The Ape and the Goat...

THE following Lecture, the first I believe on the specific subject, met with a warm reception from a numerous and good-humoured auditory; and received long and flattering notices from the local papers, “the Ipswich Journal,” and “the Suffolk Chronicle.” My enterprising and liberal publisher, has thought it worthy of more extended circulation. May the public think with him, and take it off his hands as freely as he has taken it off mine! I have modified the passages which referred to the illustra

OUR most universal and most imaginative Poet, whose single lines are often abstracts and epitomes of poems, makes Hamlet exclaim—“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!” And yet this same glorious creature, thus worthily praised, is, with singular contradiction, so forgetful of his higher attributes, t

A QUAINT old Latin author asks, “What is a Beard? Hair? and what is Hair? a Beard?” Perhaps a Beard may be defined more clearly by stating, 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.

NOT only was the Beard intended to serve the important purposes just described; but, combining beauty with utility, to impart manly grace and free finish to the male face. To its picturesqueness Poets and Painters, the most competent judges, have borne universal testimony. It is indeed impossible to view a series of bearded portraits, however indifferently executed, without feeling that they possess dignity, gravity, freedom, vigour, and completeness; while in looking on a row of razored faces,

HAVING seen that the Beard is a natural feature of the male face, and that the Creator intended it for distinction, protection, and ornament, let us turn lightly over the pages of history and examine the estimation in which it has been held at various times among the leading people, ancient and modern. The first nation which suggests itself is the Egyptian, and very peculiar forms of Beard were assigned by them on their monuments to their gods, kings, and common people. That of the gods is curle

Such was the practice of the Egyptians; and it is highly important to take the Jews next, because at the period of our first knowledge of them as a people, they appear in bondage to the former nation; and it is now generally believed that most of the usages established by Moses had more or less reference to Egyptian customs, from which he was desirous of weaning them. As might be expected from the inspired Lawgiver, whose sublime books start with the grand assertion, that man was made “in the ex

The Assyrians and Babylonians, as we know from the researches and discoveries of Layard and others, wore highly ornamental Beards, in which they were followed by the ancient Persians, and the bands appearing on them were of gold....

The ancient Arabs, like their kindred, the Jews, were Bearded, and like them also they have preserved their Beards intact, though their faith has more than once changed. From Mahomet’s time we may class them for our purpose with the Turks and Persians, since all have manifested the same respect for the Beard, looking upon it as the perfection and completion of man’s countenance and the type of freedom; and shaving as a mark of debasement and slavery. [5] Mahomet, who sanctioned dyeing the Beard,

The ancient Greeks were world-famous for their Beards. All Homer’s heroes are bearded, and Nestor the Sage is described as stroking his as a graceful prelusion to an oration. Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, are represented with Beards. Apollo is without, as an emblem of perpetual youth. Hercules and the demigods are also well furnished. And Æsculapius the God of Health,—significant fact!—is most abundantly endowed. The mother of Achilles, when supplicating Jupiter, touche

The Etruscans represented their gods with Beards, and wore them themselves; as did the Romans. Every schoolboy recollects the awe inspired to the invading Gauls when, on entering the Senate-house, they saw the conscript Fathers sitting calm and immovable as the gods, for which the Barbarians at first view took them, till one bolder than the rest plucked at the Beard of the noble Marcus Papirius, who by indignantly raising his staff, unconsciously gave the signal for the murder of himself, and hi

A BRIEF glance at Ecclesiastical History will furnish one or two interesting matters. Most of the Fathers of the Church both wore and approved of the Beard. Clement, of Alexandria, says, “nature adorned man like the lion, with a Beard, as the index of strength and empire.” Lactantius, Theodoret, St. Augustine, and St. Cyprian, are all eloquent in praise of this natural feature: about which many discussions were raised in the early ages of the Church, when matters of discipline necessarily engage

THE Britons “like their neighbours the Gauls” [16] (two of whose heads were shewn copied from Roman monuments,) were Bearded, though, probably, for some purpose of distinction, their Chiefs, as stated by Cæsar and others, had merely an enormous twisted moustache. The Druids and their successors, the native British Clergy, regarded this natural covering as adding to their dignity and gracing their office and their age. [17]...

The Anglo-Saxons brought their Beards with them which they preferred of the forked shape, and this again might be either two-pronged, or three-pronged, or plutonian and neptunian. St. Augustine is figured with his Beard on his appearance to convert these Islands in the sixth century. His followers must soon have shaved, because a writer of the seventh century, complains that “the Clergy had grown so corrupt as to be distinguished from the Laity less by their actions than by their want of Beards.