The image contains the following text:
0 Fashion! most mighty, but most capricious of god-
desses ! what strange vagaries playest thou with the sons
and daughters of men ! What is there so lovely, that thou
canst not, with a word, transform into an object of disgust
and abhorrence ? What so ugly and repulsive, but thou
hast the art to exalt it into a golden image for thy slaves
to worship, on pain of the fiery furnace of ridicule ? Could
a collection be made of the forms and figures, modes and
mummeries, which thou hast imposed on thy ofttimes too
willing votaries, it would task the most vivid imagination,
the most fantastic stretch of fancy, to furnish a description
of the incongruous contents !
CPerhaps no human feature has been more the subject of
Fashion's changeable humours than the Beard, of which it
is purposed to night to render some account, in the hope
of being able to prove that in no instance has she been
guilty of more deliberate offences against nature and rea-
V son! With this object in view, the structure, intention,
and uses of the Beard will be examined, and its artistic
relations indicated; its history will next be traced; and a
reply will then be briefly given to some objections against
wearing the Beard, not embraced in the preceding matter.
