ON BEARDS.

NUMBER ONE.

"LORD Worshipp'd might He be! what a beard thou hast got!'

His beard grew thin and hungerly, and seem'd to ask him sops as he was drinking!" - WHY should a man whose blood is warm within sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster? -WITH beard of formal cut.'

SHALSPIRE.

I REMEMBER that Stuart the artist-of course I mean Gilbert STUART, to whose facile pencil so many of us are indebted for the living portraits of our dead fathers; and some of my readers (those happy post-nati!) for the portraits of their grandfathers-well, Stuart, having been commissioned to perpetuate the effigy of an honoured and distinguished merchant of New-York, chose to represent him in a contemplative mood, dwelling in his interiour mind, and grasping unconsciously, with his right hand, the right-hand-lapélle of his coat.

The friends of the Gentleman called on the artist to remonstrate against the untoward posture he had thus assumed. Stuart would hardly listen to them, and gave free vent, as was his wont, to his impetuous humour: Does not the man stand so, half the time,' said he, when he is thinking of his ships and cargoes and planning his future voyages and combinations? I will not alter a touch of the brush! Every one has his own proper attitude, his own proper physical developement of mind, and when I have caught it, I make use of it as an additional feature to the face! But, Gentlemen, do not take the picture! No man loves and honours WILLIAM CONSTABLE better than myself! I will hang the portrait in my chamber, and so help me as I alter one touch of the brush! Not one touch! no! never! no! no! It is the man himself; and, what is more, there is Stuart in every line and shade of it!'

Mr. Liston, the British minister, afterwards Sir Robert Liston; the scholar, the christian, and (which embraces both) the GENTLEMAN – being one of the party, advanced, and in his courtly and I will say his precious manner observed, Mr. Stuart, you have convinced me that you are entirely in the right; and that I, at least, have been entirely in the wrong; but do you know that you have struck me very forcibly by the remark, that every man has some one posture or attitude peculiar to himself-the idea is quite new to me; is that really your fixed opinion?'

Stuart, quieted by this assuasive gentleness from such a person, answered, So far as my observation has extended, may it please your Excellency, I shall certainly answer in the affirmative.

'You and I are old friends, you know,' said the minister, and in the presence of such an observer as yourself I suppose nothing could have

escaped-may I ask if you have ever noticed any such mannerism or peculiarity of attitude in-myself, for example?'

Surely,' said Stuart; and if I were to paint your Excellency tomorrow-and I could not luxuriate in a subject more to my fancy, and to my heart-I should certainly sketch you with the fore-finger of your right hand resting upon the little-finger of the left.

Mr. Liston looked down upon his hands at the moment, and found them to his surprise in the position that Stuart had indicated. Bless me!' said he, how far it was from my thoughts that I could ever have been supposed guilty of such an inexcusable gaucherie!

It is not such, permit me to say it,' replied the great painter; it is the spirit speaking in dumb shew! and it is the province of the true artist to watch, to study, and to record these its manifestations!'

Now then for BEARDS!-BEARDS are these additional features of the face, these manifestations of character, each chosen by the individual himself, that the bearded part of the community of this metropolitan City of New-York have selected for the amusement of its unpretending citizens. Chosen at this moment, my masters, when wars and tumults of war have subsided before the Smile of the GoD of peace, and the round Globe itself is performing its graceful orbit in a hymn of Joy!

Now, when our noble-hearted and conquering soldiers and naval officers have returned to the garb and aspect of the civilian and the private Gentleman, charming us with their unaffected, gentle, unassuming manners and appearance, God bless them!-an entirely different class of persons are parading up and down Broadway with imminent danger to the domestick hopes of the quiet fathers or would-befathers of the city; greasy Citizens, bearded like pards, or rather like brushes; or sitting down perchance to their boarding-house dinner-tables, and staring upon a loin of veal, or a mutton-cutlet, with a singular and most-uncalled-for ferocity of countenance toward these reliques of their late relations: imitating, quite unnecessarily as I cannot but think, the appearance of the dying Cataline in the spirited description of the historian, where he says 'ferociamque animi, quam habuerit vivus, in vultu retinens.'

I would not object-I could not have the heart to object-to the soft silky well trained moustache of one of our leisurely lads who has nothing else in the world to do but attend to his toilette, and spend gracefully the money that his father acquired, and perhaps went to the devil for. These are not the creatures of whom Beatrice in the play says, 'Lord! I could not endure a husband with a beard upon his face!'-and I might well admire a pair of moustaches like those of the late renowned Mehmet Ali Pasha of Egypt, that were taught to grow upward, diminishing in volume, until the fine master-hairs of the ends mingled with the long lashes of his brilliant eyes; and that when he was transported with rage or engaged in battle coiled themselves up around his mouth like snakes, all animate with individual life, to relax and then to dart backward to their former position as soon as he had pronounced a sentence of death, or had inflicted with his own resistless scimitar the coup de grace upon some deadly foe.

