e. In days before the moustache was popular, Mr
Frith shows how even in art circles its adoption retarded progress. "I
well remember," says Mr Frith, "a book illustrator named Stuart, who,
according to his own notion, ought to have been on the throne of England
instead of drawing on insensible wood blocks. He could trace his descent
from James I. He could sing Jacobite songs, and very well, too, and he
was certainly like Charles I. There was not the least doubt about his
pedigree in his own mind; and he was such a nuisance when once launched
into the long list of Royal blood, that we declared our unanimous
conviction of the justice of his claims, and implored him to put them
forward in the proper quarter, as we were powerless in the matter. The
Stuart beard, exactly like the Vandyke portrait of Charles, was the
treasured ornament of our friend's face, and though he was assured that
the publishers felt such doubt of his abilities, and such a conviction
of his utterly unreliable character and general dishonesty in
consequence of his beard--one man going so far as to tell him it cost
him L200 a year--he refused to remove it." Mr Frith says when the
Vandyke beard became white his poor friend would have died in extreme
poverty had he not received well-deserved assistance from a fund
established to meet cases like his.

The directors and managers of banks made a stand against the moustache
movement. It is asserted that the authorities of the Bank of England
issued an order "that the clerks were not to wear moustaches during
business hours." It is not surprising to learn that the amusing order
was soon cancelled. At the present time, at one of the great banks in
the Strand, the clerks have to be clean shaven. To illustrate the rigid
manner of enforcing the order, Mr Frith quotes the case of an old
servant of the bank, who was severely attacked by erysipelas in the face
and head. Even after convalescence the tenderness of the skin made
shaving impossible, but the old clerk begged to be allowed to return to
his desk. He was told by one of the principals, in a kind note in answer
to his application, that the bank would endeavour to get on without him
until his face was in a condition to bear the attention of his razor.

In the earlier years of the moustache movement, clerks might be
dismissed for not being clean shaven. Contractors, as a rule, we should
regard as being the least particular of any class of employers about
the per