then approaching. The people willingly submitted themselves to the tonsorial charms of this vagrant Philistine, who by his clever roguery succeeded in carrying away sufficient hair to make an abundant stock of perukes and wigs.

It is a fitting subject for the consideration of our learned societies, to name the cause which has made the most powerful nation under the sun submit, for the last two centuries, to the barbarous, absurd and unaccountable vagary of shaving the hair off certain patches of the human face, instead of allowing it to grow wherever a kind and bountiful Nature intended. It must assuredly be laid at the door of that silliest of all silly teachers, termed Fashion, of whom we are all more or less unconsciously the most

devoted slaves.

If common sense would but convince men that Nature has furnished each with a scanty or thick Beard, precisely as it suits his features, they would cease their endeavours to

S

make themselves resemble the beardless gorilla in the head, considering how often he has been pronounced, in consequence of the absence of a tail, the most natural "Portrait of Man." This absurd fashion, which is of such modern introduction in Europe, and has ever been looked upon as an utter abomination in the country whence the wise men are known to have come, is already in bad repute with the upper classes on the Continent; and it is not uttering a very bold prediction if we express our unhesitating belief, as we do our earnest hope, that our children will one day wonder how their respected parents, in whatever hurry they might be, could sit before a looking-glass morning after morning, razor in hand, making all sorts of grimaces, at the risk of cutting their throats; the only known result being to render the chin, shortly after the smoothing process, not unlike that useful article peculiar to the kitchen, called a nutmeg or a sugar grater!

May all our readers of the male sex (and we

trust they may be very numerous, although we anticipate a much greater number of the other and better sex) have the courage before long to add Nature's appendix to their chins, and thus prove their appreciation of such a healthy, handsome, and useful sign of the GOOD OLDEN TIMES!

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CHAPTER VII.

The End of Man.

HAVING now considered Man under various aspects, as a Pyrrhonist, a Necromancer, an Allegorist, an Orator, and as possessing the right and title to the use of the Beard, we may finally view him-subjectively, not objectively-in the character of a poet. For if as our opening chapter, with reference to the Origin of Species, shows-the wit and ingenuity of the learned have been tried to the utmost extent in endeavouring to discover the Beginning of Man, the same may

be truly affirmed in regard to their praiseworthy attempts to acquire some satisfactory knowledge respecting his End.

What instructive lessons do not our churchyards afford concerning the descent and lineage, the virtues and qualifications, the ailments and sufferings, and not unfrequently, alas! the failings and shortcomings of the dear departed, in despite of that admirable and never-to-be-forgotten adage—

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."

An attempt has been made to justify the infraction of this sound maxim by an emendation of the text, by substituting verum in the place of bonum, which may be freely translated as follows:

"Of the dead

Let nothing be said

But what is true

For me and you."

The earliest authentic instance of tombology

we have been enabled to discover is an in