every poppy that grew within five miles of her; that she distributed her water gratis among all sorts of people: to which the knight added that she had a very great jointure, and that the whole country would fain have it a match between him and her; "and truly," says Sir Roger, "if I had not been engaged, perhaps I could not have done better."

His discourse was broken off by his man's telling him he had called a coach. Upon our going to it, after having cast his eye upon the wheels, he asked the coachman if his axletree was good; upon the fellow's telling him he would warrant it, the knight turned to me, told me he looked like an honest man, and went in without further ceremony.

We had not gone far, when Sir Roger, popping out his head, called the coachman down from his box, and, upon his presenting himself at the window, asked him if he smoked. As I was considering what this would end in, he bid him stop by the way at any good tobacconist's and take in a roll of their best Virginia. Nothing material happened in the remaining part of our journey, till we were set down at the west end of the abbey.

As we went up the body of the church, the knight pointed at the trophies upon one of the new monuments, and cried out, "A brave man, I warrant him!" Passing afterwards by Sir Cloudsley Shovel, he flung his hand that way and cried, "Sir Cloudsley Shovel! a very gallant man!" As we stood before Busby's tomb, the knight uttered himself again after the same manner: "Doctor Busby! a great man: he whipped my grandfather; a very great man! I should have gone to him myself, if I had not been a blockhead: a very great man!"

We were immediately conducted into the little chapel on the right hand. Sir Roger, planting himself at our historian's elbow, was very attentive to everything he said, particularly to the account he gave us of the lord who had cut off the king of Morocco's head. Among several other figures, he was very well pleased to see the statesman Cecil upon his knees; and, concluding them all to be great men, was conducted to the figure which represents that martyr to good housewifery who died by the prick of a needle. Upon our interpreter's telling us that she was a maid of honor to Queen Elizabeth, the knight was very inquisitive into her name and family; and, after having regarded her finger for some time, "I wonder," says he, "that Sir Richard Baker said nothing of her in his 'Chronicle.>>

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We were then conveyed to the two coronation chairs, where my old friend, after having heard that the stone underneath the most ancient of them, which was brought from Scotland, was called Jacob's Pillar, sat himself down in the chair, and, looking like the figure of an old Gothic king, asked our interpreter what authority they had to say that Jacob had ever been in Scotland. The fellow, instead of returning him an answer, told him that he hoped his honor would pay his forfeit. I could observe Sir Roger a little ruffled upon being thus trepanned; but our guide not insisting upon his demand, the knight soon recovered his good humor, and whispered in my ear, that if Will Wimble were with us, and saw those two chairs, it would go hard but he would get a tobacco stopper out of one or t'other of them.

Sir Roger, in the next place, laid his hand upon Edward the Third's sword, and, leaning upon the pommel of it, gave us the whole history of the Black Prince, concluding that, in Sir Richard Baker's opinion, Edward III. was one of the greatest princes that ever sat upon the English throne.

We were then shown Edward the Confessor's tomb, upon which Sir Roger acquainted us that he was the first who touched . for the evil; and afterwards Henry the Fourth's, upon which he shook his head and told us there was fine reading in the casualties of that reign.

Our conductor then pointed to that monument where there is the figure of one of our English kings without a head; and upon giving us to know that the head, which was of beaten silver, had been stolen away several years since, "Some whig, I'll warrant you," says Sir Roger; "you ought to lock up your kings better; they will carry off the body too, if you don't take care."

The glorious names of Henry V. and Queen Elizabeth gave the knight great opportunities of shining, and of doing justice to Sir Richard Baker, who, as our knight observed with some surprise, had a great many kings in him whose monuments he had not seen in the abbey.

For my own part, I could not but be pleased to see the knight show such an honest passion for the glory of his country, anċ such a respectful gratitude to the memory of its princes.

I must not omit, that the benevolence of my good old friend, which flows out towards every one he converses with, made him very kind to our interpreter, whom he looked upon as an extraordinary man: for which reason he shook him by the hand at part

ing, telling him that he should be very glad to see him at his lodgings in Norfolk buildings, and talk over these matters with him more at leisure.

Complete from the Spectator.

WHE

SIR ROGER'S VIEWS ON BEARDS

Stolidam præbet tibi vellere barbam.- Pers. Sat. II. 28.

He holds his foolish beard for thee to pluck.

