When the moderns brought the question back to its simple principles, and asked the sticklers for old customs if wigs were not as harmless as mitres, they were treated with as scant courtesy as Mr. Gorham or the Lord Primate is in the habit of experiencing at the hands of a “mediæval” bishop. If, it was said, a priest must even take off his _calotte_ in presence of a king or Pope, how may he dare to wear a wig before God? Richelieu was the first ecclesiastic of his rank in France who wore the modern _calotte_; but I very much doubt if he ever took it off in the presence of Louis XIII. It is known however that the French King’s ambassador, M. d’Oppeville, found much difficulty in obtaining an audience at Rome. He wore a wig _à calotte_,—that is, a wig with a _coif_, as though the tonsure had been regularly performed, and that the wig was natural hair. The officials declared he could not be introduced unless he took off the _calotte_. He could not do this without taking off the wig also, as he showed the sticklers of court etiquette, and stood before them with clean-shaven head; asking, at the same time,—“Would the Pope desire me to stand in his presence in such a plight as this?” The Pontiff however did not yield the point readily. Perhaps his Holiness, had he received the ambassador under bare poll, would have graciously served him as one of his predecessors had served the Irish saint, Malachi,—put his pontifical tiara on the good man’s head, to prevent his catching cold! But of all the tilters against wigs, none was so serious and chivalresque as “Jean Batiste Thiers, Docteur en Théologie et Curé de Champrond.” Dr. Thiers, in the year 1690, wrote a book of some six hundred pages against the wearing of wigs by ecclesiastics. He published the same at his own expense; and high authority pronounced it conformable in every respect to the “Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Dr. Thiers wrote a brief preface to his work, in which he invokes an abundant visitation of divine peace and grace on those who read his volume with tranquillity of mind, and who preferred truth to fashion. The invocation, I fear, is made in vain; for the tediousness of the author slays all tranquillity of spirit on the part of the reader, who cannot however refrain from smiling at seeing the very existence of Christianity made to depend upon the question of perukes. The book is a dull book: but the prevailing idea in it,—that it is all over with religion if perukes be not abolished,—is one that might compel a cynic to inextinguishable laughter. Yes, says the Doctor, the origin of the tonsure is to be found in the cutting of Peter’s hair by the Gentiles, to make him look ridiculous; _therefore_, he who hides the tonsure beneath a peruke insults the Prince of the Apostles! A species of reasoning, anything comparable with which is not to be found in that book which Rome has honoured by condemning—Whately’s ‘Logic.’