If we were privileged to direct our thoughts to other lands, and to record the pleasant life of that admirable humourist, the barber of Southern Europe, we might hope to add a little sunshine to these pages. Who enjoys life better than Figaro—who is as well entertained—who is half as entertaining?
Ah che bel vivere!
Che bel piacere per un barbiere di qualita,
Ah bravo Figaro, bravo bravissimo fortunatissimo.
What a lively, sensuous, al fresco life he has of it at Naples; content, without the semblance of property of any kind; in action, free as the breeze; and in spirit, buoyant as a wave.
Ah che bel vivere!
But the shrine of Figaro must be sought in Seville. In the charming fictions of Cervantes and Le Sage, we seem to live on most familiar terms with the Spanish barber, as much so, as with Smollett’s Hugh Strap, or Partridge in Fielding’s “Tom Jones.” So truthfully is the invisible world peopled for us by the power of genius. Romance seems in some way associated with the character of a barber—
“In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,
And songless rows the silent gondolier;”
but the barber still contrives an occasional serenade, accompanying his amorous tinklings with vocal strains which would rouse the Seven Sleepers. What a contrast to his European brethren is the grave barber of the East, who is usually physician, astrologer, and barber, and better known to most of us by the amusing story in the Arabian Nights than from any other source. Much might be said of Yankee wit and humour in the person of the American barber; something too, of the crude state of the art in Africa, where, to complete her modest coiffure, the sable beauty is seated in the sun with a lump of fat on her head, which trickles down in resplendent unctuous streams with a profusion enough to make a railway engine jealous. Nor can we stop to notice the Chinese “one piccie Barber-man,” whose speculations on heads and tails must be highly amusing; for the Fates are inexorable, and our canvass too small to complete the picture.