The Sun.
London, England, 1838-08-21 00:00:00

ARCHERY.

ST. LEONARD'S-ON-SEA.—The annual grand meeting of the
Queen's St. Leonard's Archers was held at this place on Friday
last, in honour of the birthday of her Royal Highness the
Duchess of Kent. Her Majesty's annual prize, an elegant
bracelet, set with brilliants and emeralds, presented to the ladies
of the Society, was won by Miss Helen Wood. The prizes
given by the Society in honour of her Majesty's Coronation l'or
open competition were gained as follows :_The gold Corona-
tion medal, by Edwin Meyrirk, Esq.. of the West Berks So-
ciety ; a bracelet by Miss Mackay, of the Queen's St. Leon-
ard's Archers; and a gold chain by Mrs. Howman, of the
East Berks Society. A lIIIMUOUI assemblage of the Nobility
and Gentry of the county, as well as visitors, graced the
ground, among whom we noticed—The Ladies Mexborough,
Nlontgornerie, Jane Hamilton, Sarah Saville ; the Hon. Mrs.
Dundas, S'r Charles Lamb, Bart. ; the Right Hon. Joseph
Planta, K. C. H., M.P. ; Sir Latimer Widdrington, the Hon.
Misses Foley, Dr. Knox and family, Dr. Wench and
family, the Rev. C. Wetherell and family, Mrs. Tedcroft and
family, Colonel and Mrs. Streatfield, Charles Lamb, Esq. ;
Capt. Norton, John Fairlie, Esq. ; the lion. Mrs. Faitlie,
WaAel Brisco, Esq., and family, A. B. Blakiston, Esq., and
family ; Samuel Pavnter, Esq., and family ; Adolphus K.
Oom, Esq. ; W. Merry, Esq. ; Hughes Hughes, Esq. ;
James Morier, Esq. ; the Rev. Geo. Plowman, Mrs. Howman,
and Miss Knightley.

THE GREAT WALKING MATCH.—Molloy still continues
walking; he looks greatly fatigued, but says he has not the
slightest doubt but he will accomplish his extraordinary self-
imposed task.

The steam-ship Sirius, which sailed from the river
on Wednesday the Ist inst., reached Cronstadt on the Bth,
having performed the voyage in seven days, including a de-
tention of twenty hours at the Sounds.
RAPACITY OF A I-lAwK.—A few days ago
sparrow-hawk, wlii!t hovering over the premises of Mr. V.
Newham, of this town, perceived some canaries hung up in a
cage in a room with the window open ; the temptation was
too strong to resist ; he flew in, attacked them with all the
voraciousness of his species, and in all probability would have
soon destroyed the whole of them had it not been for a boy
who was on the premises, and who immediately flew to their.
I rescue; having sufficient presence of mind to close the
dow, he with some difficulty succeedel in capturing the
in-
truder.—/lull Times.

It has been gravely remarked, that the decline and fall cf
beards has generally accompanied and foreshadowed the de-
cline and fall of states. They were bearded Romans who
conquered the then beardless Greeks—they were bearded
Goths who vanquished the then beardless Romans.
Painting has carried the boldness of its eulogium still fur-
ther, having made a long beard one of the characterist;c
marks of the Supreme Being. The pagan Jupiter, aid the
graver inhabitants of Olympus would not be known without
this majestic appendage. It was by touching the b and of
Jove that the subordinate divinities swore the most sacred of
their oaths. Philosophy, till our smooth-faced days, consi-
dered it as the appropriate symbol of the profession. Zoilus,
according to &lien, used to shave his head in order to ncuristi
the growth of his beard and critical discrimination at the same
time; and Lucian informs us cf a certain individual tcho was
deemed unqualified for a professorship which he aspired to, in
(consequence of the shortness of his beard. In fine, Judaic
rigour, Egyptian wisdom, Attic elegance, and Roman virtue,
have been the beard's fond and cherishing protectors. The
Jews anointed it with sweet unguents, and the sacred oil
" ran down from Aaron's beard to the skirts of his garment "
The Greeks, according to Athenmus, wore their beards till
they lost them and freedom together, in the time of Alexan-
der the Great. Alexander himself naa as determined a re-
former on this point as Peter the Great, although, when he
compelled the Macedonians to shave their beards, he asaigned
a different reason—namely, that the length of their beards
gave a handle to the enemy. Among the Romans shaving,-
the beard was was not introduced, according to Pliny, till the
year of Rome 454, when Publius Sicinius introduced a stock
of barbers from Sicily. These gentlemen pushed their trade
so actively that, in the time of Scipio Africanus, the Roman
patricians shaved every day; and the period of cutting the
beard for the first time was made the occasion of formal visits
between the various branches of the aristocracy.
Chrysostom observes that the Kings of Persia had their
beards knotted or woven together with gold thread • a cus-
tom which was also fashionable among the first Kings of
France. The Egyptian Kings, if we may trust their monu-
ments, were either wholly shaven, or had their beards cut
into a rhomboidal form. The Chinese, according to Lecent,
arect long beards extravagantly ; but nature has baulked them,
by giving them a very diminutive growth of hair on the chin.
In Russia, Peter the Great's well known shaving edict nearly
caused a revolution; " No shaving," was the watchword
from Petersburg to Moscow ;:and the Autocrat was obliged to
employ a certain number of able-bodied soldiers, in order, cot
so much to separate their beards from the Russians, as tke
Russians from their dearly-beloved beards. As to France, one
of the greatest misfortunes which she had ever to lament,
namely, the divorce of Louis le Jeune from Elinor of Gu-
yenne, resulted from the faShion which this Prince wished to

