basin. You consider that singular, sir, do
you not? One never meets now with the
Flying Barber. That, by the bye, reminds
me— I beg your pardon, sir, I did not
catch your observation. Yes, certainly, sir.
I do meet with a good many flying
customers. It is a rare thing to see the same
face twice, such is the state of the profession.
In the year one thousand —Sir, if you
jerk your head so suddenly, an artistic cut is
quite out of the question —in the year one
thousand seven hundred and thirty-six, the
race of barbers was menaced with complete
extinction by a public announcement, which,
if you please, I will repeat to you: 'A
chemist from Germany is come over hither
in order to obtain a patent for a certain
water he prepares, that by only wetting the
corner of any linen cloth with it, and rubbing
it over the beard a little—be it longer or
shorter—instantly moulders away the hair
of it like dust or powder, cleaner and closer
than any shaving, and in a tenth part of the
time taken up in shaving, and for less
than a penny charge each time, and yet does
not in the least soil or hurt the skin, or cause
any smart, or prevent the beard's growing
again; nor does it smell any more than fair
water, nor can hurt the mouth, nostrils, or
eyes, should any by chance get into them.
It does the same on the head as well
as the beard.'

"Curious, sir, I think. Ah! we have had
many a fright in our history, and many a bitter
persecution. We have been sent to Bridewell,
sir, for exercising our trade on a Sunday.
When hair-powder was in fashion
we have been fined twenty pounds a-piece,
by the hundred of us, for using flour in our
trade, on the plea that we took food
out of the people's mouths. That was
before the constitution of the Guild of
Barber Surgeons. Very interesting circumstances,
sir, are attached to our connection
with the medical profession. Lord Thurlowe,
in his speech for postponing the further
reading of the Surgeons' Incorporation Bill,
July seventeenth, seventeen hundred and
ninety-seven, in the House of Peers, stated,
'that by a statute still in force, the barbers
and surgeons were each to use a pole. The
barbers were to have theirs blue and white
striped, with no other appendage; but the
surgeons', which was the same in other
respects, was likewise to have a galley-pot
and a red rag, to denote the particular nature
of their vocation.' This description is well
versified by Gay, in his fable of A Goat without
a Beard:

'His pole with pewter basins hung,
Black rotten teeth in order strung;
Ranged cups that in the window stood,
Lined with red rags, to look like blood,
Did well his threefold trade explain,
Who shaved, drew teeth, and breathed a vein.'

We used to do all the bleeding and bone-
setting that was wanted in those days.
People were a deal better attended to then,
than they are now, I'm thinking; and
since both callings were separated, they
have both gone to the dogs. People don't
shave, now, sir; they wear beards and
moustaches. Then railways don't break half
as many bones as bad roads and rickety
carriages used to do. Pay me, sir? Whenever
you please. A barber who is an artist
is paid only by fee. Look at your head
in the glass, sir. Simplicity itself! I thank
you."

YELLOWKNIGHTS.

WHEN Roscius was an actor in Rome, I
think it highly probable that private theatricals,
imitative of the performances of the
great dramatic exemplar of the day, were
a highly popular amusement among the
juvenile Roman aristocracy. It is pleasant
as well as reasonable to think so. I would
have given something to have been able to
witness such a celebration in the great city
of men; and that such sights often took
place I have very small doubts. That amiable
system of classical education under which
you and I, my dear Hopkins, were reared,
but which our sons, let us hope, will mercifully
escape—that grand scheme of
grammatical tuition which held chief among its
axioms that the mind of youth, like a
walnut-tree, must be quickened by blows in
its advances to maturity; that the waters of
Helicon were not wholesome unless duly
mingled with brine; and that the birch and
the bays were inextricably interwoven in the
poetical chaplet— that system, I say, taught
us (among irreproachable quantities and
symmetrical feet) to look upon everything
appertaining to Rome and the Romans with
something very much akin to horror; to regard
Plautus as a bugbear and Terence as a
tyrant; to remember nothing of Horace but
the portrait of Orbilius—nothing of Virgil
but the sæve memoram Junonis. But now
that a new generation has grown up, and we
ourselves (according to an ingenious theory
some time propounded) have changed our
cuticle, and have had provided for us a new
set of viscera, we can afford to look back
without bitterness or regret, without fear or
trembling, upon the old days of verbum
personale and studio grammaticæ. Queer
days! They would have flogged us for reading
Mr. Macaulay's Lays, and caned us had
we looked upon Lemprière, not as a dull
book of reference, but as the most charming
collection of fairy tales in the world. Now
all our gerunds and supines, our dactyls and
spondees, our subjects and attributes, our
hexameters and pentameters, are mingled in
a pleasant jumble of dreamy memories: now
that we quite forget what took place in the
thirty-sixth Olympiad, and don't know the