which implied doubt of the fact. He observed, he knew not whether the barbers of the Seffavean monarchs built bridges, but I do know', he said, that the Khâsterâsh (literally, personal shaver) of our present sovereign, in the abundance of his wealth, built a palace for himself close to the royal bath at Teheran. Then,' said the good Meerza, 'he is entitled to riches, for he is a man of pre-eminent excellence in his art, and has had for a long period under his special care the magnificent beard of his majesty, which is at this moment, and has been for years, the pride of Persia.'

Well,' I replied, if your personal shaver has built such a mansion, I will no longer doubt the wealth of the barber of Shah Abbas, for that monarch, though he wore no beard, had, we are told by trevellers and observe from paintings, a noble pair of moustaches, of which he is said to have been very proud; and the trimmer of which no doubt, was, as he deserved to be, a great favorite.'

"This conversation led to a long dissertation on moustaches and beards, upon which subject my travels to countries that my Persian friends had never seen, enabled me to give them much useful information. I told them many stories about the Sikhs, a nation dwel ling between the territories of Cabul and India, who devoting their beards and whiskers to the Goddess of Destruction, are always prompt to destroy any one who meddles with them; and who, from a combined feeling of religion and honour, look upon the preservation of life itself as slight, in comparison with the preservation of a hair of these beards.

"I next informed them how beards, whiskers, and moustaches were once honoured in Europe. I told them an anecdote of the great John de Castro, a former Governor of Goa, the capital of the Portuguese possessions in India. He being in want of a considerable loan from the citizens of Goa, for a military expedition, was at a loss for an adequate security. His first intention was to pledge the bones of his gallant son Don Fernando, who had recently fallen in battle; but finding, on opening the grave, that the carcase was patrid, he offered, as next dear to his personal honor, a lock of his cherished moustaches. This security was accepted; but immedi ately returned with more than the amount required, young and old vying with each other who should show most respect to so valuable a pledge.

"The Persians of my audience twisted their moustaches with a combined feeling of pleasure and pride on hearing this testimony to the value of that ornament of the visage; and Khan Sahib, who was one of the party, said to me with a smile, You gentlemen with the mission wear moustaches in compliance with the prejudices of the Persians; but is it true that many officers of your cavalry now wear them, and that they are again likely to become popular in England? I said, perhaps they might; adding, I had no doubt that would be the case, if there appeared the slightest chance of their ever turning to account in the money market like those of John de Castro."

These facts are mentioned in the introduction to Mickle's trans lation of the "Lusiad."

A Grand Vizier of Constantinople is also reported to have once borrowed a large sum of money on the security of his beard and whiskers; and such was the faith of his creditors in the honor of a beard, that it is said they were content to visit their debtor occasionally, to see that their security was safely growing curly on his face.

"It is," says D'Arvieux, who has devoted a chapter to the exposition of the sentiments of the Arabs in regard to the beard, "a greater mark of infamy in Arabia to cut a man's beard off, than it is with us to whip a fellow at the cart's tail, or to burn him in the hand. Many people in that country would rather die than incur that punishment. I saw an Arab who had received a musket shot in the jaw, and who was determined rather to perish than to allow the surgeon to cut his beard off to dress his wound. His resolution was at length overcome; but not until the wound was beginning to gangrene. He never allowed himself to be seen while his beard was off; and when at last he got abroad, he went always with his face covered with a black veil, that he might not be seen without a beard; and this he did till his beard had grown again into a considerable length."

Burckhardt also remarks, that the Arabs who have from any cause had the misfortune to lose their beard, invariably conceal themselves from view until their beard has grown again.

To cut off the tail of a Chinese is in use as a national punishment. The Parsees are always shaven all over the head, and should he chance to remove his skull-cap (or indoor covering), the Parsee always places his hand on his crown, as if in shame of his bare head, and keeps it there till his cap is replaced.

In an article in the Quarterly Review, some eight years ago, mention was made of the Hon. Mrs. Dawson Damer having requested a lock of Mehemet Ali's hair, to place in a collection which already boasted the hair of Nelson, Napoleon, and Wellington, when she was gallantly informed by the Pacha, that in his will he would request his son Ibrahim Pacha to present her with his beard.

Swearing by the beard of the Prophet is the Mussulman form of oath. Nearly all of the inhabitants of Schinde, whether Mussulmen or Hindoos, wear beards, which they often dye of a red colour.