There is a propriety, a certain keeping in all this, that the beholder would not otherwise than enjoy-but to see our yard-wide men, who in their youth have never imagined a beard at full length except upon a maniac or a religious enthusiast, or Abraham in the Primer dismissing Hagar, coming forth, in this community of sober merchants, with their strait, stiff, red, or pepper-and-salt bristles, occupying the thoughts of peaceful men and disgusting ad nauseam those of a more refined class, is an enormity no longer to be endured in silence.

There is a fellow that it is my mischance to be acquainted with, with a form of body carved out of a cheeseparing after dinner, who wears a red stiff brush at the extremity of his chin, of the very hue and wirey consistency of the beard of Judas Iscariot, as he is represented to the life by the old masters of Italy! It is impossible to look at him, and at his eyes which are also red, without thinking at once of 'treasons, stratagems, and spoils!' Do you know that this animal, who ought never, under any circumstances, to have lived elsewhere for à moment than in the solitude of a crowd; where he might hope by the uniformity of his equipment to escape observation; or else in some darker place of concealment could you believe that he wears it, (this badge!) because without it he is hardly satisfied,' he says, with the profile of his chin?

A tall pepper-and-salt bearded man, thin as a lath, (for nature in gratifying him with a redundant commodity of hair had done all that she intended to do for him,) ran awkwardly the other day against the stove-pipe of a sprightly servant boy, who, setting the M. P.'s at defiance, was cleaning the pipe upon the side-walk. Halloo! mind what you are about!' exclaimed the lad. Then looking up at the aggressor, and examining him with an arch and kindling eye, added, Do that again, if you dare! If you do, I'll use you to clean out my stovepipe you are just the instrument I was looking for!'

I must close my Essay; for I find myself subsiding into too cheerful a strain of mind for the effectual discussion of so serious a grievance; a nuisance Mr. EDITOR, a crying nuisance, from which our very pulpits are not wholly exempt! I forbear at this time to say more. I had intended as might be inferred from my motto to have written of the thin and hungerly beards; and the stray hairs, that like only children excite the unlimited affection of their possessors. But I refrain, my dear Sir, I refrain until some less good-humored moment.

Let the Ladies, the fountains of joy, the stars of civilization, let the LADIES take the matter up. I will not ask them to 'set their faces against it, as that would be the surest way of eternal perpetuation. But I would conjure them to decree, that no man in these piping times of peace shall be admitted to their bright society, from this day henceforth, who shall hereafter wear any thing beyond a well-trimmed whisker; or the dark, the soft, the silky moustache of seventeen to twentyfour; or the animated and self-existent ornament and illustration of the visage of the renowned Pacha of Egypt.

JOHN WATERS.

*THESE Letters, (of far higher significancy and importance in Great Britain,) in New-York are employed as the distinctive indication of the Municipal Police.

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE EAST: Sketches of Travel in Egypt and the Holy Land. By the Rev. J. A. SPENCER, M. A. Elegantly Illustrated from Original Drawings. In one volume. New-York: GEORGE P. PUTNAM. London: JOHN MURRAY.

HERE is a sensible and entertaining traveller, who has wisely given the 'go-by' to disquisitions on antiquity, history, chronology, and critical dissertations on science in its various relations to Egyptian or Hebraistic lore. The letters in the volume before us were written as they profess to be, and at the time when they are dated, while yet the impressions which they describe were fresh in the mind of the writer; and they were addressed, in all the familiarity of private correspondence, 'to one at home dearer to him than all else in the wide world, and had most of all in view her interest and pleasure.' Mr. SPENCER did not misjudge in believing that many a reader would love to hear of those sacred regions where our LORD walked in the days of His flesh, and to learn how full of Scripture is the Holy Land at the present day. On this point we cannot forbear quoting, in this connection, an eloquent passage from a review of WILKES'' Narrative of the Dead Sea Expedition' in the last issue of our friend Rev. H. B. BASCOM's Quarterly Review of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South :'

