There is one grievance which the medical officers, in common with their combatant brethren, have to complain of--I refer to _compulsory shaving_; neither is this by any means so insignificant a matter as it may seem. It may appear a ridiculous statement, but it is nevertheless a true one, that this regulation has caused many a young surgeon to prefer the army to the navy. "Mere dandies," the reader may say, "whom this grievance would affect;" but there is many a good man a dandy, and no one could surely respect a man who was careless of his personal appearance, or who would willingly, and without a sigh, disfigure his face by depriving it of what nature considers both ornate and useful-- ornate, as the ladies and the looking-glass can prove; and useful, as the blistered chin and upper lip of the shaven sailor, in hot climates, points out. From the earliest ages the moustache has been worn,--even the Arabs, who shave the head, leave untouched the upper lip. What would the pictures of some of the great masters be without it? Didn't the Roman youths dedicate the first few downy hairs of the coming moustache to the gods? Does not the moustache give a manly appearance to the smallest and most effeminate? Does it not even beget a certain amount of respect for the wearer? What sort of guys would the razor make of Count Bismark, Dickens, the Sultan of Turkey, or Anthony Trollope? Were the Emperor Napoleon deprived of his well-waxed moustache, it might lose him the throne of France. Were Garibaldi to call on his barber, he might thereafter call in vain for volunteers, and English ladies would send him no more splints nor sticking-plaster. Shave Tennyson, and you may put him in petticoats as soon as you please. As to the moustache movement in the navy, it is a subject of talk-- admitting of no discussion--in every mess in the service, and thousands are the advocates in favour of its adoption. Indeed, the arguments in favour of it are so numerous, that it is a difficult matter to choose the best, while the reasons against it are few, foolish, and despotic. At the time when the Lords of the Admiralty gave orders that the navy should keep its upper lip, and three fingers' breadth of its royal chin, smooth and copper-kettlish, it was neither fashionable nor respectable to wear the moustache in good society. Those were the days of cabbage-leaf cheeks, powdered wigs, and long queues; but those times are past and gone from every corner of England's possessions save the navy. Barberism has been hunted from polite circles, but has taken refuge under the trident of old Neptune; and, in these days of comparative peace, more blood in the Royal Navy is drawn by the razor than by the cutlass.