society, indeed, politics meet with but little attention. Lawyers in good practice-unless they have an eye to Parliament and public lifeseldom trouble themselves much about such matters. Medical men even more rarely avow political opinions, unless 'standing' for some office in which party considerations are concerned. Artists and actors have usually the vaguest notions of public affairs. It is not, therefore, to be supposed that persons who wage war with society, and who make the violation of the law a profession, will care much to learn that her Majesty's ministers have successfully vindicated the national honour, or that they have been doing something to ameliorate the condition of the honest and respectable portion of the public. These considerations, however, carry us somewhat beyond the bounds of our subject-the sketch on the opposite page-in which the artist has not descended to the lower depths referred to. The 'heads of society' which he has so well portrayed, our readers need not be afraid to meet. The greater Dumber may be safely encountered at dinner-tables and in drawingrooms, and none need give cause for apprehension out of doors, even on a dark night. Here we have very fair types of many 'respectable' people. A few years ago we should not have been so sure of the fact; for the last decade has made such changes in the outward appearance of Britons of both sexes, that their very mothers would scarcely know them again, if they did not happen to be previously informed. In the men the difference is more particularly marked. In the year of grace 1853, that gentleman near the lefthand upper corner of the plate, bearded and moustached, and wearing a 'Melton' hat, would have been taken for a foreigner probably, and a swindler certainly. He would scarcely get beyond the door-mat in a respectable house, and if he did manage to intrigue his way into the dining-room, a sharp eye would be kept upon the spoons. Look, too, at the gentleman in the travelling cap and neat beard and moustache, a VOL. XVII.-NO. XCVII. little below to the right. Would any prudent person in those days have had anything to do with such a man in connexion with a pack of cards? or anything to do with him at all, unless under compulsion? Even that cheerful-looking gentleman still further below and nearer the centre would have been noted as having too much whisker to be strictly honest, while the moustache would have condemned him in the eyes of all right-minded persons. As for the men with beards utterly uncontrolled-of which there are several specimens in the plate, and who have so many representatives in London society-they would have been considered as so many models for artists, or maniacs, or ruffians on their own account. When the moustache movement' was first suggested, the Times' declared that the appendage in question belonged to only two classes of men-the guard and the blackguard, and prophesied that it would never be tolerated in English so-ciety. Even so great an authority as the Times' cannot be always right, and that it was wrong in this case is apparent to the naked eye. In 1870 the heads' we have noted belong to the most ordinary specimens of our countrymen whom we encounter in the streets and the parks, in steamboats and railway carriages, in private houses and in public assemblies. The most brigand-like among them may appertain to persons pursuing such serious pursuits as banking and stockbroking-for even City men, though late to yield, have caught the infection and are almost as deeply marked with it as any other class. And it is not impossible that one of the most flagrant beards in the collection may belong to a clergyman of the Church of England. Such things have been of late, and are so still, we believe; and we have never heard that even the bishop whose hirsute appendages were made a public topic a few years ago, has ever condescended to shave. Barristers have been long since abandoned to the new fashion; and although the leading men of the profession still set their faces against F |