refer to this independent life of the beard when he makes Gloster say to Lear's daughter Regan when she plucked him by the beard,

These hairs, which thou dost ravish from my chin,
Will quicken, and accuse thee."

The ancients, who with all their deficiencies in the means of accurate observation came often wonderfully near the truth, were not so far wrong about the hair when they said that it was not a living substance, but something rejected and squeezed out at the pores of the skin. They also considered that it was the carbonaceous portion of the blood, which became condensed at the surface, and was got rid of in this way. Now, the most that we, with all our microscopic appliances, are able to say is, that the hair grows by exudation from a conical-shaped root not unlike a bulb, which is well-supplied with vessels and nerves, and therefore thoroughly alive. The hair itself, which we might compare to the stem of a tree, has a hollow which fits this and extends some little distance along it, like that seen in the elephant's tusk, which is in fact grown by a similar process. When a hair starts from the matrix in the skin, a layer of hair-substance is formed on the conical surface,-moulded on, as it were,—and is gradually pushed out by a succeeding under-layer; so that the shape of the hair is necessarily tapered to a point, as is easily seen in young hair. When a hair, after proper soaking so as to loosen its texture, is examined with a powerful microscope, it is seen to be made up of scales, sticking together by a softer substance. These scales are similar to those which form the scarfskin, and which seem to be only the harder ones on the surface of a layer which forms the colouring matter in the skin of dark people and Negroes, and which colour universally agrees with that of the hair, being of every shade, from the ebony black of the African, to the red, yellow, or white; while in the Albinoes, who, like the white rabbits, have white hair and pink eyes, it is entirely deficient. This curious defect has happened indeed even in the Negro, and thus shows us the singular lusus naturæ of a white Negro. At the root of every hair are two or three little oil-glands, from which oozes sufficient oil to keep the hair glossy, and enable it to turn the rain as a natural aqua-scutum. It will be understood from this connection of the surface of the skin with hair, how it is that naturalists consider all the corny appendages,-whether the fine hair of insects, feathers, porcupine-quills, horns of stags and oxen, armadillo-scales, and the bulletproof armour of the rhinoceros, or our own comely ornaments of the head, as well as the finger-nails,—as so many forms of condensed cuticle.

Although a hair appears smooth to the eye, it has a kind of grain, arising from the regular arrangement of the scales; if a single hair is drawn through the finger and thumb from tip to root, a certain resistance will be felt, while the hair passes quite smoothly on reversing the ends. This is why a clumsy maid often annoys her mistress by getting the hair in a tangle from not drawing the comb steadily through it. In wool, this grain is much more marked, amounting to a series of notches

VOL. III.

R

across the hair, with jagged edges. It is this peculiar form that gives the crisp curl to wool, and makes it adaptable for pressing into the compact fabric we call felt. Curly hair when minutely examined is seen to be flat, like a riband, while straight hair is more cylindrical, like a rush or porcupine-quill. Human hair, however, is seldom quite round; and in proportion as it is flat it is easily curled, or if flat it is wavy and curly naturally. Negro hair is particularly flat and short, generally measuring two-thirds more across than in thickness; in many of the dark races who are considered to be a mixed progeny of the true Negro and the Malay, with other oceanic people, the hair is both long and woolly.* The ladies, and the men too, indeed, make some fine coiffures by frizzing it out round the head in every direction, often to the extent of a yard or more across; and the men carry their small spears and other weapons stuck in it. The Asiatic and European races have the longest hair, and it has often been known to grow to the length of seven or eight feet.

The hair of the English women is the finest in the world, and the most valuable in the market, although most of the false hair is obtained from France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, where this beauty seems to be less esteemed than with us. In France, it is common to sell the head of hair, and agents regularly travel to collect the crops. They pitch their tents at the fairs in country districts, and invite the girls to go in, by showing them trinkets or money; and many are the luxuriant tresses a beauty of fashion would give her brightest gem to have growing on her head, which these rustic beauties innocently exchange for the most trumpery jewellery. A good head of hair may weigh about one and a half or two pounds, and the wholesale price varies from thirty to sixty shillings; though very fine glossy sorts, of beautiful colour, are much more valuable. The choice hair should be well fed, neither too coarse nor too slender, and about twenty-five inches long. Some curious tricks of the trade are practised in making up false hair. All the hair intended to be worn as curls is actually made into a regular pie, with a crust of paste, precisely as if it were a very dainty morsel for the table, and then baked in an oven. This hair-pie, however, is not a mere baked cushion; the locks are wound on little earthenware rollers, and stewed for two hours before being made into the pie. The baking afterwards serves to fix the necessary curl of the hair. The English wig-makers have the credit of having first discovered that to make the artificial hair curl and set naturally to the head, it was necessary to weave the roots of the hair together; but less skilful artists had woven in the points and roots indiscriminately. "But the French perruquiers achieved a closer imitation of the natural growth when they invented the plan of threading each hair, and passing

