Seville, have you not?” “O yes,” said the bookseller, not seeing the poet’s drift, “I have the Barber of Seville, very much at your ladyship’s service.”  The lady drove away, evidently much offended, but the beard afterwards disappeared.  Talking of barbers—­but they deserve a whole paper to themselves, and they shall have it, from me, some day, if I live a little longer.

* * * * *

In No. 331 of the Spectator, Addison tells us how his friend Sir Roger de Coverley, in Westminster Abbey, pointing to the bust of a venerable old man, asked him whether he did not think “our ancestors looked much wiser in their beards than we without them.  For my part,” said he, “when I am walking in my gallery in the country, and see my ancestors, who many of them died before they were my age, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many patriarchs, and at the same time looking upon myself as an idle, smock-faced young fellow.  I love to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs, and your Jacobs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings.”

* * * * *

During most part of last century close shaving was general throughout Europe.  In France the beard began to appear on the faces of Bonaparte’s “braves,” and the fashion soon extended to civilians, then to Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia, and lastly to England, where, after the gradual enlargement of the side-whiskers, the full beard is now commonly worn—­to the comfort and health of the wearers.

INDEX.

    Abbas the Great, 107. 
    Abraham:  jealous of his wives, 197;
      arrival in Egypt, 197;
      his servant in Sodom, 202;
      Ishmael’s wives, 203;
      the ‘ram caught in a thicket,’ 205;
      the idols, 251. 
    Abstinence, advantages of, 20. 
    Acrostic in the Bible, 251. 
    Adam and Eve, 191, 267, 268. 
    Addison’s Spectator, 359. 
    Advice to a conceited man, 44;
      gratuitous, 261. 
    Aesop—­see Esop. 
    Affenschwanz, etc., 192. 
    Aino Folk-Tales, 312. 
    Akhlak-i Jalaly, 23, 261. 
    Aladdin’s Lamp, 144. 
    Alakesa Katha, 176. 
    Alexander the Great, 253, 254. 
    Alfonsus, Petrus, 99, 100, 227, 231, 241. 
    Alfred the Great, 315. 
    Ali, Mrs. Meer Hassan, 270. 
    Ambition, vanity of, 254. 
    Amir Khusru, 18. 
    Ancestry, pride of, 22. 
    Androgynous nature of Adam, 191, 192. 
    Ant and Nightingale, 41. 
    Antar, the Arabian poet-hero, 46. 
    Anthologia, 259. 
    Anwari, the Persian poet, 106. 
    Aphorisms of Saadi, 7, 41, 44, 125;
      of the Jewish Fathers, 260. 
    Apparition, the golden, 136. 
    Arab and his camel, 82. 
    Arab Shah, 87. 
    Arabian lovers, 283, 294.