WIGS.

CHAPTER IV

The introduction of the ample perriwig has always been regarded as the most ambitious effort of tonsorial art. And as it rarely happens that any one mind is capable of perfecting a discovery by a single effort; so the honour of conceiving the beau ideal of a fully-developed wig can scarcely, with justice, be claimed by any particular artist. Like the Absolutism, of which it may be regarded as the symbol, it was the growth of time, and expanded to its fullest dimensions under the favouring rule of the Grand Monarque. During that long reign, extending over the greater part of a century, the Wig sat supreme upon the brows of one of the great Princes of the Earth, at whose nod the nations trembled; whose wrath was fire and desolation, as the ruined towns of the Palatinate may still bear witness (Rex dixit, et factum est); whose ambition was fed with war and conquest; but whose heart was all as false as the smooth curls which counterfeited the graces of perpetual youth.

The true morphological development of the wig appears to have been after this fashion. First of all a small portion of artificial hair was cunningly inserted among the natural curls, to eke out the economy of Nature; this suggested the idea of two supplementary bunches; then a third was added; these in turn were connected by a coif, and the result was the perruque à calotte. It is recorded of the Cardinal de Richelieu that he was the first to introduce this form of peruke at court. It formed part of the attire of the Duke of Bedford, so whimsically described by De Grammont to Charles II. “Sir,” said he, “I had the honour to see him embark in his coach, with his asthma, and country equipage, his perruque à calotte neatly tied with a yellow riband, and his old-fashioned hat covered with oil-skin, which became him uncommonly well.” The first appearance of Louis Quatorze in his grand peruke is not duly set forth with historic accuracy; but the important part it played in the daily routine of court etiquette is well known. The chief valet slept in the king’s apartment and called him at the appointed hour. Then it was announced in the ante-chamber that the king was awake. In came the members of the royal family to wish him “good morning;” after them, the first gentleman of the chamber, the grand master of the wardrobe and other officers bringing the king’s dresses. From a silver gilt vessel the valet pours spirits of wine on the royal hands, and a duke presents the holy water. After a very short religious service, the king’s perruques are laid before him, and choice is made of one most pleasing to his majesty, which is subsequently elevated to the head by the king’s own hand. Other ceremonies disposed of, the king must be shaved: one holds the basin, another adjusts the shaving-cloth and applies the razor; a soft sponge dipped in spirit of wine is passed over the royal face, and afterwards pure water in the same manner, which completes the operation, the chief valet all the time holding the looking-glass. At all the mysteries of la première entrée, the grand entrée, and the dressing of the king by the courtiers, the ceremony of the breakfast, and the state receptions, the peruke is present. But before proceeding to the council, the chief valet furnishes another wig for the king’s pate: it goes to mass with him, attends him at dinner, accompanies him to the abode of Madame de Maintenon and elsewhere; comes home in good time, and is present at the supper au grand couvert: then bows to the ladies and courtiers in the grand saloon, and returns with the king for a while to his own apartments to witness the felicities of a king in private life. About midnight again all is bustle and preparation; the chief barber arranges the dressing table in the king’s chamber; a cold collation is put by the bedside, ready to the king’s lips, should he wake with an appetite in the night; the courtiers are assembled, and the king enters. He hands his hat and gloves to some favoured nobleman who is present to receive them, the sword by knightly hands is carried to the dressing-table, the almoner holds the wax lights and repeats the prayer, the watch and reliquary are given in charge to a valet de chambre, blue ribbon, cravat and waistcoat are dispensed with, two lacqueys remove the garters, two more are required to draw off the stockings, two pages present slippers, and the Dauphin the chemise de nuit; the king bows, the courtiers retire, and the grand coucher is finished. Now the hair has to be combed and arranged; one valet holds the looking-glass and the other a light; the bed is aired, and the Wig goes to bed with the king; the chief valet draws the curtains, and, within the secret recesses of that impenetrable shade, the perriwig is exchanged for a nightcap, and the royal hand of Louis presenting it outside the curtains, it is consigned to the care of its trusty guardian, the chief valet, who then locks the doors, and lays down on a bed prepared for him in the same chamber. Good night, Monsieur Bontemps.—What if some of these wonderful wigs could publish their “Secret Memoirs,” what a treasury of scandal it would disclose for the gratification of the pickers-up of “unconsidered trifles!”

Binette was the great perruquier of that Augustan age. Without his aid neither king nor courtiers could go forth in becoming fashion. His carriage and running footmen were constantly to be seen passing to and fro the streets of Paris, in attendance on the nobility. In 1656, Louis le Grand appointed forty wig-makers to wait upon the Court, and in 1673 a corporation of Barbiers-perruquiers, consisting of 200 members, was established to supply the commonalty of Paris. At one time the minister Colbert, judging from the large sum of money remitted from France to foreign countries for hair, that the balance of trade was against his own country, was desirous of introducing some kind of cap to take the place of the wig, and spoke to the king on the subject; but the wig-makers took the alarm, memorialized the king, and showed from statistics that the profit on wigs exported from Paris more than equalled the sum paid to foreigners for the material; so that Colbert’s project was laid aside, and wigs and wig-makers flourished more than ever. The number of licenses was now increased to 850, and the members known under the title of barbiers-perruquiers, baigneurs-etuvistes. The corporation had its provost, wardens, and syndics, which were appointed by letters patent, and the offices were hereditary. The king bestowed on this corporation the sole right of dealing in hair, either by wholesale or retail; of making and selling powder or pomatum; preparations to remove the hair; drops for the cure of toothache, &c. The use of powder was not at first sanctioned by the monarch, but at last he yielded to the wishes of his courtiers, and permitted a trifling quantity to be sprinkled on his own perukes. Not only was the wig a thing of magnitude, it possessed also considerable weight; a stylish wig weighed rather more than a couple of pounds, and was worth, according to the best authorities, a thousand crowns. Light hair was most esteemed, and fetched at times as much as eighty francs the ounce. To prevent imposition, it was ordered that no second-hand wigs should be sold, except by certain dealers on the Quai de l’Horloge. When these costly wigs were first introduced the wearers appeared in the streets, in all sorts of weather, with their hats in their hands, so anxious were they not to disarrange their well-ordered curls. Menage has preserved a poem of that period which ridicules the custom, and concludes thus:

“Critics, how narrow are your views,

Who thus the prudent youth abuse!

By a just value he is led

Both of his wig and of his head;

The one he knows was dearly bought,

The other would not fetch a groat.”