HEN I was last with my friend Sir Roger in Westminster Abbey, I observed that he stood longer than ordinary before the bust of a venerable old man. I was at a loss to guess the reason of it; when, after some time, he pointed to the figure, and asked me if I did not think that our forefathers looked much wiser in their beards than we do without them. "For my part," says he, "when I am walking in my gallery in the country, and see my ancestors, who many of them died before they were of my age, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many old patriarchs, and at the same time looking upon myself as an idle smock-faced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs, and your Jacobs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings." The knight added, if I would recommend beards in one of my papers, and endeavor to restore human faces to their ancient dignity, that, upon a month's warning, he would undertake to lead up the fashion himself in a pair of whiskers.

I smiled at my friend's fancy; but, after we parted, could not forbear reflecting on the metamorphosis our faces have undergone in this particular.

The beard, conformable to the notion of my friend, Sir Roger, was for many ages looked upon as the type of wisdom. Lucian more than once rallies the philosophers of his time, who endeavored to rival one another in beard; and represents a learned man, who stood for a professorship in philosophy, as unqualified for it by the shortness of his beard.

Elian, in his account of Zoilus, the pretended critic, who wrote against Homer and Plato, and thought himself wiser than all who had gone before him, tells us that this Zoilus had a very long beard that hung down upon his breast, but no hair upon his head, which he always kept close shaved, regarding, it seems,

the hairs of his head as so many suckers, which, if they had been suffered to grow, might have drawn away the nourishment from his chin, and by that means have starved his beard.

I have read somewhere that one of the popes refused to accept an edition of a saint's works, which was presented to him, because the saint, in his effigies before the book, was drawn without a beard.

We see by these instances what homage the world has formerly paid to beards; and that a barber was not then allowed to make those depredations on the faces of the learned, which have been permitted him of later years.

Accordingly several wise nations have been so extremely jealous of the least ruffle offered to their beard, that they seem to have fixed the point of honor principally in that part. The Spaniards were wonderfully tender in this particular. Don Quevedo, in his third vision on the last judgment, has carried the humor very far, when he tells us that one of his vainglorious countrymen, after having received sentence, was taken into custody by a couple of evil spirits; but that his guides happening to disorder his mustaschoes, they were forced to recompose them with a pair of curling irons, before they could get him to file off.

If we look into the history of our own nation, we shall find that the beard flourished in the Saxon heptarchy, but was very much discouraged under the Norman line. It shot out, however, from time to time, in several reigns under different shapes. The last effort it made seems to have been in Queen Mary's days, as the curious reader may find if he please to peruse the figures of Cardinal Pole and Bishop Gardiner; though, at the same time, I think it may be questioned, if zeal against popery has not induced our Protestant painters to extend the beards of these two persecutors beyond their natural dimensions, in order to make them appear the more terrible.

I find but few beards worth taking notice of in the reign of King James I.

During the civil wars there appeared one, which makes too great a figure in story to be passed over in silence: I mean that of the redoubted "Hudibras," an account of which Butler has transmitted to posterity in the following lines:

"His tawny beard was th' equal grace

Both of his wisdom and his face:

In cut and dye so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile;
The upper part thereof was whey,

The nether orange mixt with gray."

The whisker continued for some time among us after the expiration of beards; but this is a subject which I shall not here enter upon, having discussed it at large in a distinct treatise, which I keep by me in manuscript, upon the mustaschoe.

If my friend Sir Roger's project of introducing beards should take effect, I fear the luxury of the present age would make it a very expensive fashion. There is no question but the beaux would soon provide themselves with false ones of the lightest colors and the most immoderate lengths. A fair beard, of the tapestry size Sir Roger seems to approve, could not come under twenty guineas. The famous golden beard of Esculapius would hardly be more valuable than one made in the extravagance of the fashion.

Besides, we are not certain that the ladies would not come into the mode, when they take the air on horseback. They already appear in hats and feathers, coats and periwigs, and I see no reason why we should not suppose that they would have their riding beards on the same occasion.

Complete. From the Spectator.

Mỹ

Y FRIEND Sir Roger de Coverley, when we last met together at the club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy [The Distrest Mother] with me, assuring me at the same time that he had not been at a play these twenty years. "The last I saw," said Sir Roger, was 'The Committee,' which I should not have gone to neither, had not I been told beforehand that it was a good Church of