prevent his brooding over the past. His
young wife speedily discovered the anomalous
nature of her position: not received
by the gentry, and looked on with cold
jealousy by those of her own class. She
became fretful and slatternly, and turned
out to have a shrewish tongue, and to be
energetic in the using of it. And her
vulgar family established themselves in
the vicarage, and lorded it over the vicar
as only the callousness of vulgarity can.

Old Joanna left her old master with
regret. But, as she said, she could not
stand being crowed over by Mrs. Meggitt.
The faithful old woman went to live with
Mrs. Hugh Lockwood, whose children—
especially a bright-eyed little girl, named
Veronica—she spoiled with supreme
satisfaction to herself, and under the delusion
that her discipline was Spartan in its
rigour.

Miss Turtle inherited a trifling legacy
from a bachelor uncle, who was a tradesman
in London: on the strength of which
legacy she set up a day-school. As she
was very gentle, very honest, and very
industrious, she prospered. She never
married, and she and Mr. Plew continued fast
friends to the end of their days.

Of the little surgeon—if these pages
have succeeded in portraying him as he
was—it need not be said that his life
continued to be one of humble usefulness and
activity. He was never merry, and seldom
—to outward observation at least—sad.
Once a year he made a pilgrimage to
London, where he visited a lonely tomb in
a suburban cemetery. But of these visits
he never spoke.

And it was observed in him, that while
he was always kind and gentle to all
children, he was especially attached to one of
Maud's little girls. But he always gave
her the uncouth name she had bestowed
upon herself in her baby efforts to talk—
Wonca!—and he never called her Veronica.

THE END OF VERONICA.

BEARDS AND MOUSTACHES.

WE are not aware that any author has
yet written the chronicles of the appendage
which nature attaches to the chin and face
of man; yet a great deal might be written
on the subject, and a curious study made
of the vicissitudes of public favour and
disfavour which beards, moustaches, and
whiskers have at different times
undergone. A skilfully inquiring pen might
search out for us, the reasons of these ups
and downs; and an interesting chapter or
two might be added to the social history of
ages, by recording what great men wore
beards, and what others shaved. Upon a
first reflection it might seem as though
shaving-brushes were symptoms of civilisation,
and as though man in his primitive
condition must have let his beard alone.
This, however, is by no means the case;
in virtue of that singular impulse which
prompts men, civilised or no, to disfigure
themselves under pretext of adornment,
man no sooner saw his face reflected in the
waters of a stream, than he decided that it
needed alterations, and took to running
rings through his ears, and skewers through
his nose, and to scrape the hair off his
cheeks and chin. The first razors
employed, were probably sharp flints; afterwards
came shells, such as were used up to
a very recent time by the natives of New
Zealand; then appeared a variety of shaving
implements in steel, which looked more or
less like modern carving-knives or
nineteenth century cork-cutters; finally,
humanity was endowed with the razor.

By the Hebraical law the Jews were
forbidden to shave; it is said in Leviticus xix.
v. 27; and again in Lev. xxi. 5: "Ye shall
not round the corners of your heads, neither
shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard."
This law, however, could not have been
very stringently observed, for we find
frequent allusions to razors in the books of
the Pentateuch; and, as great stress is
laid upon the fact that the Nazarites and
the priests in the Temple were forbidden
to shave, it is probable that some, at least,
of the children of Israel were in the habit
of cutting off their beards. The law to
which we have referred above, was decreed
by Moses, B.C. 1490; five centuries before
that time, during the reign of Semiramis,
in Assyria, it was customary for men of
the upper classes to wear their beards
plaited and curled into tresses, like short
ropes. The hair was arranged in the same
fashion, as we find by the frescoes
discovered in the excavations at Nineveh, by
Mr. Layard and M. Botta. The Assyrian
slaves and common soldiers seem, however,
to have shaved, and the slaves also wore
their hair much shorter and plaited less
elaborately. The Egyptians appear, for
the most part, to have shaved, that is, they
wore neither moustaches nor whiskers;
but it is still a controverted point whether
that appendage which we find upon the
chin of all Egyptian statues, sphinxes, and