which have grown up rank for centuries? But,
we suppose, there is a time for everything.
The hair question assumed disquieting
proportions in France, for in the year 1201, Pierre
Lombard, Archbishop of Paris (whose own
head left much to be desired in the matter of
capillary adornment) was prevailed upon by
the malcontents to become their champion. He
was a learned and a good man. No doubt he had
often pondered in the silence of the closet upon
the unseemly appearance of his close-clipped
crown, and he took up the cudgels like a man
determined to win. The King of France at
that time was the gallant Philip the Second,
generally known as Philip Augustus. He was
not by any means a monarch averse to progress,
for he had already excited no little dissatisfaction
amongst his subjects by insisting that they
should wash. He had erected extensive bath
houses, and the people had been politely
requested to make use of them as one of the best
preservatives against scurvy and fever, which
then had hold upon all the working classes.
Philip Augustus, after giving the matter his
most attentive consideration, signed the Magna
Charta of capillary liberty, at about the time
when his royal compeer, John of England, was
pulling a dismal face over the Charter of
Runnymede. Generally speaking the English follow
the French in the matter of personal adornment,
but in this case we had been beforehand with
our neighbours. So early as the reign of Henry
the Second, our plebeian forefathers had
obtained exemption from the obligation of having
their hair cut, and they had obtained it without
much ado.

As was natural, the repeal of the long-hair
law caused immense dissatisfaction among the
nobles. The chief hardship, they alleged,
was, that it would be thenceforth impossible
to discern a gentleman from a boor at a
hundred yards off; and they vented their spleen
upon Pierre Lombard by prosecuting him
before the ecclesiastical court of Paris for a
work of his entitled Les Sentences, a theological
treaty which his enemies affirmed to be heretical.
The book was pronounced subversive,
and was burned by the hands of the hangman.
Pierre Lombard did not resign his see in
consequence, but he died soon after, broken-
hearted by persecution, and wishing, very
likely, that he had allowed the hair of his
countrymen to remain cut close in bristles,
without interference.

We hear nothing more about short hair
until the sixteenth century. From the time
of Philip Augustus to that of Francis the First,
every one, lord or bumpkin, let his hair fall
down his back. Historians and chroniclers
speak a great deal about the oils and ointments
that were used by the wealthy and noble of
the middle ages; and it appears to have been
a pretty prevalent custom to powder one's
locks with gold-dust.

Frequenters of picture-galleries must have
observed that all portraits of French noblemen
during the mediaeval times, and up to the
year 1530, represent men with abundant locks,
but that from the year 1530 there is an abrupt
change  the hair of Frenchmen becoming,
from that date, as short as that of a modern
jail-bird. The reason of this is as follows:
His Majesty Francis the First, happening to
spend the Christmas of 1529 at Fontainebleau,
organised a series of routs and revels, in honour
of the new year. On the sixth of January,
it used to be customary for the mummers to
elect a king, and engage in a mimic war
against a rival party, who would pretend to
dethrone the mock monarch. Francis, hearing
that the lord of a neighbouring castle had
been elected "king" by some friends of his,
disguised himself, and went with a party of
twenty courtiers to offer battle to the revellers.
The challenge was accepted. A fort
was erected in the great hall of the castle,
and Francis endeavoured to carry it by storm.
It was usual to fight with eggs in guise of
shot, and bags of flour in lieu of maces; but
after a while the strife waxed hot, and somebody
threw a lighted brand, which fell upon the
disguised king's head and felled him senseless.
The wound was a very serious one. For some
time Francis remained in bed, and when he
made his reappearance amidst his court, his
hair was cropped quite close: while his beard,
on the contrary, which he had always up to
that time shaved off, had been suffered to
grow luxuriantly. Imitation being the sincerest
flattery, the courtiers hurried off to put
themselves into the haircutter's hands. Gradually
the people followed the example. Hair became
short, and beards lengthened. From France,
the fashion passed into England and other
countries. It lasted for nearly a hundred years.

As every one knows, long hair and short
hair had a marked political significance during
the wars of Charles the First against his
parliament. It was no joke, then, to be caught
with bristles in Prince Rupert's camp; and to
have come with curling locks under
Cromwell's eye would have been to run the risk of
being sent, not to the hair, but to the head,
cutter's. Charles the Second brought back the
fashion of long cavalier locks, but these were
soon superseded by the towering wigs
introduced by Louis the Fourteenth. He had a very
poor head of hair; thin, lank, and of a dirty
buff colour  and his barber devised a most
voluminous peruque to meet the emergency. Of
course the fashion "took," and this big
unsightly headdress, which must have been
insupportable in summer, remained in use until the
middle of Louis the Fifteenth's reign, when it
gave way to the famous powdered wig.

The great Republic swept away the wigs,
and many of the heads that were in them. It was
then that the pigtail fashion came in, both for
high and low, and lasted long enough to be
remembered by some men of the present day.
Napoleon the First mercilessly cut off the
pig-tails of his republican soldiers, and nearly
caused a mutiny among the army of Egypt by
so doing. Similarly, immense discontent was
excited in the British Navy when the Admiralty
abolished the pigtail some half century ago. So
we come down to the present times, when we
gratify our individual tastes in the matter of