Bernini, the sculptor, once ventured to arrange the monarch’s curls in accordance with his own notions of classic dignity. He had been sent for, from Rome, at great expense, to superintend some additions to the Louvre, and was engaged on a bust of Louis, when perceiving that the king’s forehead was too much over-shadowed with curls, he thrust them back, saying to the king, “Your Majesty’s face should be seen by every one.” This originated the frisure à la Bernin.

Combing these elaborate curls was the envied occupation of the beaux. In that inimitable dramatic sketch by Molière, “Les Précieuses Ridicules,” which resembles a clever etching by a master-hand, it will be remembered that Mascarille, the pretended marquis, combs his curls in the presence of the ladies with the usual blandishments. The scented powder with which these wigs were besprinkled was selected with the nicest judgment and at great cost. In this respect also, Mascarille, who had made free with his master’s clothes, the better to make love in the court fashion to the fair precieuse, was as well furnished as any of the court gallants.

Mascarille.

Et celle-la? (Il donne à sentir les cheveux poudrés de sa perruque.)

Madelon.

Elle est tout à fait de qualité; le sublime en est touché délicieusement.

Well might Gorgibus, in choleric mood exclaim:

Ces pendardes-là, avec leur pommade, ont, je pense, envie de me ruiner. Je ne vois partout que blancs d’œufs, lait virginal, et mille autres brimborions que je ne connais point. Elles ont usé, depuis que nous sommes ici, le lard d’une douzaine de couchons, pour le moins; et quatre valets vivraient tous les jours des pieds de moutons qu’elles emploient.

We are not well enough informed in such manners to know if these family recipes be worthy to be compared with the “capons greaz” which good Queen Bess carried with her, as we learn from Nichol’s “Progresses,” to make the hair to shine like a mallard’s wing. We own to a natural dread of such domestic manufactures, and always greatly admired that fine piece of strategy on the part of Dr. Primrose, when observing his daughters busily concocting some compound over the fire—and informed by little Dick of its true nature—he grases the poker and capsizes the ingredients.

The nomenclature of wigs is very ample, a complete system of classification might be adopted, and genus and species discriminated with the greatest nicety; there were Wigs Military, Legal, Ecclesiastical, and Infantile; we can only find room for a few varieties:

We shall only be following the usual course of Fashion if we pass from the French Court to Whitehall. In England the ladies are said to have been beforehand with the gentlemen in the great Wig movement. Pepys writes (1662), “By and bye came La Belle Pierce to see my wife, and to bring her a pair of perruques of hair as the fashion now is for ladies to wear, which are pretty, and one of my wife’s own hair, or else I should not endure them.” The year following Pepys made a similar investment on his own account—“November 3, Home, and by and bye comes Chapman, the perriwig maker, and upon my liking it (the wig), without more ado, I went up, and then he cut off my haire, which went a little to my heart at present to part with it; but it being over, and my perriwig on, I paid him £3, and away went he with my own haire to make up another of; and I by and bye went abroad, after I had caused all my maids to look upon it, and they concluded it do become me, though Jane was mightily troubled for my parting with my own hair, and so was Besse.

“November 8, Lord’s Day.—To church, where I found that my coming in a perriwig did not prove so strange as I was afraid it would, for I thought that all the church would presently have cast their eyes on me, but I found no such things.”

The same minute chronicler informs us that the Duke of York put on a perriwig in February, 1663, and that he saw the king in one for the first time the following April.

By command of Charles II., members of the University of Cambridge were forbidden to wear perriwigs; and, on another occasion, when a chaplain was preaching before him in a wig, he bid the Duke of Monmouth, then chancellor of the university, to cause the statutes concerning decency of apparel to be more strictly enforced. To be deprived of their wigs was a clerical grievance. In France, a turbulent priest at the cathedral of Beauvais insisted on his right to wear one at mass, but was hindered from doing so, when he solemnly placed the objectionable wig in the hands of a notary at the church doors, and protested against the indignity which had been put upon him.

The year of the Great Plague was one of the most terrible in our annals—Death smote his victims by thousands—the voice of lamentation and mourning stilled for a time the gaieties of a dissolute court. The men of fashion became alarmed lest the poison of the plague might lurk insidiously in the curls of their wigs. Pepys entertained the same fear:—“September 3, (1664).—Up, and put on my coloured silk suit, very fine, and my new perriwig, bought a good while since, but durst not wear, because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to perriwigs, for nobody will buy any hair for fear of infection, that it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.”

Wigs were first worn by barristers about 1670. The judges were at first somewhat opposed to the innovation, as suited only to fops, and unbecoming so learned a profession; and some of the more zealous leaders of the fashion were not suffered to plead in their new attire. Time has long since reconciled us to the forensic head-dress; and if the public be at all sceptical as to the merits of horse-hair, the rare talents it has fostered would alone command respect. Custom and precedent have now securely enthroned the wig in the Halls of Justice, and authority looks with suspicion on any attempt to interfere with its prerogative. Lord Campbell tells us that when he argued the great Privilege Case, and had to speak for sixteen hours, “he obtained leave to speak without a wig; but under the condition that it was not to be drawn into a precedent.”

As early as 1654, Evelyn had been shocked at the discovery that ladies of fashion painted their cheeks; and Pepys records that in the galleries at Whitehall he beheld the ladies of honour “just for all the world like men with doublets buttoned up to the breast, and with perriwigs and hats.” How closely French fashions were imitated at Whitehall we may judge from an entry in Evelyn’s diary:—“Following his majesty this morning through the gallery, I went with the few who attended him into the Duchess of Portsmouth’s dressing-room, where she was in her morning loose garment, her maids combing her, newly out of her bed, his majesty and the gallants standing about her.” Although modesty, which ever accompanies good taste, had fled the court of Charles, some fine examples might be selected from the Court Beauties, as illustrating the special beauty of a natural and becoming coiffure. De Grammont has not failed to notice the hair of La Belle Hamilton, which was well set, and fell with ease into that natural order which is so difficult to imitate. Miss Jenning’s hair was of a most beauteous flaxen, adorning the brightest complexion that ever was seen. And the portraits of Nell Gwynn show that sprightly damsel with short ringlets about the temples, massed like bunches of grapes, in most tempting clusters.

Among the smaller works of art which the perruquier produced for the fair sex, we may mention a description of false hair set on wires, so as to stand out like wings from each side of the head; and the merkin, so called, which was arranged in a group of curls at each side of the face, small over the forehead and thence increasing like the lower part of a pyramid.

