The National Register.
London, England, 1812-04-19 00:00:00

APRIL 19.

necessity : in them the child reads the temper of his parent, whether he
is p!eased or angry; in them the wife places h...r hopes, wl.e❑ she wishes
far this or tha.. trinket, and waits with impv...ience for :lie sliding and
gently retiring motion of her husband's whisker's towards the ear, the
happy precursor of a smile, the long-wished token of consent; and the
sweat girl, whom cupid has lightly touched with the point of his dart,
never fancies the azure of tlre sky so pure, but when she spies it through
the Whiskers of her lover, a circumstance which generally happens when
she receives a modest kiis en 'dein air. _ _ _

To the eyes of a comm.,n observer, the noses and tails of all the
sheep, which the whole of Sanithfield contains on a Monday morning,
are exactly alike; hut the shep!lerd who fed them, the drover who led
them, the butcher who sped CI, 7.1, all perceive as great a difference
between the physiognomy of this and that lamb, or ewe, as was ever
noticed between the nose of the Poet Ovid, and that of the Historian
Gibbon. Therefore, as there is so much of discrepancy in faces, as all
sorts of prominencies give a distinctive character to physiognomy, and
as the fe.ttures are the mirror of the soul, (a principle generally ad-
mitted by all parties since the days of Socrates, down to Lavater) why
should we notstudy in Whiskers and Mustachios, the genius, the humour,
the turn of mind, the morals, and passions of man. They are naturally
and frequentlya proof of manliness, and are now so generally worn, that
they furbish every where fuod and amusement to the lively fancy of
an observer.

Then Dr. Wiskerandophilus proceeds to the First Grand Division;
Natural and Artifical Mustachios and Whiskers—" it has been held,"
says he, " as an indisputable notion, that the word Whiskers meant,
for a long lapse of centuries, a tuft of hair on the upper lip, an ornament,
which the lord of the creation, man, has the honour to share with
leopards, cats, monkeys, and mice."
We must confess, that with the latter, it is a mere affair of necessity,
a sine quci non, which help their blunt sense of smelling or seeing, as a
stick and a dog help a blind man along the road, but with the former
animal (the Doctor means, Man), it rises to a much higher dignity; it
soars abwe the vulgar and home-spun idea of use and utility; and
becomos a dignified ornament, as if the coarse stick of the blind was
admitted to the priviledge of ,swaggering and strutting in the lobbies of
Play-homes, with all sorts of fops imaginable, from the letter A, down
to the end of the Alphabet. However, since the Whisker, which was
then identically the same as the Itlustachio, assumed another shape, and
appeared on another part of the face, the Doctor has very properly,
and classically, distinguished one from the other; and as his Treatise is
written in Latin, has called the first Whiskera, and the second, accord-
ing to the old custom, Mustachia.
We must observe, bye the bye, that we have bad here, for a certain
lapse of time, a tremendous specimen of the latter order, named
Mustachia Baronali Gerambica ; it was imported from Hungary
through Spain, and seemed to have had a desire propense to thrive and
Fullulate in this country; but it became soon so troublesome r. seed,
tint our head-gardeners were obliged to root it entirely off, and to
send it, properly packed, where it originated from. This kind is also
hinted at by our great dramatic Bard in As Thu Like It, where he says :
It Then, a soldier ;
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,
Jealous of honour —"
And again— - -

" The justice,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut ;"
By these last words it appears that, in his time, Wit, Which now, (as
the Songster will have it) is in the Whig, had not yet migrated, and
resided still in the Whiskers and beard, as strength, in the case of Judge
Sampson was safely lodged in his hair.

(To be Continued.)

Baron Geramb is said to have written, before he embarked at Har-
stteb, a most furious and bombastic manifesto, proclaiming the injuries
Which he had received from the British Government, and threatening
the nation with his vengeance. He declares that he will throw himself
uPon the mercy of the great Napoleon, who, he is sure, will pardon
Inn for offering his services to this country; and he adds, that he will
make his wrongs resound from the batiks of the Seine to those of the
Danube. Thule wrongs, he says, were inflicted upon him, not only by
the Government, but by the Newspapers; and he wi.l, some time or
other, come here at the head of his tremendous Croats, and take ven-
geance upon us. In the mean time he says he is quitting this country
with no other property than his sabre, though he brought 8:1:01. into it.
It way afford some bat is tacti on to his creditors to know, that " it stabs
kite to the heart" to think of leaving iinglased v thout paOrig Lis dans.