great's time. It is said that "that prince to the venerable appendage; which, also, was ordered the Macedonians to be shaved, lest worn by the chiefs, by Agamemnon and Ulys- the beard should afford a handle to their enesees. First of all, then, what we may call a mies." Here, we might observe, that the beard-tradition descended from the heroic beard saw the best days of Greece; as it did period, and thus it was, that in ages when the purest days of Rome. But leaving the shaving had become established as a custom, reader to his own reflections on that coincimen still spoke of the "bearded ones," their dence, we will transcribe for popular perusal ancestors, with a peculiar emphasis. When from Mr. Bohn's " Athenæus" just published, Cicero is lashing the affected gravity and the passage testifying to this fact-the orthoseverity of the infamous Piso, he tells you, dox passage to quote in support of it, which that you would have thought you were look-commentator hands to commentator, from ing at aliquem ex barbatis illis, exemplum generation to generation. 66 veteris imperii, imaginem antiquitatis." There "And this custom of shaving the beard is a similar allusion to the terrible barbæ of originated in the age of Alexander, as Chrythe ancient statues and "imagines," in one sippus tells us in the fourth book of his treatise of the most charming of his minor speeches, on the Beautiful and on Pleasure. And I the Pro Calio. When Persius introduces think it will not be unseasonable if I quote Socrates in the fourth of his satires, he speaks what he says; for he is an author of whom I of him as the "barbatum magistrum," where- am very fond, on account of his great learnupon, Casaubon, his most distinguished com- ing and his gentle, good humored disposition. mentator (he of the mighty learning, and the And this is the language of the philosopher:: twenty children) remarks that Persius so called him-"non, solum, quia barbam alebat Socrates," but also, because the Romans were DXXXIV. LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 20 * Liv. v. 41. † Encyc. Brit. Art. Beard. "The -The custom of shaving the beard was in- age. But it is a very noticeable feature that troduced in the time of Alexander, for the the philosophical world generally seems to people in earlier times did not practise it; have protested against the practice. and Timotheus, the flute-player, used to sophists" (says Becker, in the "Charicles,") play on the flute, having a very long beard." partly, at least, kept to the ancient fashion." And at Athens, they even now remember that We have heard the remark of Diogenes: the man who first shaved his chin, was given there are doubtless statues, even of philosothe name of Kópons;* on which account Alexis phers, without the beard; but that the beard sayswas part of the general "get-up" of a professed philosopher, is one of the best known facts about the social life of antiquity. A prolater fellows, (who unhappily brought at once fessed philosopher, and especially one of those philosophy, and the beard itself, into disgrace,) was no more complete without a beard, (generally a terrible one, such as that with which Virgil has endowed Charon,) than without a head. Do you see any man whose beard has been Or else he's some complaint of wealthy men. And Diogenes, when he saw some one once, whose chin was smooth, said, 'I am afraid you think you have great ground to accuse nature for having made you a man, and not a woman.'" + A supporter of the beard might plausibly maintain, that this fact came to be characteristic of the philosopher, because he stood for the absolutely and eternally fit and beautiful in the decay of national religions, and the corruption of national taste, he took his stand upon the eternal truths of nature, and witnessed for them against the decaying world. The line in italics, expresses a common What saith the golden-tongued Cicero (too popular notion about the beard, and which much neglected by the beard-shaving youth has survived generations of barbers, viz., that of this age)? He, writing of the formation it is a mark of manly potence to have a sturdy of the academic and peripatetic sects—says, one. Hence, we still hear old gentlemen "Ac primam illam partem, bene vivendi, a sneer at a "beardless boy," which surely has NATURA petebant.* Doubtless, then, it was an inconsistent sound, from individuals who in homage to nature, that philosophy retained daily labor to be beardless themselves. In the the beard; meaning to protest against mere same involuntary homage, we now talk of fashion and change; and likewise respecting "bearding" a foe, recognizing virtually the the antique tradition of purer and earlier peidea which yet we contemn in particular; and riods. But this insulting contempt of public testifying to the naturalness of the letting the opinion provoked reprisals. In proverb and beard grow. Taking the first stage in beard- in epigram, the ancient world retaliated. history to be the era of the heroic and patri- The comic writers (in all ages, a genial sort archal beard (when it is even a sanctified ob- of race, and hateful of all pretence to superior ject)—the second is the era when it is a sign virtue) embodied this retaliation in literature. of general manliness, when a πwywv Bavus in- It was openly urged, that the beard was the dicates a sturdy character. But a period only thing philosophical, about many a so-called comes, when the human race grows luxurious; philosopher! An epigram asserted, that if when it grows mechanical and commercial; the beard made the philosopher-the claim of the age of the hero is gone by; the position the goat to Platonic honors must not be overof the priest is becoming doubtful: the time looked! And the current proverb-“ The of the barber is at hand! Greece shaved, beard does not make the philosopher,”—reafter it had lost its liberty; Rome shaved-buked the haughtiness of miny a well-thatched but not, also, till comparatively late in its his- chin. tory; and here, as in