During the brief reign of James II. wigs grew larger still, and false hair put the natural ornament of a man’s head completely in the shade. Holme, writing in 1688, assures his readers that the custom of wearing wigs, then so much used by the generality of men, “was quite contrary to the custom of their forefathers, who got estates, loved their wives, and wore their own hair,” and adds pathetically, “in these days there be no such things.” The love-lock was soon engrafted on the wig, to which allusion is made in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Cupid’s Revenge:”

“He lay in gloves all night, and this morning I

Brought him a new perriwig with a lock at it.”

There was, also, a long perriwig in vogue with a pole-lock or suffloplin, as the perruquiers termed it, the prototype of the giant pig-tails, once so dear to the army and navy, who never turn tail on the enemy. We read, likewise, of the travelling or campaign-wig, with long knots or twisted tails tied with ribbon, depending from the bottom of the wig laterally—technically styled “knots or bobs, or a dildo on each side with a curled forehead.”

In the next reign wigs still went on increasing in size. Combing the curls in public, or when flirting with the ladies, was esteemed haut ton. Ivory or tortoiseshell combs of large size were carried in the gentlemen’s pockets, with which they imitated Mascarille, we make no doubt, very abominably. They certainly manage these things much better in France: in fashion we are content to be servile imitators of the French, and the copy is usually very inferior to the original. Madame Sevigné, in one of her charming letters, gossiping about the Duchess de Bourbon, writes:—“Rien n’est plus plaisant que d’assister à sa toilette, et de la voir se coiffer; j’y fus l’autre jour: elle s’éveilla à midi et demi, prit sa robe de chambre, vint se coiffer, et manger un pain au pot; elle se frise et se poudre elle-même, elle mange en même tems; les mêmes doigts tiennent alternativement la houppe et le pain au pot; elle mange sa poudre et graisse ses cheveux; le tout ensemble fait un fort bon déjeuné et une charmante coiffure.” To this age belongs the extraordinary head-dress usually called a commode: the hair was combed upwards from off the forehead, and upon this was built a huge pile of ribbons and lace, arranged in tiers, and over all a scarf or veil drooping on the neck and shoulders. It rivalled the fabled turrets which crown the head of Cybele, and was worn by Queen Mary herself as part of the court costume. In England these were Halcyon days for wig-makers. In later years wigs were more generally worn by all classes; but, for the most part, they were wigs for the million, more moderate in their pretensions, till at last they dwindled down to a mere apology for a wig. The quantity of hair alone in a wig for a nobleman or gentleman in those high and palmy days of wig-making was more than ten natural crops could furnish. The material was most costly. In 1700, a young country girl received £60 for her head of hair; and the grey locks of an old woman, after death, sold for fifty pounds: the ordinary price of a wig was about forty pounds. Full-bottomed wigs, invented by one Duviller, to conceal, it is said, a want of symmetry in the shoulders of the Dauphin, were appropriated by the learned professions and those who studied to look uncommonly grave and sagacious.

“Physic of old her entry made

Beneath the immense full-bottom’s shade,

While the gilt cane, with solemn pride,

To each sagacious nose applied,

Seemed but a necessary prop

To bear the weight of wig at top.”

Children, too, wore wigs; and, if unprovided with so necessary an article of dress, the hair was combed and curled, so as to look as much like a wig as possible.

Archbishop Tillotson was the first of our prelates who wore a wig. In one of his sermons he writes: “I can remember when ministers generally, whatever their text was, did either find or make occasion to reprove the sin of long hair; and if they saw any one in the congregation guilty in that kind, they would point him out particularly, and let fly at him with great zeal.”

The reign of Queen Anne saw the magnitude of the wig somewhat diminished, but the variety of wigs in fashion was increased. Steele’s wig at one time formed a heavy item in his expenditure. His large black perriwig cost him (we are supposing it was paid for) as much as forty guineas. Swift had a fine state wig for grand occasions waiting his coming to St. James’s, as did poor Vanessa. Colley Cibber’s wig, in which he played a favourite character, was of such noble proportions, that it was brought upon the stage in a sedan by two chairmen. How it was that Colonel Brett desired to possess this formidable wig, at any price, must be told in Cibber’s own words: “Possibly, the charms of our theatrical nymphs might have had some share in drawing him thither; yet, in my observation, the most visible cause of his first coming was a more sincere passion he had conceived for a fair full-bottom’d perriwig, which I then wore in my first play of the Fool in Fashion. * * * Now, whatever contempt philosophers may have for a fine perriwig, my friend, who was not to despise the world, but to live in it, knew very well that so material an article of dress upon the head of a man of sense, if it became him, could never fail of drawing to him a more partial regard and benevolence than could possibly be hoped for in an ill-made one,—terms were offered—and it ended in an agreement to finish our bargain that night over a bottle.” “That single bottle was the sire of many a jolly dozen,” at their subsequent meetings, as he explains further on.

The tie-wig, an abridgment of the long curled perriwig, was worn by many, but was not considered court dress. Lord Bolingbroke, having to wait upon the queen in haste, once went to court in a tie-wig, which so offended Queen Anne, that she said to those about her, “I suppose his lordship will come to court the next time in a nightcap.” Swift writes, (1712): “As prince Eugene was going with Mr. Secretary to court, Mr. Hoffman, the Emperor’s resident, said to his highness that it was not proper to go to court without a long wig, and his was a tied up one. “Now,” says the prince, “I know not what to do, for I never had a long perriwig in my life; and I have sent to all my valets and footmen, to see whether any of them had one, that I might borrow it; but none of them had any.” But the secretary said “was a thing of no consequence, and only observed by gentlemen ushers.” After the battle of Ramillies, the name of the Ramillie-wig was given to a wig with a long tapering tail, plaited and tied, with a great bow at the top, and a smaller one at the bottom.”

The little incident of Lord Petre depriving Mrs. Fermor of a ringlet gave rise to Pope’s poem “The Rape of the Lock.” Belinda’s head-dress is thus described:

“This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,

Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind

In equal curls, and well conspired to deck

With shining ringlets the smooth ivory neck.

Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,

And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.”

The poet explains how these “mazy ringlets,” owed much of their beauty to a rigorous discipline:

“Was it for this you took such constant care

The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare?

For this your locks in paper durance bound,

For this with torturing irons wreathed around?

For this with fillets strained your tender head,

And bravely bore the double loads of lead?”

Belinda’s lock, in imitation of the lost tresses of Berenice, is translated to the heavenly regions:

“A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,

And drew behind a radiant trail of hair.”

