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Under Charles the 2nd, the Beard dwindled into the
mere moustache, and then vanished. And when we con-
sider the French apery of that un-English court, it is no
wonder the Beard appeared too hold and manly an ensign
to he tolerated. It went out first among the upper classes
in London, and by slow degrees the sturdy country squires
and yeomen also yielded their free honors to the slavish
effeminate fashion, which, by the force of example, des-
cended even to the working classes, on whom it imposed
new burdens and some bodily diseases from which their
hardy frames had been hitherto exempt. It is to be
hoped, that when any one for the future talks about the
Beard being a foreign fashion, he will be reminded that
it is a good old English natural fashion, and that the
present custom of shaving was borrowed from France, at
a time when we had no credit to borrow anything else,
seeing that king, courtiers, and patriots, were all the pen-
sioned dependents of the French monarch ! The sooner
therefore we cease to shave, the sooner shall we wipe out
the remembrance of a disgraceful period of our history!
One amusing proof that the Beard continued to be worn
by the country people after its decline about the court, is
afforded by an anecdote of the notorious Judge Jeffries,
who, in his browbeating way, thus addressed a party before
him. " If your consience be as large as your Beard, fel-
low ! it must be a swinging one." To which the witness
