It is a very odd thing that people commonly think they can have their consciences at command, and can set them as they do their watches, and it is generally behind time: yet will they go irregularly, and sometimes all of a run; and when they come to set them again, they will bear no sort of regulation. Some set them as they would an alarum, to awaken them at a given time; and when this answers at all, they are awakened in such an amazement that they know not what they are about. Such was the case with the notorious Parisian pawnbroker, who all in a hurry sent for the priest; but when the crucifix was presented to him, stammered out that he could lend but a very small matter upon it. So consciences go by latitudes and longitudes--slow here and fast there. They have, too, their antipodes--it is night here and sunshine there. And so of ages and eras: and thus the same things make men laugh and tremble by turns. What unextinguishable laughter would arise should Dr Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, go in procession with his clergy to Windsor, each armed with scissors, to clip the moustaches of the prince and his court! Yet a like absurdity has in other days pricked the consciences of king and courtiers to a sudden and bitter remorse. I read the other day in that very amusing volume, the _Literary Conglomerate_, in an "Essay on Hair," how Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to pronounce an anathema of excommunication on all who wore long hair, for which pious zeal he was much commended; and how "Serlo, a Norman bishop, acquired great honour by a sermon which he preached before Henry I. in 1104, against long curled hair, with which the king and his courtiers were so much affected, that they consented to resign their flowing ringlets of which they had been so vain. The prudent prelate gave them no time to change their minds, but immediately pulled a pair of shears out of his sleeve, and performed the operation with his own hand." A canon is still extant, of the date of 1096, importing that such as wore long hair should be excluded from the church whilst living, or being prayed for when dead. Now, the very curates rejoice in ringlets and macassar. It would be curious to trace the heresy to its complete triumph in full-bottomed wigs, in which, it was ignorantly supposed, wisdom finally settled, when it was not discovered elsewhere. Thus it is, Eusebius, that folly, the vile insect, flies about--just drops a few eggs in the very nest of conscience, and is off, and a corruption of the flesh followeth. Those, therefore, who take out license to shoot folly as it flies, should be made to look after the eggs likewise.