Van Helmont, in support of this theory, asks us if we ever saw a good angel with a beard;—one of those questions which are supposed by those who put them to determine a dispute at once. He falls to another conclusion thereupon; and maintains that if good angels do not wear beards, the men who _do_ are guilty of profanity, and love goats rather than godliness. Van Helmont himself was extremely perplexed by the Jesuit casuists, who wrote on the lawfulness of beards, and who most lucidly proved, under three heads,—1st, That we are bound to shave the beard; 2nd, That we are bound to let it grow; and 3rd, That we may do either the one or the other. St. François de Sales, the gentleman saint, was less perplexing when, on being asked by a lady whether she might not _rouge_, smiled, and answered, certainly, if she only painted one cheek. Van Helmont hit the happy medium left by the Jesuitical argument, and, shaving his beard, only cultivated his mustachios. Southey is rather inclined to accept the Dutch account of the derivation of beards, based as it is on the certainty that no man ever saw a good angel wearing one; “for,” says he, “take the most beautiful angel that ever painter designed or engraver copied, put him on a beard, and the celestial character will be so entirely destroyed, that the simple appendage of a tail will cacodæmonize the Eudæmon.” So it may be said, that a monk with a fine polished bald head is hedged with a sort of divinity, and looks altogether reverend; but only sprinkle powder from a dredging-box upon the baldness, and you make him, if not ridiculous, certainly mundane.