so many other arts, No one can deny that a large class of soRome was an imitator. The first Roman ton-called "philosophers," were what we should sores came from Sicily, B. C. 300. This state-designate intolerable bores. They were at ment Pliny copies from Varro. The younger once the scandal of respectable, and the torAfricanus seems to have been the first Roman ture of intellectual circles. Ruffians of hidewho shaved every day, as we do: and Aulus ous aspect, dirty person, and mendicant imGellius speaks of his having read that this was done in middle life by the nobiles viros of that *From keiрw, to cut the hair. †The Deipnosophists, etc. Literally translated by C..D. Yonge, B. A. Bohn. portunity, eternally babbling of the summum bonum, and abusing a world desirous of paying its way in peace, infested the fair and potent cities of the ancient world. Horace tickled *Acad. Posterior, lib. i. c. 5. them; Martial peppered them; Juvenal flayed to allude to the "bearded" of old days, them. Scandal loved to hint, that the philo- brings in, by a side-wind, that he does not sophic cloak covered a multitude of offences, mean that "barbula," with which she is dedark as those which the stoics and cynics lighted, etc. But the regular "barba" was charged on the world. The Aretalogus, in not then worn, except in mourning, when the fact, was at once a bore and a reproach: sus- Romans let their hair and beard grow. No picious in his conduct, and contemptible in doubt, many a chin grew dark, when the his person, the public conscience yet felt that mourning for Cicero's exile began, among the there was a justice in his gibe, and thin- youth of Rome. Suetonius (in Julius Cæsar, skinned respectability shrank from his blister- c. 67), states that Cæsar let his beard grow, ing tongue. Often, indeed, he seems to have" auditâ Titurianâ clade,” and did not cut it combined in himself, cynic, pauper, libeller, off, till he had revenged himself. The same moralist, tuft-hunter, and diner-out. How curious and interesting writer supplies us with charmingly has Horace sketched the tribe; and with what fine humors does he pray the gods to endow Damasippus, in exchange for his wisdom, with a barber! Di te, Damasippo, deæque Verum ob consilium donent tonsore! It would seem that the boys even loved to have a tug at the stoic beard (Sat. i. 3), and Martial's contempt for Antiochus the barber, seems unable to prompt him to any deeper curse, than that he may have pauper, cynic, and stoic beards to trim Tondeat hic inopes Cynicos, et Stoica menta. other illustrations of our subject. He tells us, that Cæsar in an altercation, absolutely violated the beard of an Eastern prince (barbam invasit). He informs us that Augustus, too, let his beard and hair grow after the terrible Varian catastrophe; though in general, he resigned himself with indifference to his tonsors, to be clipped or shaven, and read during the operation. Further, he has preserved for all posterity the curious fact, (which so survives, when so much is hopelessly lost!) that when Nero dedicated his first beard (which was consecrated by the Roman youth, on a festal day), he inclosed the valuable offering in a golden box adorned with precious pearls, and consecrated it in the Capitol! The beard began to revive again in the Yet, it might be urged, that the wearing of time of the Emperor Hadrian. But of all the the beard by some questionable vagabonds emperors who wore that ornament, none crewho called themselves philosophers, was but a ates so much interest in posterity as the Emcorruption of the institution of Pogonotrophy? peror Julian. His beard is the most famous Are the monks of Erasmus's time held to have beard in history, and hangs up like the hair dishonored all ancient and pious monasticism? of Berenice, world-famous for ever. All EngDo we not still honor philosophy in spite of lishmen early learn to wonder over it, from the abuse that has been made of its name? the pages of Gibbon. The MISOPOGON, Shall the beard of Socrates be forgotten, be- which the Emperor wrote to confound the cause the cynic of a later period dishonored audacious rabble of Antioch, who had prethe ancient and honorable appendage? Let sumed to sneer at it—we, indeed, have only us distinguish, as Herodes Atticus (who was consulted in the version of the Abbe de la consul, A. D. 143) distinguished. The tale is Bleteria-(reserving a profounder study of in Aulus Gellius. A man of this questionable that famous piece for our maturer years)—yet school, “barbâ prope ad pubem usque porrec- a version which was of value to Gibbon, as he ta," came to him, begging, Being asked what tells us, is not to be pooh-poohed by an age he was, he replied, sharply, that he was a phi- like ours. What, then, are the facts? Let losopher, and wondered that the inquirer us suffer the Emperor to speak through the should ask. Admirable was the retort. "Vi-midium of the Abbé :— deo barbam et pallium; philosophum nondum "I commence with my countenance. It video." "I see the beard and cloak; the had nothing regular, or particularly agreeable philosopher I do not see!" As Herodes about it; and out of humor and whimsicality, would not suffer the fellow to do discredit to and just to punish it for not being handsome, the name of philosopher, so, let us not suffer I have made it ugly by carrying this long and him to injure the reputation of the beard. peopled beard." We have hinted at the barbula, or goatee. "Cette barbe longue et peupleé!" The In Cicero's times, the genuine beard was not Abbé refers the reader to his notes, and there worn by society. But the barbula seems to (having, as it were, got you up in a corner, have been affected by the young Roman where he can talk over the awful allusion, "swells; " as we see in the above-mentioned quietly), he relates how shocked his friends Pro Colio of the divine orator. He there ral- were at Julian's levity (for of course, he must lies Clodia with much humor, and happening be joking), and how they advised him to sup |
