Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1847-08-21

4
with sophistcation-cou consent to commit the
natural majesty Of their heads whether laws or
beards) to the trivial hands of onsor oil clipper
off of immemorial things--could let his reformer
with soap pare down the native countenance and
that other reformer (soapless and unwashed) whip
of, merely excrementltious, the clustering locks,
the Jove-like curls of Conshtutions--al was lost.
The introduction of BARRIERS was fatal to the beard,
just as that of improvers is TO institutions Brought
in al FIRST only to correct eXcrescences they end by
leaving you not as much of the mark of manLness
as graces the lip of many woman: they
Shear us,
! Like tame wether, all our precious fleece;
Then turn us out ridiculous despoiied,
Shawn and d1armed, ameng enemies
| The ancents and whatever since of valiant and
able hath drawn civil skill from Nature and Unborn
magnanimity, perfectly knew that to smooth down
the faces of men into sickness went far towards
rendering them effemnate. What Lycurgus thought
of the hair and its military importance every body
knows or ought to know. When Cyrus sought
some milder way than that Of military executions,
by which to punish the repeated revolts OF the Ly-
dams and bend them to quiet slavery, he changed
their dress from wool to silk their sports from atf
letc and martial exercises to volupmous dances,
and of course Ito womanize them being the object
made them shave. Ii was Alexander the Great who
first made the Greeks clip their boards, under pre-
tence of removing handle which the enemy might
seize in battle. The Romans, we know, did not
begin TO practice any of the ignobe arts OF the Jt
scar and coifeur until after the fall of Carthage,
when anarchy and slavery began to spring up at
home out of arms and conquest abroad: the first
BARRIERS she knew were introduced from Sicily, in
the time Of Scipo Africanus; who was also the
first man in Rome to submit to daily scraping of
his face. Under the Emperors every body shaw
cd for in q nf 81 IS IN
like girl an eunuch as one can. When the
terrible. Lango6ardi-that is Long-beards, now
Lombards-came upon the peeled and cropped
changeling of Romuus, how was the victim of bar
bers and tailors to withstand that capillary supe
riority? Do we not see, in English history, Will
liam of Normandy, after his conquest, resortng to
the old means of enslaving, and cutting off the
boards of the Saxons, by way of destroying the ma
tona spirit! In Ireland the same thing seems to have
been practised, during the tardy subugaton of that
luckless people, equally unmanageable by friend and
foe. Our readers who may have at hand Tom
Moore's Irish Melodies may find, as well we
recollect, account of this persecution of the
tresses in note TO song entitled i" Coolen." The
romantic love locks, to- be sure, which the damse
in the song dwes on so doatingly were nothing but
that mat of hair and beard, making an enormous
animated felt, which Sanihurst (apud Hollinshed's
Chronicles, vol. 6, p 22S( describes so curiously,
as worn by the Hibernans of his day and forming,
by its compacted mass, sort of natural armor Of
the head, proof alike to the sword and the shaleh
citation OF the passage may amuse our readers
"Their boards and heads they wash, cleanse nor
cut especially their heads the hair whereof they suffer to
grow saving that do round and by that the
kembed, it grows fast together and in process
of time matieth thick and fast together that instead
of hat keePh the head very and also will bear of
great blow stroke And this head of hair they call
lfrIgh apAth fhatyh aya nlou
Old Bulwer, in his artificial Changeling, writ
ten against the English excuses Of hairdressing,)
describes it much in the same way. He says they
used it for the purpose lin lieu Of napkins hand
kerchiefs) of wipng their greasy fingers. They
also represented in the cuts to the curious DeScrp-
tion Of Ireland, by Derricke, which Sir Walter
Scott has given in his edition ofthe SomerS Tracts.
In England the wearing of the beard continued
with probably little of fantastic in its fashions down
to the time of Elizabeth Under James l. we find
pointed, and little later forked boards. Presently
they grew into thousand strange colors and shapes
such the Knights and Ralphos, in Hadibras
may serve samples of. Such of our readsrs as
are not tired Of the subject may find, in Grey's
notes the passage, curious facts in the his.
tory Of the chin, and particularly of catalogue
of the various cuts and colors Of the beard, which
Taylor (called the Water Poet from his being
Thames boatman) had seen flourish in his day-the
latter part of James l. and beginning of Charles is
reign. OF Taylor mentioned in the D,mciad as
acting the Charon of the shades to which all bad
poets must descend) an amusing account may be
consulted in Southey's Lines Of Uneducated Poets.
Taylor says, in his very prosac verse;
Now few lines to paper will put,
| Of mems boards strange and variable cut
In which there's doe take S vane pride
As almost in all other things beside.
| Some reaped most substantial like brush,
Which makes a natural wit known by the bush
And, in my time, of some men have heard
Whose wisdom has been only wealth and heard.
Many Of these the proverb well doth fit,
Which says "Bush natural, more hair than wit"
Some as they starched so stiff and fine,
Like 10 the bristes of some angry swine;
And some, to set their loves desire on edge,
Are cut and pruned like to quikset hedge
some like a spade, some like a fork, some square,
Some round, mowd like subble, some stark bare
Some sharp, stiletto- fashion, dagger-like,
That may, with whispering, mans eyes outpke;
Some with the harnmcr-cut or Roman r;
Their boards extravagant reformed must be
Some with the quadrate, triangle fashion;
Some circular oval in translation;
Some perpendicular in longitude;
some like a thicket for their crasstude
That heights, depths, breadhs, trorme, square, oval
round,
And rules geomctrc in boards are found
We hate reserved, however, one argument in ia
vor OF Boards which we know the present age of
finance will find Gnsher. Boards have, ere now,
among heroic men stood bail for their owner and