A compliment to Belinda appropriately concludes the poem:

“When these fair suns shall set, as set they must,

And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,

This lock the Muse shall consecrate to fame,

And ’midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name.”

In Swift’s verses called “Death and Daphne,” we have a metaphorical description of a beau’s wig:

“From her own head Megara takes

A perriwig of twisted snakes,

Which in the nicest fashion curl’d,

(Like toupées of this upper world),

With flour of sulphur powder’d well,

That graceful on his shoulders fell.

An adder of the sable kind

In line direct hung down behind.”

Both old and young fops carried the follies of the wig mania to a most ridiculous extent. The author of the “London Spy” introduces us to a smart young fellow “with a wheelbarrow full of perriwig on;” and that impudent fellow, Tom Brown, in his “Letters from the Dead to the Living,” writing of a certain beau, styled Beau Whittaker, says, “His perriwig was large enough to have loaded a camel, and he had bestowed upon it at least a bushel of powder;” and speaking elsewhere of another fop, with a perriwig of the same dimensions, he observes, “If Nature had indulged our primitive parents with such an extraordinary production, they would have had little reason to have blushed at, or been ashamed of their nakedness.” To speak seriously, if the wig did not quite clothe the body like a tunic, it more than concealed the head. The malicious spy we have quoted above comes across another fopling in a fine wig, and moralizes after this manner: “His head is a fool’s egg hid in a nest of hair.” If we accompany him to Man’s Coffee House, we shall see, “a gaudy crowd of Tom Essences walking backwards and forwards with their hats in their hands, not daring to convert them to their intended use, lest it should put the foretops of their wigs into some disorder; their whole exercise being to charge and discharge their nostrils, and keep their perriwigs in proper order.” The fortune of a life not unfrequently turned upon the imposing—we should have said the captivating appearance of a wig: unluckily in every lottery there are many blanks; and Addison tells of one inveterate fortune-hunter, who “had combed and powdered at the ladies for thirty years.”

There were some inconveniences attending the use of wigs. There was no such thing as walking forth to enjoy fresh air and exercise except in the finest weather, if attired as became a gentleman; to be carried about by chairmen, and jolted in a sort of trunk or band-box was a most unenviable distinction. If a dark cloud hung over the Park or the Mall, away hurried the magnificent perriwigs—away flew the pretty women in their hoods and ribbons. Gay, in his “Trivia,” sounds the note of warning:

“When suffocating mists obscure the morn,

Let the worst wig, long used to storms be worn;

This knows the powdered footman, and with care

Beneath his flapping hat secures his hair.

* * * in vain you scow’r

Thy wig alas! uncurl’d, admits the show’r.

So fierce Alecto’s snaky tresses fell,

When Orpheus charm’d the vig’rous powers of hell

Or thus hung Glaucus beard, with briny dew

Clotted and straight, when first his am’rous view

Surprised the bathing fair.”

Swift, in the “City Shower,” laughs at the distressed wigs:

“Here various kinds, by various fortunes led Commence acquaintance underneath a shed. Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.”

To be caught in the rain was a terrible ordeal for the curls; but accidents by fire were still more calamitous. At a display of fireworks, an old writer says, the spectators screwed themselves up in the balconies to avoid the fireworks, “which instantly assaulted the perukes of the gallants and the merkins of the madams.” Wigs, too, being of considerable value, were frequently stolen from the head. Gay gives an instance of a very artful dodge:

“Where the mob gathers swiftly shoot along,

Nor idly mingle in the noisy throng.

*****

Nor is thy flaxen wig with safety worn.

High on the shoulder, in the basket borne,

Lurks the sly boy, whose hand to rapine bred,

Plucks off the curling honours of the head.”

To be brought into actual contact with a powdered beau, was reckoned one of the misadventures which a prudent man would wish to avoid.

“You’ll sometimes meet a fop of nicest tread,

Whose mantling peruke veils his empty head,

At every step he dreads the wall to lose,

And risks, to save a coach, his red-heeled shoes;

Him, like the miller, pass with caution by,

Lest from his shoulders clouds of powder fly.”

While the coarser sex revelled in all the luxury of full perriwigs, we may be sure the fair sex bestowed as great attention on their hair. If enterprises of great moment were undertaken by the wigs, there was fearful slaughter of human hearts from the masked batteries of the ladies’ smiles. In “Love’s Bill of Mortality,” given at length in the Spectator, we read of one, “Jack Freelove, murdered by Melissa in her hair.”

“The toilet,” says Addison, “is their great scene of business, and the right adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives.”

“At her toilet she puts on every toy

That ladies use when eager to destroy;

Three hours by the clock, (and some say four),

She sat in polishing her form all o’er,

And culling arrows from her fatal store.”

The resources of a lady’s toilet were too numerous to be brought within the compass of Cowley’s verse. He declines

“To relate

The strength and riches of their state—

The powder, patches, and the pins,

The ribbons, jewels, and the rings,

The lace, the paint, and warlike things,

That make up all their magazines.”

And, fortunately, what he despaired of accomplishing lies beyond the limits of our present subject. But the time spent at the toilet was not all dedicated to dress and the tire-woman. Addison’s skilful pen will supply an apt illustration; “Sempronia is at present the most professed admirer of the French nation; but is so modest as to admit her visitants no farther than her toilet. It is a very odd sight that beautiful creature makes when she is talking politics, with her tresses flowing about her shoulders, and examining that face in the glass, which does such execution upon the standers-by. How prettily does she divide her discourse between her woman and her visitants! What sprightly transitions does she make from an opera or a sermon to an ivory comb or a pin-cushion! How have I been pleased to see her interrupted in an account of her travels by a message to her footman, and holding her tongue in the midst of a moral reflection by applying the tip of it to a patch!”

“Vanessa held Montaigne and read,

Whilst Mrs. Susan combed her head,”

The Duchess of Sunderland, daughter of the celebrated Duchess of Marlborough, and like her mother, says Horace Walpole, conspicuous for her long and beautiful hair; was a great politician, and used, when combing it, to receive the visits of those whose vote and interest she sought to influence. While Queen Anne dressed, prayers used to be read in an outer room, and once ordering the door to be shut while she shifted, the chaplain stopped. The queen sent to ask why he did not proceed. He replied, “He would not whistle the word of God through the key-hole.” The author of the “Reminiscences” adds, that Queen Caroline was wont to dispatch her toilet and hear prayers in the same fashion. The Duchess of Marlborough on one occasion was somewhat prodigal of her fine fair hair, of which she had the greatest abundance; for being engaged at her toilet, in a fit of anger towards the Duke, she cut off those commanding tresses and flung them in his face.

