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566 Chignons. 
“Hair in commerce” (by way of contrast, we are 
speaking of 1819), “ constitutes a very considerable article, 
especially since the fashion of wearing wigs has prevailed 
among all ranks, and has lately been extended to both 
sexes. In 18109, the hair of this and other countries was 
preferred to that of the southern climates of Italy, 
France, &c.” 
Descending the ladder of time, we find the author of the 
“ Curiosities of Literature” observing, “that our ancestors 
were not less vacillating, and perhaps more capriciously 
grotesque, though with less taste than the present gene- 
ration.” 
The sobriquet of Chignon is new, but the idea is scarcely 
a novel one. What after all zs new, as someone recently 
observed, except “hair-brushing by machinery and 
underground railroads?” We find, however, that this 
elaborate padding is but an old fashion revived, for 
it is recorded that in the reign of Charles II., “the hair- 
dress of the ladies was very elaborate; it was not only 
curled and frizzled with the nicest art, but it was also set 
off with certain artificial curls, then too emphatically 
known by the pathetic terms of ‘heart breakers and 
lovelocks.’ ” 
Last autumn we ourselves noted at a celebrated west- 
end hair-dresser’s, a young lady of prepossessing appear- 
ance. Some would write jolze a ravir. After all, however, 
the special beauty of the “Model” in the eyes of the 
customers of the hair-dresser consisted in a conspicuous 
addendum in the shape of a turret of dyed tow 
of the fashionable colour; this magnificent embellishment 
was the young lady’s fortune, inasmuch as she received 
no mean weekly salary for allowing tall apprentices to 
wave long curls over her majestically-arranged head-piece. 
We happened not long ago, to take up the -Quarterly 
Review for the year 1852, containing an amusing 
paper about Hair. Hair, observed the reviewer, is the 
only part of the body of which human volition°can curtail 
or elongate the proportions. He proceeded to remark that 
a redundancy of locks, or a closely cropped poll, have, at 
various epochs of the world’s history, symbolized the social 
conditions of mankind. For instance, of old the freedman 
and the slave were distinguished by the respective lengths, 
of their hair. At a later date, we may observe, the Puri- 
tans used to have a small wash-hand basin or wooden bowl 
inverted over their polls, and the hair thence protruding 
