The number is greater than people think. We have at present a heroine whose dignities of warrior, juris-consult, man of letters, and minister, as well as a bearded chin, concealed her sex a long time from her countrymen. It is as ridiculous for a man to look like a woman, as for a woman to look like a man. However, a man without a beard would be much less surprising now-a-days, than a bearded woman, which proves how unnatural our tastes and customs are. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. V. _That LONG BEARDS are salutary._ THE beard has not only the advantage of giving a man a stern, majestic air, of preserving over the sex the empire which Nature has bestowed on him, and of displaying on his face the characteristical marks of his manhood, but likewise enables the attentive observer to remark, by more determined changes, the different states of human life, and gives him the still more valuable advantage of being useful to his own preservation. Nature made nothing in vain, and the course of her wise operations is never opposed with impunity. Is it not natural to suppose, that this bushy hair which she has placed on man’s face must have an influence on the salubrity of the neighbouring parts that are acknowledged to be essential? Is it possible to think otherwise, without accusing our common mother of inconsequence, and charging her uniform conduct, (which so fully explains its own motives,) with folly and extravagance? How is it possible then for people to venture to thwart the wisdom of her intentions, and destroy their effects, without being afraid of drawing on themselves a superabundance of evils, to which human nature is already too much subject? This however is what we do every day, in order to comply with a very unnatural custom. The beard, among men, is the sign of puberty, vigour, and weakness. ’Tis this hair on the chin which first tells him that the time is come when his organs, being more unfolded, will procure him a new existence, that he is entering the state of manhood, that he is going to take his place in society, and that he is endowed with the valuable faculty of begetting his own likeness.