Then a social tyranny prevailed, unpleasant to the rich and costly to the poor, which regarded the beard as an outrage. I remember when only four men in Birmingham had courage to wear beards. They were followers of Joanna Southcott. They did it in imitation of the apostles, and were jeered at in the streets by ignorant Christians. George Frederick Muntz, one of the two first members elected in Birmingham, was the first member who ventured to wear a beard in the House of Commons; and he would have been insulted had not he been a powerful man and carried a heavy Malacca cane, which he was known to apply to any one who offered him a personal affront. Only military officers were allowed to wear a moustache; among them--no one, not even Wellington, was hero enough to wear a beard. The Rev. Edmund R. Larken, of Burton Rectory, near Lincoln, was the first clergyman (that was as late as 1852) who appeared in the pulpit with a beard, but he shaved the upper lip as an apology for the audacity of his chin; George Dawson was the first Nonconformist preacher who delivered a sermon in a full-blown moustache and beard, which was taken in both cases as an unmistakable sign of latitudinarianism in doctrine. In the bank clerk or the workman it was worse. It was flat insubordination not to shave. The penalty was prompt dismissal. As though there were not fetters about hard to bear, people made fetters for themselves. Such was the daintiness of ignorance that a man could not eat, dress, nor even think as he pleased. He was even compelled to shave by public opinion. When Mr. Joseph Cowen was first a candidate for Parliament, he wore, as was his custom, a felt hat (then called a "wide-awake"). He was believed to be an Italian conspirator, and suspected of holding opinions lacking in orthodox requirements. Yet all his reputed heresies of acts and tenets put together did not cost him so many votes as the form and texture of his hat. He was elected--but his headgear would have ruined utterly a less brilliant candidate than he This social intolerance now shows its silly and shameless head no more. A wise Tolerance is the Angel, which stands at the portal of Progress, and opens the door of the Temple. Dr. Church, of Birmingham, was the first person who, in my youth, contrived a bicycle, and rode upon it in the town, which excited more consternation than a Southcottean with his beard. He was an able physician, but his harmless innovation cost him his practice. Patients refused to be cured by a doctor who rode a horse which had no head, and ate no oats. Now a parson may ride to church on a bicycle and people think none the worse of his sermon; and, scandal of scandals, women are permitted to cycle, although it involves a new convenience of dress formerly sharply resented.