ciliatory touch, as it prepares the skin for the sweeping course of the razor, and its gentle pressure, as it inclines the head to either side, to aid the operation of the scissors, a man may sit for hours, and feel no weariness. Happy must he be who lived in the days of long, or full dressed hair, and resigned himself for a full hour to the passive luxury of hair-dressing! A morning's toilette-(for a gentleman, I mean; being a bachelor, I am uninitiated in the arcana of a lady's dressingroom)-a morning's toilette in those days was indeed an important part of the "business of life:" there were the curling-irons, the comb, the pomatum, the powder-puff, the powder-knife, the mask, and a dozen other requisites to complete the elaborate process that perfected that mysterious frappant, or tintinabulant appendage" to the back part of the head. Oh! it must have been a luxury-a delight surpassing the famed baths and cosmetics of the east. 66 I have said that the barber is a gentle man; if not in so many words, I have at least pointed out that distinguishing trait in him. He is also a humane man: his occupation of torturing hairs leaves him neither leisure nor disposition to torture ought else. He looks as respectable as he is; and he is void of any appearance of deceit or cunning. There is less of personality or egotism about him than mankind in general: though he possesses an ideo-syncracy, it is that of his class, not of himself. As he sits, patiently renovating some dilapidated peruke, or perseveringly presides over the development of grace in some intractable bush of hair, or stands at his own threshold, in the cleanly pride of white apron and hose, lustrous shoes, and exemplary jacket, with that studied yet seeming disarrangement of hair, as though subduing, as far as consistent with propriety, the visible appearance of technical skill-as he thus, untired, goes the never-varying round of his pleasant occupation, and active leisure, time seems to pass unheeded, and the wheel of chance, scattering fragments of circumstance from the rock of destiny, continues its relentless and unremittent revolution, unnoticed by him. He hears not the roar of the fearful engine, the groans and sighs of despair, or the wild laugh of exultation, produced by its mighty working. All is remote, strange, and intricate; and belongs not to him to know. He dwells in an area of peace-a magic circle, whose area might be described by his obsolete sign-pole ! Nor does the character of the barber vary in other countries. He seems to flourish in unobtrusive properity all the world over. In the east, the clime most congenial to his avocations, the voluminous beard makes up for the deficiency of the everturbanned, close-shorn skull, and he exhibits the triumph of his skill in its most special department. Transport an English barber to Samarcand, or Ispahan, and, saving the language, he would feel quite at home. Here he reads the newspaper, and, unless any part is contradicted by his customers, he believes it all-it is his oracle. At Constantinople, the chief eunuch would confide to him the secrets of the seraglio as if he were a genuine disciple of Mahomet; and with as right good will as ever old " gossip" vented a bit of scandal with unconstrained volubility of tongue. He would listen to, aye and put faith in, the relations of the coffee-house storytellers who came to have their beards trimmed, and repaid him with one of their inventions for his trouble. What à dissection would a barber's brain afford, could we but discern the mine of latent feuds and conspiracies laid up there in coil, by their spleenful and mischievous inventors. I would that I could unpack the hoarded venom, all hurtless in that "cool grot," as destructive stores are deposited in an arsenal, where light and heat never come. His mind admits no spark of malice to fire the train of jealousy, or explode the ammunition of petty strife; and it were well for the world and society, if the intrigue and spite of the inhabitants could be poured, like the cursed juice of Hebenon," into his ever-open ear, and be buried for ever in the oblivious chambers of his brain. Vast as the caverned ear of Dionysius, the tyrant, his contains in its labyrinthine recesses the collected scandal of neighbourhoods, the chatter of households, and even the crooked policy of courts; but all is decomposed and neutralized there. It is the very quantity of this freight of plot and detraction that renders him so harmless. It is as ballast to the sails of his judgment. He mixes in no conspiracy, domestic or public. The foulest treason would remain "" pure in the last recesses of his mind." He knows not of, cares not for, feels no interest in all this material of wickedness, any more than the unconscious paper that bears on its lettered forehead the "sixth edition" of a bulletin. Amiable, contented, respected race!-I exclaim with Figaro, Oh, that I were a happy barber!" GASTON. 66 The town hall, or guildhall, of Paris, was built in the year 1606, after the design of an Italian artist. Several additions have been made to the original building, by the purchase of the decayed hospital and church of St. Esprit, and a chapel of the church of St. John. The latter has been converted into a grand hall for public assemblies; and here the banquet was held, which was given to Louis XVIII. by the corporation, on the the 29th of August, 1814. The Hotel de Ville will excite a mingled feeling of awe and admiration. Hallowed by time, it has been debased by scenes of modern terror and popular excess; here, it was, that Louis XVI. was exhibited to the infuriated multitudes, and to this spot the ferocious Robespierre retreated after his outlawry. The guillotine, which, during the revolution, daily immolated numbers in the square before the building, called Place de Greve, is still preserved within its walls, and occasionally brought forth for the execution of criminals. This square was first appropriated to the execution of criminals at the commencement of the fourteenth century. It is painful to learn that innocent blood was the first that flowed here. An unhappy female heretic, named Margarette Porette, scarcely thirty years old, was burnt here in 1310, for having written that the soul, absorbed in God, is at the height of every virtue, and has nothing more to do; and that when a certain degree of virtue is attained, one cannot go beyond it. Previously to this execution, criminals were put to death in the market-places, which still participated for more than a century, with La Greve, the miserable prerogative of scaffolds. In this last place was decapitated, in 1398, the two Augustin monks, who had engaged, for a large remuneration, and on the penalty of their lives, to cure Charles VI. of an incurable malady with which he was struck. The two friars lost their heads, and the king did not recover his own. The last execution which took place in a market-place, in 1477, was that of the unhappy Duke de Nemours, whose children, placed on the scaffold by order of the cruel Louis XI., were covered with the blood of their father. Since that epoch, every sentence of death passed at Paris has been executed at the Place de Greve, except those ordered by military tribunals. MIDNIGHT. BEFORE A BATTLE. 'Tis night! the moon rides high in heaven, But I, upon this Alpine height, I lean upon my faulchion bright, Perhaps at this lone pensive hour, And, kneeling, prays to that Great Power, All round me now my comrades lie, I see ye calmly, sweetly sleeping, But see, the glorious god of day Bursts with effulgence through the skies, That bids the cheerful soldier rise. Hark-hark! the trumpet sounds,- My heart within my bosom bounds, LINES T. C. G. WRITTEN WHEN HAVING THE PROSPECT OF GOING ABROAD. BY JAMES KNOX. My country! aye, wheree'er I stray, But duty calls me hence, and I Must bow beneath the stern behest; Still never shall thy mem'ry fly From this, my swelling--faithful breast: In joy or grief, in weal or woe, I'll call thee mine-my country, ever! |