Page:The philosophy of beards (electronic resource) - a lecture - physiological, artistic & historical (IA b20425272).pdf/32

 aflections, its surrounding muscles rendering it the reflex of every passing emotion, owes its general expression to the line between the lips-the key to family likeness; and this line is more sharply defined by the shadow cast by the moustache, from which the teeth also acquire additional whiteness, and the lips a brighter red. Neither the mouth chin are, as we have said, unsightly in early life, but at no a later period the case is otherwise. There is scarcely indeed a more naturally disgusting object than a beardless old man (compared by the Turks to a "plucked pigeon,") with all the deep-ploughed lines of effete passions, grasping avarice, disappointed ambition, the pinchings of poverty, the swollen lines of self-indulgence, and the distortions of disease and decay! Now the Beard, which, as the Romans phrased it, "buds" on the face of youth in a soft downiness in harmony with immature manliness, and lengthens and thickens with the progress of life, keeps gradually covering, varying, and beautifying, as the "mantling ivy" the rugged oak, or the antique tower, and by playing with its light free forms over the harsher characteristics, imparts new graces even to decay, by heightening all that is still pleasing, veiling all that is repulsive.

The colour of the Beard is usually warmer than that of the hair of the head, and reflection soon suggests the reason. The latter comes into contact chiefly with the forehead, which has little colour; but the Beard grows out of the face where there is always more or less. Now