The beauties of those days made politics, the card table, and the toilet, their chief study, and

“Thought the life of ev’ry lady

Should be one continued play-day—

Balls, and masquerades, and shows,

Visits, plays, and powdered beaus.”

The wits and poets of that brilliant era, have hit off the manners of the times, and all the paraphernalia of patches, fans, hoops, and head-dresses, by a few touches of the pen, with such airy grace and lightness in the true spirit of comic revelry, and with keenest irony, that more modern efforts in the same style appear, by comparison, coarse and clumsy. In our own day one would think the artists all copied from the same model,

“Small waist, wide flounces, and a face divine,

Wretchedly foolish, and extremely fine.”

The ladies’ head-dresses, which, in the time of William III., had shot up to a height which would have astonished even De Grammont’s Princess of Babylon, had now fallen many degrees. Addison remarks, “some ten years ago, the female part of our species were much taller than the men. The women were of such an enormous stature, “that we appeared as grasshoppers before them.” At present the whole sex is in a manner dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species. I remember several ladies who were very near seven feet high that at present want some inches of five. How they came to be thus curtailed I could never learn:”

Instead of home-spun coifs were seen

Good pinners edged with Colberteen.

Old ladies continued for some time longer to adhere to the huge head-dresses, which supplied Lady Wortley Montague with a bit of raillery for her “Town Eclogues:”

At chapel shall I wear the morn away?

Who there appears at these unmodish hours

But ancient matrons with their frizzled towers.

Queen Anne in the latter years of her reign wore her hair in a simple, graceful style, well suited to her quiet nature, with clusters of curls at the back of the neck; nor was any hair-powder permitted to sully the brightness of her chesnut ringlets. Her sweet voice seems still to plead for her with posterity, and to be remembered with something like affection, when the splendid victories of the great Marlborough are losing somewhat of their lustre on the page of history. The fruits of industry and the blessings of peace are too precious to be weighed against the glories of war. But, who can look at the portraits of Marlborough, with the long curls of the wig resting on the cuirass, without feeling there was truth in the saying of a foreigner, “That his looks were full as conquering as his sword.”

How to wear a wig was part of the education of a man of the world, not to be learned from books. Those who know what witchcraft there is in the handling of a fan, what dexterity in the “nice conduct of a clouded cane,” will imagine the wits and gentlemen of old did not suffer the wig to overshadow their temples with perpetual gloom, like the wreath of smoke which overhangs our Modern Babylon. And many a country squire must have tried in vain to catch the right toss of the head; to sport a playful humour in those crisp curls; or to acquire the lofty carriage of the foretop, or the significant trifling with some obtrusive lock; and felt as awkward in his new wig as a tailor on horseback, or a fat alderman with a dress sword dangling between his legs. There must have been something truly ridiculous in the prostrations of the perriwig-pated fop, who

Returns the diving bow he did adore,

Which with a shag casts all the hair before,

Till he with full decorum brings it back,

And rises with a water-spaniel shake.

For many years wigs were worn of the natural colour of the hair, but about 1714 it became customary to have them bleached; this, however, was not found to answer, as they soon turned of a disagreeable shade, so that recourse was had to hair-powder, the use of which soon became general. At the accession of George 1st, it is mentioned that only two ladies wore hair-powder. White perukes were characteristic of the early Georgian era. About the same period we notice that one side only of the wig was frequently tied together into a sort of club which hung down upon the chest in a very lop-sided fashion. A few years later bag-wigs were in vogue; when first introduced in France they were only worn en déshabille; in a short time, however, they came to be regarded as the most essential part of the full-dress costume of a beau. The French bag-wig, as it was styled, when it first made its appearance among us, was called in ridicule a fan-tail, and said to resemble the winged cap of Mercury; the women likened the bag-wigs to asses’ ears, and the men retorted by allusion to the horns which were visible in a lady’s head-gear. The tu quoque has ever been the ready argument with both sexes.

Follies they have so numberless the store,

That only we who love them can have more.

In some satirical verses, published 1753, the contour of the wig, set off from the face, is clearly shown:

“Let a well-frizzled wig be set off from his face;

With a bag quite in taste, from Paris just come,

That was made and tied up by Monsieur Frisson;

With powder quite grey—then his head is complete;—”

The tie-wig, which Lord Bolingbroke helped to bring into fashion, was a very stiff and solid affair, as compared with the long curled perriwigs which preceded them. The curls appear as if hardened into rollers; and the pendant lumps of hair, looped and tied at the ends, as if modelled after the fashion of the proud horse-tails, turned up and bound with straw, at a fair. It would be as difficult to determine why such cumbrous wigs were tolerated without any beauty to recommend them, as to say why George I. chose such ugly German mistresses. Was it because, like certain kinds of old china, deformity was pleasing? The king’s favourites might possibly resemble the china, but the wigs were certainly not as frail. Horace Walpole has left us a lively description of Lord Sandwich’s tie-wig, in a letter to Sir H. Mann, 1745: “I would speak to our new ally, and your old acquaintance, Lord Sandwich, to assist in it; but I could have no hope of getting at his ear, for he has put on such a first-rate tie-wig, on his admission to the admiralty-board, that nothing without the lungs of a boatswain can ever think to penetrate the thickness of the curls. I think, however, it does honour to the dignity of ministers: when he was but a patriot, his wig was not of half its present gravity.” We have yet to notice the wig with the long queue, “small by degrees and beautifully less”—the drollest and most awkward of all additions to the human form since the long tails in Kent were inflicted on the men by a miracle, as a punishment for sticking fish tails to some monks’ garments.

“As I live!

The hair of one is tied behind,

And plaited like a womankind,

While t’other carries on his back,

In silken bag, a monstrous pack:

But pray, what’s that much like a whip,

Which with the air does waving skip

From side to side, and hip to hip?

It is a modish pig-tail wig.”