Change of climate will alter the hair of some animals into wool. The late Mr. Rotch, of Harrow, imported a few Asiatic sheep having long hair, which was found a very useful substitute for horse-hair in manufacture; but in a few years these sheep all became woolly like the English breed.

it through an imitative skin with a needle. In this ingenious way, "false fronts" are made that would deceive the keenest and cruellest inspection. Speaking of wigs reminds us that they are by no means a modern invention, although not adopted, as we do, to supply the place of a lost natural ornament. The ancient Egyptians preferred to shave the head and wear wigs, because it enabled them to be more cleanly, and at the same time to protect the head from the sun by the addition of more than the natural thatch. In the British Museum there is to be seen, in perfect preservation, an ancient wig, such as female musicians and people of high rank wore, as shown by the ancient fresco paintings. It was found in a tomb at Thebes. The custom has been maintained to the present day in the East, though with the better adaptation of the turban and other kinds of head-dress as a protection against the sun, of which the strange cap, resembling a soda-water bottle, which we see on the statues of Egyptian kings would seem to be a prototype. Among the Jews, the men cut the hair short, and the women wore it long and plaited with gold. The hair and beard were highly esteemed, and baldness especially disliked. The Grecks were great at stage-wigs, their immense theatres requiring the head of the actor to be increased to a portentous and imposing size; the tragic masks having always very thick and straight hair. But the Greek ladies prided themselves on their natural hair, and never resorted to the fashion, afterwards introduced by Roman ladies, of heaping large masses of artificial hair upon their heads. In the British Museum there are some good examples, especially the busts named Julia Sabina, Olympias, and Domitiana. The coiffure of the Roman ladies was at one time not unlike that which we see in the portraits of our great-grandmothers painted by Gainsborough and Reynolds, though instead of powdering their dark hair with white, they used yellow-ochre, and the wealthy even went into the extravagance of using gold-dust. The great rage appears to have been for light hair; no doubt because Venus was always spoken of as golden-haired, and represented in her statues with gilt, or actually gold hair. To meet this fashionable taste, a large quantity of blonde hair was regularly imported from Germany. The Greeks and Romans regarded the hair with superstitious importance. Achilles cast a lock into the tomb of Patroclus, according to the general custom. The Romans did not allow the hair of their sons to be cut before the completion of the seventh year, and after that not till another septennial period had elapsed. Brides cut off their tresses as an offering to the gods, and mothers dedicated a curl from their infant's head to the protecting deities. They imagined also that no one could die until the top hair of the crown, the "scalp," in fact, of the Red Indians, was cut off by Iris, or some other messenger of the gods. Virgil particularly alludes to this in describing the death of Dido. Juno sends Iris down "to cut the topmost hair," and release her from "the strife of labouring nature."

"She cut the fatal hair:

Her struggling soul was loos'd, and life dissolved in air.”

It was common also to hang a lock of hair upon the door of the deceased before the burial, and the mourners, as in all times, wore their hair dishevelled, increasing the demonstration of their woe by throwing ashes upon it, to make it look like the gray hair of sorrowful old age. Something of the old superstition attaches to the hair in our times. A lock of hair is very generally regarded as an anxious pledge of parting vows; once touched with the fatal blade, it is cut off for ever, and becomes but an ominous gift. But we have our hair-seers. In Paris, there are certain impostors of this kind, who, when in a pretended state of ecstasy, have put into their hands the hair of persons diseased, or wishing to know their destiny, and then pronounce a prophecy or a prescription, as the case may be. The clients of these oracles are not confined to the Parisians only, for to our certain knowledge a large consignment of hair goes over from this country for this silly purpose.