"WHAT though the ancient outward show and grandeur of Palestine have departed? What though the chosen tribes, ejected from their homes, wander, a hissing and a by-word,' among the nations of the earth? What though Jerusalem, that name so full of inspiration, is inhabited and oppressed by the Arab savage and the heartless Ottoman, and the mosque of Omar crowns the summit of the mount where ABRAHAM offered up his only son, and the gorgeous temple lifted its splendid dome amid the serene intensity of oriental skies? What though, beneath its sacred palms, the fanatic Moslem pores over the pages of his Koran, chants his prayers, or meditates upon the Paradise of his prophet? What though, amid the surrounding desolation and wretchedness, the traveller looks in vain for a single object which can remind him of the splendor and magnificence of the Hebrew kings? What though the frown of JEHOVAH seems to spread a pall of gloom over all its hills and valleys? Yet is there not a halo of glory encircling every mount, and sacred memories hovering over every valley and plain; a spirit that moves amid the storms of the mountain and the mists of river and sea; a voice from its groves and its grottoes, which tells, now in exulting, now in sad and mournful tones, of the splendor and the beauty of other years, when all this land was even as the garden of the LORD.' Though the temples and palaces and walls and monuments of former years have vanished, like the mists of morning, yet here is spread forth the same plain which glowed in the light of the advent; here are found the localities that witnessed the coming, the wonders, the life, the death of the world's REDEEMER; here are the summits where he taught, where he died, and from whence he ascended; here rolls the same sea whose billows crouched in meek submission at his feet, and in its depths are reflected the same stars which then, as now, looked from their quiet thrones upon the departing storm. Here Jordan glides, with his limpid waters and beautiful cascades, the same as when he was baptized by the prophet and acknowledged by the SPIRIT. Here is the mount where Moses and ELIAS appeared with him, and the Divinity within shone so resplendently through the thin veil of humanity! There is an indescribable feeling of awe and wonder in the consideration of these scenes, stealing over the heart, like a breeze over a wind-harp, awakening music sad and mournful. The glory with which the art of man once invested this land has met the fate which its origin rendered probable, perhaps necessitated; but the moral glory with which the hand of JEHOVAH has invested it shall linger while its waters roll or its mountains tower.'

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Of these and kindred scenes our author has given very clear and striking descriptions; which, taken in connection with the numerous illustrations, from the pencil of an accomplished artist, cannot fail to afford to every reader a vivid picture of the Holy Land. The work is dedicated, in a neat and appropriate tribute, to Hon. ZADOCK PRATT, President of the Mechanics' Institute, New-York, as a slight testimonial of grateful recollections of more than a year spent in travel with his son,' Mr. GEORGE W. PRATT, a young gentleman of fine gifts and acquirements, among which an aptness and capacity for oriental studies are deemed by the author peculiarly prominent. The volume which we have thus too hastily noticed cannot well fail to find wide and marked favor with the public.

TURKISH EVENING ENTERTAINMENTS: The Wonders of Remarkable Incidents and the Rarities of Anecdotes. By AHMED IBN HEMDEM THE KETKHODA, called SOHAILEE. Translated from the Turkish by JOHN P. BROWN, Esq., Dragoman of the United States' Legation at Constantinople. In one volume. New-York: GEORGE P. PUTNAM. London: American Agency,' Bow-Lane, Cheapside.

It would be a work of supererogation to commend the execution of the translation of this various and entertaining volume to the readers of the KNICKERBOCKER. The gentleman to whom we are indebted for the work has been for many years the 'Oriental Correspondent' of this Magazine; and both in his original sketches of life and scenery in the East, and in various translations from the literatures of the Orient, he has proved himself one of the most popular and most widely-read among all our foreign contributors. The present work, so pleasantly rendered by our correspondent, the celebrated orientalist, Baron VON HAMMER, pronounces to be by far the most interesting book that has been published at Constantinople. It cannot fail to amuse the general reader by its agreeable and entertaining representation of oriental society, sentiments and manners. The translator does not challenge the criticism of the orientalist by a scrupulous technical accuracy of rendering, although he has ‘aimed ever to preserve it as much like the original as possible.' If indeed it be 'only a promise of better things in future,' it will, while securing for itself popularity, pave the way for a ready reception of its successors. 'I have here collected,' says the Turkish editor, in characteristically 'effulgent' phrase,' these pearls from the seas of authentic works, and these sparkling jewels from the mines of celebrated authors, in which are folded and contained the histories of the ancients, with the accounts of the best of the learned and the philosophers. I have selected its contents from the most remarkable events and the strangest occurrences, and have spent the capital of my life in acquiring the valuable and choice extracts found in it. I translated them from the Arabic and Persian tongues, wrought them into a new form, and gave them new light and expression in the Turkish idiom; giving to my book the title of 'Remarkable Events and Strange Occurrences.' In this work I have particularly attached myself to collecting such tales and narratives as are authentic and instructive, and at the same time, more or less curious; so that their moral application will be seen by every one.' Professor SALISBURY, of Yale College, the American editor, pays a just tribute of praise to the American publisher for issuing at his own expense the first work ever introduced to readers in the United States directly from the East. The volume is characterized by the uniform typographical neatness of the works from the press of our 'American MURRAY.'