When the Czar Peter was in Holland he made free with a burgomaster’s wig in a very characteristic manner. He was at church: the service was somewhat dull, and his head getting cold, when, observing a good warm wig on the head of a fat functionary near him, he clapped it on his own pate, and did not restore it until the service was over. Churchill, the poet, used to declare that his career at Oxford was cut short by a large bushy wig, which added such a sage solemnity to the grave aspect of the examiner’s face, that he could not control his laughter. Churchill had his jest, and was rejected at the examination. Garrick himself was once driven from the stage by a fit of laughter, brought on at the sight of a powdered wig. A Whitechapel butcher in a church-warden’s wig, accompanied by his dog, occupied seats in front of the stage. Garrick was playing Lear, and preparing for a triumph at the end of the fifth act. The butcher, overcome with heat and mental excitement, was in a melting mood; to relieve which, he took off his wig, and placed it on the dog’s head, who advanced to the orchestra, holding himself up by the fore-paws. At the critical moment, when inspiration seemed to animate every tone and gesture of the great actor, it chanced that his eye, “in a fine frenzy rolling,” lighted on his four legged critic, who was as intent as any biped present on the scene before him, and quite indifferent to his large well-powdered Sunday peruke. At the moment the effect was irresistible; the dog outdid Garrick, who fairly ran off the stage amid roars of laughter from the whole house.

Of old, the doctor who set up in business without a wig in the best style of art was as little likely to succeed in his profession as a modern physician without his carriage.

“Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,

Had on a large, grave, decent, three tailed wig.”

Of course, we don’t suppose that Dr. Brocklesby’s barber or the learned doctor intended it as an advertisement; but it was the constant practice of his barber to carry the said doctor’s wig in its box through the crowd at the Exchange, calling out, “Make way for Dr. Brocklesby’s wig!” Our allusion is to the dignity and importance of the wig, which were fully recognized by the honourable and illustrious professors of the healing art, who will please to excuse our indulging in a pleasant stave of an old song:

“If you would see a noble wig,

And in that wig a man look big,

To Ludgate-hill repair, my joy,

And gaze on Doctor Delmayhoy.”

The parson was as well found in wigs as the doctor. Mandeville says of a wealthy parson, “His wigs are as fashionable as that form he is forced to comply with will admit of; but, as he is only stinted in their shape, so he takes care that for goodness of hair and colour few noblemen shall be able to match ’em.” It is encouraging to know that the clergy look so closely to the goodness of the article they put before us. Warton wrote an “Ode to a Grizzle Wig,” which is not the worst ingredient in that pleasant miscellany of his, “The Oxford Sausage:”

“All hail, ye Curls, that rang’d in rev’rend row,

With snowy pomp my conscious shoulders hide!

That fall beneath in venerable flow,

And crown my brows above with feathery pride!

High on your summit, wisdom’s mimick’d air

Sits thron’d with pedantry, her solemn sire,

And in her net of awe-diffusing hair,

Entangles fools, and bids the crowd admire.

O’er every lock, that floats in full display,

Sage ignorance her gloom scholastic throws;

And stamps o’er all my visage, once so gay,

Unmeaning gravity’s serene repose.

*****

But thou, farewell, my Bob! whose thin wove thatch

Was stor’d with quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,

That love to live within the one-curled scratch,

With fun and all the family of smiles.

*****

No more the wherry feels my stroke so true;

At skittles in a grizzle, can I play?

Woodstock, farewell! and Wallingford adieu!

Where many a scheme relieved the lingering day.

Such were the joys that once HILARIO crown’d,

Ere grave preferment came my peace to rob;

Such are the less ambitious pleasures found

Beneath the liceat of an humble Bob.”

But at Bath the clergy thought of other things beside divinity lectures and professorships. Anstey tells of a young spark of a clergyman sporting about in a more fashionable, but less canonical, coiffure than the grizzle-wig:

“What a cropt head of hair the young parson has on

Emerged from his grizzle, the unfortunate sprig

Seems as if he were hunting all night for his wig.”

Lely and Kneller could best illustrate the heroic age of wigs; but Hogarth’s ready pencil furnishes abundant details of their social state. The comic element seems to abound in all his sketches of wigs. In his print of “The Bench,” they slumber in the softest repose, in undisturbed gravity, and nod with the profoundest humour. The eminent lawyers were not all senior wranglers in those days. Look at the print of “The Country Dance,” and say if ever wigs hung more unbecomingly on the shoulders of the most awkward frights; but for an enormous pig-tail wig where could we select a finer specimen than in the print of “Taste in High Life.” These choice Exotics, as he has labelled them, are evidently great favourites with this humourous artist. But the print we are most concerned with is “The Five Orders of Periwigs, as they were worn at the late Coronation, measured Architectonically.” At the foot of the print the following advertisement is added:

In about 17 years will be completed, in 6 vols. folio, price 15 guineas. The exact measurements of the Periwigs of the Ancients, taken from the Statues, Bustos, and Basso-Relievos of Athens, Palmyra, Balbec, and Rome, by Modesto, Periwig-maker, from Lagado.

Five rows of perriwigs, faithful portraits we dare be sworn every one, illustrate the Five Orders of Perriwigs. First in order we have the Episcopal, or Parsonic Wigs, followed by the Old Peerian or Aldermanic; the Lexonic; Composite, or Half Natural; and, last of all, the Queerinthian. The reader will understand from the advertisement given above that the engraving was a notable quiz on Athenian Stuart, as he was called, whose laborious and accurate work on the Antiquities of Athens has been of such service to architects. It is said that the portrait of Stuart, outlined as a wig-block in the original was so unmistakably like the author of the Antiquities that Hogarth struck off the nose on purpose to disguise the joke a little. One of the Old Peerian order of wigs was at once recognized as a hit at the notorious Bubb Doddington, “the last grave fop of the last age:”

“Who, quite a man of gingerbread,

Savour’d in talk, in dress, and phiz,

More of another world than this.”

Bubb Doddington’s wig is again figured by Hogarth in one of the prints of “The Election,” where it shares in the perils and triumphs of the chairing of the member. Cumberland says that when Doddington was made Lord Melcomb, he actually strutted before the looking-glass, coronet in hand, to study deportment. Warburton’s wig was another of the portrait-wigs, of the Parsonic order. From Hogarth’s most popular works alone one might select a gallery of wigs—tie-wigs, bag-wigs, pig-tails, and bob-wigs, in every variety—well worthy of earnest criticism. Matthews used to say he wondered what the beggars did with their left off clothes till he went to Ireland, when he discovered some of those old relics curiously clinging to the nakedness of their brethren of the Emerald Isle. What became of the old wigs we had ourselves never sufficiently considered till we scanned one of these said prints, and found, to our delight, what had evidently once been a wig comically seated on the head of a young vagrant beside a gutter.