Before the revolution of 1830, neither the French nor Belgian citizens were remarkable for their moustaches; but after that event there was hardly a shopkeeper either in

Paris or Brussels whose upper lip did not suddenly become hairy with real or mock moustaches. During a temporary triumph gained by the Dutch soldiers over the citizens of Louvain, in October, 1830, it became a standing joke against the patriots, that they shaved their faces clean immediately; and the wits of the Dutch army asserted that they had gathered moustaches enough from the denuded lips of the Belgians to stuff mattresses for the sick and wounded in their hospital.

An amusing anecdote has lately been current in Germany. The authorities of Vienna have not, until very recently, attacked the beards of men, but a lady of high rank some time since made an unsuccessful attempt to induce about fifty servants of her guests to sacrifice the hirsute honors of their upper lips. The lady in question, the wife of the reigning Prince Adolphus Schwarzenburg, gave a grand ball, at which the crême of the Austrian nobility was present. As is customary on such occasions, the friends and acquaintances of the lady of the house permitted their valets to wait on the guests during the entertainment. The illustrious lady, who, in the matter of festivities, leads the fashion there, ordered that the servants should have their hair powdered. Now, as immense black, brown, or red moustaches do not exactly harmonize with white pericraniums, five florins (10s.) were offered to each of the gentlemen's gentlemen who would sacrifice his cherished schnurrbart. Need I say that the lady kept her money, and the men their moustaches.

A facetious writer in the Quarterly Review, asserts that a mutton chop seems to have suggested the form of a substantial British whisker. Out of this simple design countless varities of forms have arisen. British whiskers, in truth, have grown up like all the great institutions of the country, noiselessly and persistently-an outward expres sion, as the Germans would say, of the inner life of the people; the general idea, allowing of infinite variety according to their individuality of the wearer. Let us take the next half-dozen men passing by the window as we write. The first has his whiskers tucked into the corners of his month, as though he were holding them up with his teeth. The second whisker that we desery has wandered into the middle of the check, and there stopped, as though

it did not know where to go to, like a youth who has ventured out into the middle of a ball-room with all eyes upon him. Yonder bunch of bristles twists the contrary way, under the owner's ears; he could not, for the life of him, tell why it retrograded so. The fourth citizen, with the vast Pacific of a face, has little whiskers, which seemed to have stopped short after two inches of voyage, as though aghast at the prospect of having to double such a Cape Horn of a chin. We perceive coming a tremendous pair, running over the shirt collar in luxuriant profusion. Yet, we see, as the Colonel or General takes off his hat to that lady, that he is quite bald—those whiskers are, in fact, nothing but a tremendous land-slip, from the veteran's head.

ART. V.-XAVIER DE RAVIGNAN.

Le Père De Ravignan, Sa Vie, Ses Œuvres; par M. Poujoulat. Paris, Charles Douniol, 1859.

To readers of English works of fiction published during the past eighty years, it must be a puzzle to guess whence could have come all the evil disposed Jesuits, plotting and doing every sort of mischief through the well or ill-written pages in question. Waverley and his brothers wrought an improvement in the world of imaginative prose, but the quasi evil-disposed disciples of Ignatius still retained their bad eminence, and wrought all the evil in their power to Sir Reginald Montfort and Lady Alicia as in times past. Catholic Emancipation is at last obtained; the persons and principles of Catholics, lay and cleric, are better known and understood; melo-dramatic villains and deep-designing knaves will be sought for in other places as well as in the cell and the confessional!-By no means. Our living writers still resort to the same haunts for their disreputable characters, as the cotemporaries of Bridget Bluemantle or the now-unknown author of "Says she to her Neighbour, WHAT!"

Since the epoch of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, the crop has been more prolific than ever; and publishers find it profitable to resuscitate even such wretched productions as the Lollards or the Monks of Leadenhall, for though the Jesuits themselves were unborn when Prince Hal took purses, their dead and buried relations, the monks and friars, were all alive, and prompt for evil doings.

What deduction could be strictly drawn from the contemplation of this mighty, many-sided mass of fleeting literature, if it gave anything like a true reflection of the state of society either of past or present times? merely this:-Only for the supernatural strength, wisdom, goodness, and omnipresence of certain Gipsies, madmen, outlaws, and brigands, all the venerable gentry and aged widows for eight centuries would have been deprived of their little property, the minors reduced to beggary on coming to age, young gentlemen on the eve of the wedding day, killed by ambushed parties, and their shrieking or fainting lady-loves carried away before their