1827.] Historical and Literary. 599 



that the continual sight of it would prevent him from committing any act 

 that might disgrace its whiteness. Had the philosophers of Greece been 

 influenced as a body by such virtuous motive?, her comic writers and her 

 historians would have had less cause to accuse them of fraud, and avarice, 

 and treachery, and almost every other vice, that degrades and defiles the 

 purity of human nature. 



Before I take leave of my friends in Greece, I cannot help noticing 

 a singular phenomenon, which is said to have occurred in one of its- 

 colonial dependencies, and which Alexander Sanderson the "Alexander 

 ah Alexandro" of Waverley has noticed, in his "Genial Days," without 

 stating how he came by the knowledge of it. T have hunted for it in 

 vain in various classic authors, and therefore partly suspect it to be an 

 experiment made by my friend Sawney, in one of his drunken moments, 

 on the credulity of his readers. " It is a singular fortune," says he, 

 "which attends the priestess of Minerva, at Halicarnassus. As often as 

 any misfortune is going to befall the Amphictyan colonists, who are settled 

 in that country, a large beard sprouts upon her chin, and, by its magni- 

 tude, gives warning of the extent of mischief which is to follow. A simi- 

 lar phenomenon is not uncommon in Caria; the inhabitants know, that, 

 when the females, who are dedicated to the service of the gods, have hairs 

 growing in their cheeks and chins, they are capable of divining future 

 events." How the Carian ladies came by this strange qualification, or 

 how they lost it, I pretend not to say. Sawney may have learned the 

 story from some of their descendants, who sailed in a sieve from Aleppo 

 to Scotland for the witches, who unfolded the secrets of futurity to Mac- 

 beth, must have been of the same complexion and clan, if we are to credit 

 the language in which he addresses them : 



-You should be women ! 



And yet your beards forbid me to interpret 

 That you are so.'* 



But T abstain from saying more on bearded women at present, as I 

 intend to dedicate a page to their honour, before I bring this historical 

 compilation to a close. 



It is evident from several passages in the most esteemed Latin authors, 

 that the early Romans were as averse as most other savages to the use of 

 the razor. The large white beard of Xuma is extolled more than once 

 by the complimentary muse of Virgil : and the honest beard of his sub- 

 jects is "familiar as household words" in the mouth of the caustic Juvenal. 

 Indeed that satyrist assures us, that the first inhabitants of Rome looked 

 upon the beard with so much honour, that they visited with condign 

 punishment any disrespect shewn to it by the junior members of the com- 

 munity. The same feeling prevailed for more than five hundred years 

 among their descendants, and led them to burden the chins of their gods 

 very lavishly with these hairy appendages. With the exception of 

 Apollo, all the images of their gods were well bearded and, strange as it 

 may appear, even the images of two of their goddesses were sometimes 

 similarly decorated. It will perhaps excite a smile in the unlearned reader 

 to be informed, that Venus was one and Fortune the other of these .extra- 

 ordinarily gifted female divinities. Macrobius has left us a description of 

 the former, and Augustine of the latter, with the additional information, 

 that she was invoked for no gift so often as that of a prolix and handsome 

 beard. We learn from Persius, that when a devotee particularly wished 