Voltaire’s wig, in the eyes of his contemporaries, was as fatally charged with the electricity of criticism, as Dr. Johnson’s proved to be, to the terror of his obsequious followers. This Rhadamanthus of literature, speaking of Geneva, says, “Je secoue ma perruque, la republique est bien poudrée.” There was one, André, a perriwig maker, who wrote a play in 1760, and ventured to solicit Voltaire’s friendly criticism. His reply is well known; it filled four sides of a sheet of letter-paper with merely a repetition of “Monsieur André, faites des perruques,” and ending, “toujours des perruques et jamais que des perruques.” Descartes had a great passion for perukes; and at the taking of Dresden, Frederick the Great found in the wardrobe of Count Brühl some hundreds of wigs—one authority says fifteen hundred.

Some time before bag-wigs went out of fashion a practical joke was played off in Pall Mall, with the intention of bringing bags into contempt, which had like to have ended somewhat seriously. The particulars are given in the Annual Register of 1761. Some wags dressed up a porter in a bag-wig and lace ruffles, and made him as Frenchified as possible, and drove him into the midst of the fashionable throng in the Mall. His superb dress immediately won the admiration of the votaries of pleasure, who seemed anxious to make his acquaintance; but his absurd conduct soon convinced them of the trick which had been played upon them, and the fellow was thrust out from among them—we sincerely hope with the addition of a good cudgelling.

The time came when perriwig makers had fallen upon evil days. The fashion was evidently on the decline—something must be done for the common good; when, Curtius like, they took a bold leap. Accordingly, on the 11th February, 1765, they presented a petition to his majesty George III., the prayer of which was, that a law should be passed to enforce the wearing of wigs, and that his majesty should help to keep up the fashion. Alas! for the mutability of human affairs, it is questionable if the good king had the power to revive, even for an hour, an expiring fashion: it is certain in this instance, as in others of graver moment, he obstinately adhered to his own choice, and clung to his pig-tail in spite of remonstrance. The London mob, however, proceeded to legislate after their own fashion; and, observing that the wig makers, who wished to make others wear wigs, wore no wigs themselves, they seized hold of the petitioners by force, and cut off all their hair. “Should one wonder,” says Horace Walpole, “if carpenters were to remonstrate that since the peace there has been no call for wooden legs.” George III. might well be content with his modest pig-tail, which queen Charlotte, like a home-loving wife, as she was, often powdered and bound with ribbon, and curled his majesty’s hair in the style he preferred, well knowing in such matters none could please him so well as herself; and thus adorned, we are told, he read the speech from the throne at the meeting of parliament.

At the marriage of the Princess Royal to the Prince of Orange, in the reign of George II., the bridegroom wore a long curled perriwig to hide the terrible hump which disfigured his princely shoulders. As soon as the awkward ceremony was over, the queen gave vent to her feelings in a flood of tears.

The Maccaroni Club, 1772, set the fashion of wearing the hair in a most preposterous style. It was combed upwards into a conical-shaped toupée of monstrous size; and, behind the head, the hair was plaited and tied together into a solid bundle, which of itself must have been an inconvenient load for a gentleman’s shoulders. The ladies wore a head-dress of similar altitude, piling Peleon upon Ossa, in the shape of a cushion of horse hair and wool, over which the hair, pomatumed and powdered, was spread out and carried upwards towards the clouds, bedecked with lace and ribbon; the sides of this delectable mountain were ornamented with rows of curls: but words can convey but a very poor idea of this diverting monstrosity. “An you come to sea in a high wind,” says Ben to Mrs. Frail, in Congreve’s “Love for Love,” “you mayn’t carry so much sail o’ you head—top and top-gallant.” And the Macarronies in their day ran the same risk of being capsized by a squall. At the opera these head-dresses so completely intercepted all view of the stage to those in the rear, that, in 1778, a regulation was put in force which excluded them altogether from the amphitheatre.

The amiable Cowper, shocked at the vulgar assurance of the once coy shepherdess, beheld

“Her head, adorned with lappets pinned aloft,

And ribands streaming gay, superbly raised,

And magnified beyond all human size,

Indebted to some smart wig-weaver’s hand

For more than half the tresses it sustains.”

Cowper, like Shakspere appears to have entertained a great antipathy to wigs. The author of the Diverting History of John Gilpin assailed them in their dotage: Shakspere would have nipped them in the bud. Cowper, writing to a friend, says, “I give you joy of your own hair. No doubt you are a considerable gainer by being disperriwigged....* * * I have little doubt if an arm or a leg could have been taken off with as little pain as attends the amputation of a curl or a lock of hair, the natural limb would have been thought less becoming than a wooden one.”

“Look on beauty,

And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight;

Which therein works a miracle in nature,

Making them lightest that wear most of it.

So are the crispéd, snaky, golden locks,

Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,

Upon supposed fairness, often known

To be the dowry of a second head;

The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.”

Merchant of Venice.

The Water-poet was more explicit than elegant when he inveighed against the dames

“Whose borrowed hair (perhaps not long before)

Some wicked trull in other fashion wore;

Or one that at the gallows made her will,

Late chokéd with the hangman’s pickadill;

In which respect a sow, a cat, a mare,

More modest than these foolish females are;

For the brute beasts, (continual night and day,)

Do wear their own still, (and so do not they.)”

Pennant had a strange aversion to wigs, and, when he was half seas over, used to snatch them off the wearers’ heads. Once, at Chester, dining with an officer and a personal friend, (who, knowing his particular weakness, purposely sat next him, to prevent mischief,) being somewhat elated with wine, he made a sudden dart at the officer’s wig and threw it into the fire. The officer, enraged at the insult, drew his sword, and Pennant took to his heels. The son of Mars was close upon him when Pennant’s better knowledge of the bye-ways of Chester stood him in good stead, and he contrived to give the enemy the slip. His friend, who remembered all the particulars of this hair-breadth escape, used to call it Pennant’s Tour in Chester.

When Fag, in Sheridan’s play of “The Rivals,” meets Sir Anthony’s coachman at Bath, he tells him he must polish a little, and that “none of the London whips of any degree of ton wear wigs now.” But the bucolic mind is eminently conservative, and Thomas makes answer, “Odd’s life! when I heard how the lawyers and doctors had took to their own hair, I thought how ’twould go next. Why, bless you, the gentlemen of the professions ben’t all of a mind; for in our village now, thoff Jack Gauge, the exciseman, has ta’en to his carrots; there’s little Dick, the farrier, swears he’ll never forsake his bob, though all the college should appear with their own heads.”

