NOTES HISTORICAL, ÆSTHETICAL, ETHNOLOGICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, ANECDOTAL, AND TONSORIAL, ON THE HAIR & BEARD. LONDON: READ & Co., 10, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET ST. Entered at Stationers’ Hall. (THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION IS RESERVED.)...

CHAPTER I. Although much time and attention are usually bestowed in dressing and ornamenting the hair, in compliance with the dictates of fashion, but little regard is paid to the natural beauty of the hair itself, as contributing to the expression and comeliness of the features. The absurdities and caprices of fashion have been constant themes for ridicule and declamation with the wits of all ages. The sharp epigrams of Martial, the satires of Juvenal, the anathemas of the Romish ecclesiastics,

CHAPTER II. The fashion of ornamenting the hair is an universal vanity, probably as old as the creation; for the earliest records and antiquities introduce us to the mysteries of wigs and beard cases, and such evident and lavish displays of tonsorial art, as remind one more of the skilful artist than the first rude essays of the craft. It has been suggested by a writer in the Quarterly Review that we are indebted to Eve herself for the first principles of the art, and that probably by the reflec

CHAPTER III. We will now conduct the reader, who has condescended to accompany us thus far, through the succeeding centuries and complete our illustrations of the fashion of bygone times. Cæsar describes the Britons as having long flowing hair, and a beard on the upper lip only. A bust in the British Museum, one of the Townley marbles, supposed by some to represent Caractacus, may be taken as a good example of the fashion of hair worn by the British chieftains. The hair is parted along the crown

CHAPTER IV The introduction of the ample perriwig has always been regarded as the most ambitious effort of tonsorial art. And as it rarely happens that any one mind is capable of perfecting a discovery by a single effort; so the honour of conceiving the beau ideal of a fully-developed wig can scarcely, with justice, be claimed by any particular artist. Like the Absolutism, of which it may be regarded as the symbol, it was the growth of time, and expanded to its fullest dimensions under the favou

CHAPTER V. Barbers, by common consent, enjoy a most enviable reputation. Both in fact and fiction they are the representatives of shrewdness and good nature; and in some of the choicest literature extant, the sayings and doings of the brethren of the craft are among the best of their kind. It would be a dull world without Figaro. The barber’s shop was for centuries the emporium of gossip, the idler’s club; and when the young Roman wished to meet with a rake as pleasure-loving as himself, he soug

CHAPTER VI. In olden time, the hair was said to be produced by “a vapour or excrement of the brain.” In the more exact language of science it is described as a horny appendage of the skin. The skin is shown to be composed of two layers—the outer termed the cuticle, the inner the cutis. The cuticle is an insensible transparent membrane covering the whole surface of the body; the portion exposed to the air consists of flattened cells or scales which are continually being renewed; while on the inne