Germans took to the obliteration of the vain
mark of distinction by growing hair on their
own chins and upper lips. Hairs have been
thus made significant in a new way. There
are now such things to be seen on the Continent
as revolutionary beards, and not long
ago in a small German State, a barrister was
denied a hearing because he stood up in his
place in the law court, wearing a beard of the
revolutionary cut. Not only custom, but
even to this day law regulates the cultivation
of the hair on many of our faces. There is
scarcely an army in Europe which is not
subject to some regulations that affect the
beard and whiskers. In England the chin
and, except in some regiments, the upper lip
has to be shaved; elsewhere the beard is to
be cultivated and the whiskers shaven. Such
matters may have their significance. The
most significant of whiskers are, however,
those worn by the Jews in the East, and
especially in Africa, who in accordance with
a traditional superstition, keep them at an
uniform level of about half an inch in length,
and cut them into cabalistic characters
curiously scattered about over the face.

As there are some communities especially
bestowing care and honour on the beard, and
others more devoted to the whiskers, so there
are nations, as the Hungarian, in which the
honour of the moustache is particularly
cherished. The moustaches of General
Haynau were about half-a-yard long. A
Hungarian dragoon who aspired to eminence
in that way, and had nursed a pair of moustachios
for two years until they were only
second to Haynau's, fell asleep one day after
dinner with a cigar in his mouth. He awoke
with one of his fine nose tails so terribly
burnt at the roots, that he was obliged afterwards
to resort to an art used by many of his
companions, and to fortify the weak moustache
by twining into its substance artificial hair.

Such freaks and absurdities are, of course,
inconsistent with the mature dignity of
bearded men. Let us have whisker, beard, and
moustache, reverently worn, and trimmed
discreetly and with decency. I am not for the
cabalistic whisker, the Hungarian moustache,
or a beard like that worn by the Venetian
magnate, of whom Sismondi relates, that if
he did not lift it up, he would trip over it in
walking. Still worse was the beard of the
carpenter depicted in the Prince's Court
at Eidam; who, because it was nine feet
long, was obliged, when at work, to sling
it about him in a bag. A beard like either
of those is, however, very much of a
phenomenon in nature. The hair of a man's
head is finer, generally, than that on the
head of women, and if left uncut, would not
grow to nearly the same length. A woman's
back-hair is an appurtenance entirely and
naturally feminine. In the same way, the
development of the hair upon the face of
men, if left unchecked—although it would
differ much in different climates, and in
different individuals—would very rarely go on
to an extravagant extent. Shaving compels
the hair to grow at an undue rate. It has
been calculated that a man mows off in the
course of a year about six inches-and-a-half
of beard, so that a man of eighty would have
chopped up in the course of his life a
twenty-seven foot beard; twenty feet more,
perhaps, than would have sprouted, had he
left nature alone, and contented himself with
so much occasional trimming as would be required
by the just laws of cleanliness and
decency.

It has been erroneously asserted that
a growth of beard would cover up the face,
hide the expression of the features, and
give a deceitful mark of uniform sedateness
to the entire population. As for that last
assertion, it is the direct reverse of what is
true. Sir Charles Bell, in his essay on expression,
properly observes that no one who
has been present at an assembly of bearded
men can have failed to remark the greater
variety and force of the expressions they are
able to convey. What can be more portentous,
for example, than to see the brow cloud
and the eyes flash and the nostrils dilate
over a beard curling visibly with anger ?
How ill does a smooth chin support at any
time the character assumed by the remainder
of the face, except it be a character of
sanctimonious oiliness that does not belong
honestly to man, or such a pretty chin as
makes the charm that should belong only to
a woman or a child!

Therefore I ask, why do we shave our
beards? Why are we a bare-chinned people?
That the hair upon the face of man was
given to him for sufficient reasons it will
take but little time to show. It has various
uses, physiological and mechanical. To take
a physiological use first, we may point out
the fact that the formation of hair is one
method of extruding carbon from the system,
and that the external hairs aid after their
own way in the work that has to be done by
the internal lungs. Their use in this respect
is not lessened by shaving; on the contrary,
the elimination of carbon through the hairs
of the face is made to go on with unnatural
activity, because the natural effort to cover
the chin with hair is increased in the vain
struggle to remove the state of artificial
baldness, as a hen goes on laying if her eggs
be taken from her, and the production of
hair on the chin is at least quadrupled by
the use of the razor. The natural balance
is in this way destroyed. Whether the harm
so done is great I cannot tell; I do not know
that it is, but the strict balance which
nature keeps between the production of hair,
and the action of the lungs, is too constant
and rigid to be altogether insignificant. We
have all had too much opportunity for
noticing how in people whose lungs are constitutionally
weak, as in people with consumptive
tendencies, the growth of hair is