It was during the first shock of the French Revolution, when the laws, religion, and social institutions of France were overturned, as by an earthquake, that wigs were discarded with other insignia of the old régime. The heroes of pagan Rome, and the fabled deities of Greece, supplied the French Republicans with models for their newest fashions. The men with rough cropped hair sported a Brutus, and the ladies in scanty draperies assumed the coiffure à la Greque. While the heroic citizens rejoiced in their newly acquired liberty and freedom from wigs, the chaste matrons went in search of false hair, to imitate the classic beauties of antiquity. In England, however sudden the transformations in high life, the change, agreeably to the genius of the people, was rather the growth of a new system than the uprooting of the old. The old wig decayed slowly beside the growth of a new crop, and lingered long in many a humble circle, became the oracle of the club, and enjoyed the dignity of the arm-chair and the repose of the chimney-corner; and some would be laid up in ordinary with family relics in the old lumber-room, like Uncle Toby’s white Ramillies wig in the old campaign trunk, which the corporal put into pipes and furbished up for the grand coup de main with widow Wadman, but which resisted all Trim’s efforts, and the repeated application of candle-ends, to bring into better curl.

It chanced that Queen Charlotte’s auburn locks fell off during her accouchment. At this fatal omen the extravagant head-dresses then in fashion were suddenly sacrificed. Her majesty and the princesses in 1793 were pleased to discard hair-powder, which speedily rid the beau monde of that encumbrance. In 1795 the hair-powder tax of one guinea per head, imposed by Pitt’s act, came into operation. The tax at one time realized as much as £20,000 per annum. This lessened considerably the number of powdered heads; and hair-powder, once so necessary to the finish of the finest gentleman, fell into disuse, except with a few gentlemen’s gentlemen—the Fitz-Jeames in livery.

For state and ceremony except among the lawyers and the bench of bishops, at last nothing worthy the name of a perriwig was left to admire. George the Third’s bag-wig was as unpretending as the king himself. His statue beyond Charing Cross will happily remind posterity of that most respectable monarch—and his wig. Dr. Johnson’s scratch-wig, of which Boswell has left us a most authentic account, is familiar to most readers. That famous old scratch, too small for his head, always uncombed, and the fore part burnt away by contact with the candle, must be carefully distinguished from the smart wig which Mrs. Thrale’s butler kept for him at Streatham and placed on his head as he passed through the hall to dinner.

During the decadence of the wig, the army and navy wore pig-tails, which were nourished with regulation charges of powder and pomatum. How gallantly they defended them, the history of many a well-fought battle can tell—

“Not once or twice in our rough island story,

The path of duty was the way to glory.”

In 1804, the soldier’s allowance of pig-tail was reduced to seven inches, and in 1808 the order was promulgated to cut them off, but countermanded the very next day. However, revocation was impossible; for the barbers, with their usual alacrity, had performed their stern duties successfully, and not a pig-tail remained to the British army.

Is the reader curious to know something about Sergeants of the coif, and the mysteries of the bar-wig with its rows of curls and twin tails? Let him make his studies from nature, and “the stiff-wigged living figures,” as Elia calls them. The sages of the law were among the last to forego the use of wigs in private life; and it is said that Mr. Justice Park acquired the cognomen of Bushy Park, from the peculiar fashion of his wig, which he retained long after his brethren of the long robe had forsaken theirs. In the Table-talk of Samuel Rogers there is an anecdote of Lord Ellenborough’s wig. The judge was setting out for the circuit, and as Lady Ellenborough wished to accompany him, it was agreed between husband and wife that no band-boxes of any kind would be tolerated; for, when travelling, his lordship had a great aversion to band-boxes. On the journey, however, as the judge was stretching his legs in the carriage, they came in contact with the thing he so cordially detested—a band-box. In an instant his lordship seized hold of it, and threw it out of the window. The carriage stopped, and the footman was about to pick it up, when his lordship called out, “Drive on!” Arrived at the county town, when the judge was putting on his robes before going into court, enquiry was made for the wig, which, at the last moment, was nowhere to be found. After much delay, the footman was interrogated by his lordship, “Where is my wig?” “Why, my lord,” replied the servant, “you threw it out of the window.” It seems that her ladyship’s maid, envious that a judge’s wig should travel so comfortably in its proper case, while some pieces of millinery were in danger of being terribly crushed for want of a larger box, at their last resting place had made an exchange, and put the fright of a wig in a band-box, and the millinery in the wig-box. The most villainous of the wig tribe was certainly the peruke of George the Fourth’s reign, which, pretending to imitate the natural hair, was, on that very account, the more detestable, in as much as an ape’s features are more ridiculous from bearing some resemblance to a man.

Even the bishops have gradually forsaken the episcopal wig. The Irish bishops do not appear to have worn them. The Honorable Richard Bagot, bishop of Bath and Wells, was the first of our modern bishops who dispensed with the wig. Many years previous to his obtaining the bishopric, the Prince Regent had said to him in a joke, “You are much too handsome a man to wear a wig; remember, whenever I make you a bishop you may dispense with wearing one.” However, when the bishop reminded his sovereign that his promise when Regent exempted him from wearing a wig, it was only after much hesitation that the favour was granted. Bishop Bloomfield officiated in an orthodox-peruke at the coronation of William IV.; and more recently in the House of Lords, at times, a solitary wig came forth like a decrepid fly in mid-winter, drowsily contemplating the change and bustle going on around it. For a brief space it walked the earth like a troubled spirit—the reverend fathers have exorcised it, and it is no more seen of men.

When George IV. was king, his were the model whiskers (though false ones) which constituted the standard of perfection. Our continental neighbours, in derision, frequently likened the English whiskers to mutton chops or a string of sausages; but John Bull who is always tolerant of abuse, and goes about matters after his own sturdy fashion, maintained his whiskers with imperturbable gravity. Moore, in one of his humorous poems, thus takes off the vanities of royalty, and it says much for the good sense of the king that he could enjoy the wit of the poet when directed against himself:

“He looks in the glass—but perfection is there,

Wig, whiskers, and chin-tufts all right to a hair;

Not a single ex-curl on his forehead he traces—

For curls are like Ministers, strange as the case is,

The falser they are, the more firm in their places.”

Some brief notes yet remain to complete the present imperfect sketch, but of too recent date to warrant their insertion here. It is gratifying to know that, under the present glorious and auspicious rule, improvement is taking place in all matters of taste, and that even in the changeful fashions of the day we are much indebted to the refined judgment of our most gracious Queen, VICTORIA, whom may God long preserve to reign over a free and enlightened people.