The deities of the Greeks were represented always with certain peculiar forms of the hair. Jupiter has a magnificent head of hair, rising in full upright locks from the forehead, and falling thick upon the shoulders, but not curled like Bacchus's. It was intended to give something of the character of the lion's mane, and to portray Homer's god, who, when he was angry, shook Olympus by the waving of his hair and the frowning of his eyebrows. All the children of Jove had the hair turned up with his peculiar curl on the forehead, as shown in the antique busts. Apollo has beautiful curling hair, and sometimes tied in a woman's knot on the crown of the head. Hercules has the hair of a bull. The hair of virgins was worn tied in a knot across the head, while matrons wore it in a knot on the back of the head, or in one double knot on the top, the ends of which were turned towards the front and back of the head. Diana wears the hair in a double knot, with ends pointing to the ears, while Venus has the reverse fashion; and the Amazons were represented with the maiden's knot with dishevelled hair. Very old Greek statues show the hair in a prim style of regular rows of curls, which looks rather as if the artist were at fault than that such an ugly fashion was adopted by the people. A prettier dressing of the hair was one, generally seen in the best statues, where a fillet is bound round the head, leaving the front hair to float back carelessly over it, and gathering the back hair into a sort of broad bundle, with sometimes a ringlet or two hanging at each side upon the neck. The hair was sometimes fastened with a large pin; the principal tragedian on the stage usually adopted this style. The Roman ladies forsook the simpler style of the Greeks, and curled the long hair profusely; some, like the Empress Plotina, brushing the front hair straight up, and evidently supporting it by a cushion, as was done by the ladies of the last century. Every article of the toilet was then in vogue, even to hair-preservers (pilæ mattiaca) and hair-dyes (caustica spuma). The late Roman fashion was prolonged into the early Christian times, and with even greater extravagance, for the ladies were not satisfied with ordinary curls, plaits, and

hillocks; they employed the artists in hair of that day to weave all sorts of devices on their heads-towers, castles, ships, trees, dragons, &c., often too wearing innumerable plaits woven in little ribands, pearls, gems, and golden ornaments and clasps. It came to such a pitch at last that the Fathers of the Church were provoked to preach against the vanity of these fashionable ladies.

To have the hair cut short was always esteemed a disgrace, at least until Francis I. set the fashion, because he had a wound on the head which he was proud of showing. It was a mark of slavery and submission, and thus Cæsar compelled the Gauls to cut their hair, allowing only the moustache to be worn. Among the Franks, as Gregory of Tours tells us, it was the privilege of kings and nobles only to wear the hair long. And so strictly was this custom observed, that, in accordance with the Jus Capilliti, a regular graduated scale of cropping was kept up according to the rank; and if a prince or noble was debarred from his succession, his hair was kept cut short in future as a mark of his dishonour. The sons of Queen Crothilda were brought before her by Arcadius, with a pair of scissors and a sword, offering her the choice of seeing them either shaved and cropped or put to death, when she said, "If they are not to reign, I would rather have them put to death than deprived of their hair." There is a story told of an ancient British youth who was taken prisoner, and being about to be beheaded, made a last request that no slave should touch his hair, and that it might not be stained with blood. Perhaps a better authenticated instance of the kind was when Sir Thomas More, laying his head upon the block, carefully placed his beard out of the way of the axe, telling the executioner not to wound it; his words-"My beard has not been guilty of treason; it would be an injustice to punish it"-might, however, have been meant for a last sarcasm.

The young and unmarried ladies of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes wore their hair long and flowing; but after marriage it was the custom to cut it shorter, and wear some kind of head-dress, often with bands of pearls and gold. If a wife, however, dishonoured her lord, she was at once compelled to wear her hair cut quite short. The English women of this time are said to have been much captivated by the fine flowing hair of the Danish soldiers in the reigns of Edgar and Ethelred II.

In the middle ages the Goths cultivated long hair to a foppish extent; the married women curled and plaited the hair; but the maidens were said to remain, or be, in the hair, because they wore it in the natural state. The clergy seem to have been envious of the advantages of the laymen, for they did nothing but inveigh against the fashion; and at this time Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to pronounce excommunication against all who wore long hair. The clerical tonsure had been enjoined so early as A.D. 155 by Pope Anicetus, and perhaps still earlier by the Eastern Church; but it was evidently submitted to with a bad grace, and required very forcible denunciations to sustain the practice, although it was but natural that the badge of servitude to God should