If this account is just, and we may be permitted to add to it the disgusting marks which this powder imprints on the beauty of the fair, it must be confessed that great obligation would be due to whatever should cause it to be disused. In ripe age, the beard is the sign of physical powers: in old age, the symbol of veneration. What sight is there more reverend than an old man with a venerable, long, white beard, receiving the caresses of his grand-children, the sole consolation of his burthensome years! Surrounded by his family, he is the image of wisdom and divinity. Is there any thing more noble than Nestor appeasing the rage of Achilles, lamenting the misfortunes of that division, giving advice to all the kings of the camp of the Greeks, and seeing himself the object of general veneration? Where is there to be found a more striking example of majestic sweetness than that of the sage Mentor? Is there a more moving picture than that of old Priam at Achilles’s feet, kissing the terrible hands of the murderer of his son; and to see this venerable old man beg with tears the sad remains of the unfortunate Hector? All these different sketches may give some idea of the majesty and nobleness which a long beard and hoary locks stamp on the person of an old man. But let any one fancy Mentor and Nestor shaved, and old king Priam without his beard and white hair, having each of them a wig with three tails; this allusion, at first so flattering, will disappear; ridicule will succeed to respect, and he will no longer see in these heroes, but the figure of our neighbour the churchwarden, the overseer of the poor, and the auctioneer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. VI. _Of FALSE BEARDS._ THE substitutes of art are to nature what hypocrisy is to virtue: both are unworthy of an upright man, who is no more afraid to discover the sentiments of his heart, than the lineaments of his face. But if, as a famous moralist said, _hypocrisy is a homage which vice pays to virtue_, false beards should likewise be regarded as a homage which luxury or idleness pays to natural beards. Such impositions are more or less condemnable, according to the causes from whence they proceed. The old man whom Theophrastus speaks of, who, in order to plead before the senate of Lacedemon, stained his beard and hoary locks black, dearly merited the mortifying affront which a meanness so unworthy of his age publicly drew on him. As he was debating his cause, his adversary interrupted him, and addressing himself to the senate, asked what confidence could be given to the words of a man who carried a lie in his face?