The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-03-09 00:00:00

at this port

and Blakely, for

Mary Ann, Redfern, from Cork to this port, ran on shore on
Creghill Sands, near Holyhead, during a thick fog, on the Bth inst.
Should the weather prove moderate, she is expected to be got off
GIBRALTAR, Feb. 25.—The Heroine, from China to London, was
totally lost on the night of the 2,th instant, near Cape Spartel, and
about 35 out of 60 persons drowned

A CHAPTER ON THE BARBER-OUS

BY A KEEN SHAVER,

If there is a luxury enjoyed by man in this breathing world,
verily that luxury consists in a clean and an easy shave. Man
is an animal who may very correctly be defined as " the
possessor of a beard," which, in his uncivilised state, is
allowed to be unshorn ; but when humanised by society and
civilisation, is denuded to the stumps by an operation, diur-
nally or hebdomadally performed by a class of men, the most
deseriing perhaps, and at the same time the most lightly
esteemed of any in her Majesty's dominions. Through all
ages the beard of the biped race has been held to be an in-
violable portion of the person. The gods of old swore by it;
the Mahomedans of ,the present age swear by that of their
prophet ; the Grecians, the Romans, the Goths, and the
Visigoths, held it in repute ; and yet the artist who, in the
present day, operates upon that portion of " the human face
divine," is a being of a proscribed caste ; whilst the same
man in his capacity of " frizeur," because engaged in larding,
cutting, and combing, the curls of coxcombs—is permitted
to strut and swagger in the consciousness of possessing in
the estimation and in the nostrils of mankind, the perfume
tf respectable status—the very otto and Macassar of gen-
tility !

Excuse this outbreak reader, or set it down to the state
of my lacerated feelings, which you will readily estimate
when I inform you, that I am the identical barber who was a
few weeks ago so foully libelled in the pages of a worthless
periodical in this town, the " facial" development of whose
editor I have of late condescended to denude of its diurnal
growth of hair.

" Tis excellent to have a giant's power, but barber-ous to

use it like a giant!"—like a barber, I was about to say ; for
what, I ask, would have been the feelings of the gentleman
in question, if, whilst 1 had over him a giant's power on so
many different occasions, whilst I had held him by the nose,
as I have so often done, I had blinded him with my lather-
brush, or lacerated his chin as he has lacerated my repu-
tation ? What, I ask, would the world have said ? Why, I

should have been scouted as a monster—pointed at as a
burker—nay, I should have been indicted by the society for
the prevention of Cruelty to Animals!

But to return to the subject from which I have unaccount-

ably strayed. 'What man—from the gentleman—nay, from
the nobleman to the beggar—has not at some portion of his
life desiderated the luxury of a clean and easy shave ? There

is no man, I venture to say, no man at least who can boast
,of the possession of a beard. Turn back in your memory,
reader, to some occasion when love, or grief, or joy, or ten
tumblers of punch overnight, have palsied your hand until,

ur image in your dressing

glass presentable at the brc

s I am represented to

ave done to the beard of

scrapea,

Mercury

—some hundred and eighty times, at the imminent

lisker, a slice of chin, or the wart

hazard of taking off
which haply flourishes upon the apex of your nose
you not then exclaimed mentally, with all the enthusiasm of
Icing Richard—

" A shaver! a shaver!

My kingdom for a sha

Assuredly you have. And yet you pass by my unpretending
shop, with its pole and its show of ." dummies" and false

fronts in the windows, as if you dispised the whole race of

shavers! Let me tell you, sir, that the profession of a

barber is one which no man ought to despise, and which
Mercury himself shall not libel with impunity. A barber
formed the subject of a most celebrated opera in the world—
Ah I liigaro, how often have my ears drunk in thy sublime

and spirit-stirring

barber sir

the sword of Amadis,
Round Table! But I