J828.J Historical and Literary. 257 



close, so that no giterne could be shut up more closely in its case/' and 

 to keep it there till the next morning, when it was taken out with even 

 corners, and arranged in the mode which the wearer thought most 

 becoming to his form and dignity. He points out, with considerable 

 glee, the practical absurdities of which a formal doctor of his acquaint- 

 ance had been guilty, in endeavouring to trim his beard according to the 

 latest fashions. He had made his mustachoes as straight and as level as a 

 ruler, and had cut his beard as just and as even as a privet hedge, giving 

 to it the form of a broom, narrow at the top and broad at the bottom. 

 Whether he was accustomed to give it the same " starching and lan- 

 dering," which Hudibras was in the habit of bestowing upon the barbal 

 parts of his face, I cannot pretend to divine ; but I think it not impro- 

 bable that he did, from the allusions to the practice which I have found 

 in other Spanish writers of the seventeenth century. With that cen- 

 tury, however, the glory of their beards departed. At the commence- 

 ment of the eighteenth century, a new dynasty entered upon the govern- 

 ment of the country, hostile at once to the liberties and to the beards of 

 its inhabitants. Philip the Fifth brought with him from France a shaved 

 chin ; and, by the influence of his example, soon made his grandees as 

 beardless as himself. When the king and his grandees thus renounced 

 the custom of their forefathers, it became almost imperative upon " the 

 rogues and peasant slaves" of the country to renounce it too. They did 

 not, however, submit to the innovation either so speedily or so patiently 

 as was expected of them loud were the murmurings and deep the 

 resentment which it created and those murmurings and that resent- 

 ment are perpetuated in a proverb, which ascribes all the losses of Spain 

 during the last century to the loss of its bearded dignity. ( ' Desdc que 

 no hay barba, no hay mas alma" But on this subject it is painful to 

 dilate. Who that recollects the early glories of Spain her colleges, 

 abounding with philosophers and men of letters, at a period when neither 

 colleges, nor philosophers, nor men of letters were to be found in any 

 other region of Europe, her princes, and her people, voluntarily cir- 

 cumscribing their mutual prerogatives for the benefit of each other, and 

 generously defending the distressed victims of religious persecution 

 against the sanguinary assaults of the Church of Rome, at a time when 

 the vengeance of that church generally struck with unerring certainty, 

 her long and arduous struggle with the fanatic valour and insatiable ambi- 

 tion of her Moslem invaders, who threatened to render the West as 

 desolate as they had already rendered the East, and her memorable and 

 immortal triumph over them at last by her own unaided and indomitable 

 spirit her enthusiastic love" of ' enterprise and daring, which added a 

 new quarter to the world, and gave to science a new theatre for its dis- 

 coveries, and to civil and religious liberty a new arena for its beneficent 

 triumphs ; who, I say, that recollects all these early glories of 

 Spain, and that sees the brutalizing ignorance, intolerance, apathy, 

 and slavery, which now degrade her in their stead, would not 

 rejoice and be glad, if he could attribute the existence of such demo- 

 ralizing evils to the same cause which is assigned for it in the national 

 proverb ? The expulsion of the razor would then do more for the moral 

 regeneration of Spain than the expulsion of all the priests of prey, who 

 now batten on its entrails ; and the restoration of the beard would be 

 more successful than the restoration of the Cortes in regaining for her 

 her ancient weight in the scale of nations. H. W. 



M.M. New Series. VOL.V: No..27 2 L 