introduce of shaving the chin and cropping the head; the
lady observing that she expected to have married a monarch
ai.d not a monk. The obstinacy of Louis in shaving himself,
and the horror conceived by Elinor at the sight of abeardless
chin, occasioned France the loss of her fairest provinces, and
was indeed the primary cause of the war which raged between
France and England for four centuries.

In England the Reformation gradually introduced liberty
and free shaving; and finally expelled beards and the Stuarts
together.

Begirds made a transitory effo:t to resuscitate tlntir decaying
honours in the anti-reformation days of Queen Mary ; but,
during the civil wars, they dwindled down to little Letter than
military moustachios. _

Passing over to Spain, we shall not find the grave and
magniloquent Spaniard behind other nations in high apprecia-
tien of beards. Quevedo, in his " Third Vision of Judg-
ment," introduces one of his countrymen, whose beard had
been disordered while he was receiving sentence, refusing to
file off in the guardianship of a brace of evil spirits till they
had recomposed the ruffled emblem of dignity with a pair of
curling irons. But none carry their affectionate respect for
this distinguishing characteristic of man to a greater length
than the Tut ks. It is, among them, the mark of liberty and
authority, and many a Turk would prefer death to losing it.
It is anointed and perfumed, as if it were sacred, and its pre-
servation is a capital article of the Mahometan religion.
A Turkish wife kisses the beard of her husband—a child
that of his father ; friends swear by it, and, in parting, reci-
procally kiss each other's beards with respectful devotion.
They even gather up the hairs which drop from their beards
while coming them, fold them up carefully in paper, and carry
them for inhumation to the place where they bury the dead.
Nor was the Chris:jail Church, at one time, behind the Maho-
metan religion in reverence. Not only provincial and na-
tional, hut general councils have been convened, synods have
been summoned, and cloistered chapters of every denomina-
tion have been assembled to consider, at different periods, the
growth of the human visage. Infinite disputes have been en-
gendered, sometimes with respect to its form, at others with
regard to its existence. The Catholic Church, in one age, in-
terested itself in contending for that pointed fcrm to which na-
ture conducts it ; at a succeeding period anathemas have been
denounced against those who refused to give it a rounder
shape ; and to these other denunciations have followed, which.
changed it to the square cr the scollop.
Hitherto the disputes were confined to the Western chuceb,
but when innovation grasped the tensors—when the beard
lessened into whiskers, and the scythe of ecclesiastical disci-
pline threatened to mow down every hair from off the " human
face divine," the Churches of Asia and Africa took the alarm,
and supported by .violence, invective, and remonstrance, their
right and title to those undiminished honours of the chin
which they enjoyed in the west. The Gallic Church alone
made any effectual stand against the radical change of the
ecclesiastical razor.

Fierce contests were waged with various success by the
Barbites and unti.Barbites ; at length a compromise was
made ; and the Bishops compounded the matter with their re-
fractory clergy, by giving up the greater part of the beard,
but retaining the growth of the upper lip in the form of
whiskers. Tranquillity was thus restored ; and the preacher
of peace, for a considerable time after, appeared on all public
occasions en moustache, exhibiting to his highly edified flock
the fierce, terrific aspect of a German pandour, as an emblem
of the Church militant. At length the persecuted beard was
driven from this, its last important place of refuge in our
quarter of the globe, and if we except the corner of European
Turkey, now finds its only asylum in the Capuchin cloister.—
Court Journal.

MAILS.
♦rrived. Due Arrived. Due \Arrived. Due.
0 America.......... 0 1 France 0 0 Lisbon 0
0 8razi1............ 0 0 Guern. & Jersey 0 0 Malta ....... 0
O Buenos Ayres.. 0 0 Hamburg........ 0 0 Mexico 0
n Carthagena.... 0 0 Holland ...... .... 0 0 Ostend.. ......
1 Dublin... ..... 0 0 Jamaica 0 0 Sweden 0
0 Flanders .... 0 0 Leeward Islands 0 1 Waterford 0

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE TO-MORROW.
M0rning.......• 24 minutes after 3 I Evening 37 minutes after 3

THE