Sheffield live, and shaving is their substance. But, as
in the case of the smoother and softer sex, we are convinced that the
wand of fashion would presently convert their heterodox anti-barbal
prejudices: so, in the case of harder-ware Sheffield, while we hope to
live to see razors regarded as antiquarian rarities, (even as a
watchman's rattle, or the many-caped coats of the semi-extinct class
_Welleria coachmanensis_ are now some time become,) still we desire all
possible multiplication to the tribe of trimming scissors. Like Ireland,
we shout for long-denied justice; give us our beards. That reasonable
indulgence shall never be abused; our Catholic emancipation of moustache
and imperial, whisker and the rest, shall not be a pretence for lion's
manes, or the fringe of goats and monkeys: we would not so far follow
unsophisticated nature as to relapse into barbarous wild men; but
diligently squaring, pointing, combing, and perfuming those natural
manly decorations, after the most approved modes of Raleigh, Walsingham,
and Shakspeare, and heroical Edward the Black Prince, and venerable
apostolic Bede, we will encroach little further than to discard our
comfortless starched collars and strangling stocks, to adopt once more
in lieu thereof open necks and vandyke borders.

Of course, (here, priest-like, we take our ell,) there must follow upon
this a grand and glorious revolution in male attire. This present
close-fitting, undignified set of habiliments, which no chisel dare
imitate--this cumbersome, unbecoming garb--might, should, ought to be,
and would be, superseded by slashed gay jerkins, and picturesque nether
garments: cap and feather throwing into shade the modern hat, ugliest
of all imaginable head-dresses; and in lieu of the smock-frock
Macintosh, or coarse-featured bear-skin, Ciceronian mantles flowing from
the shoulders, or lighter capes of the elegant olden-time Venitian. By
way of distinguishing the now confused classes of society, my radical
reform in dress would go to recommend that nobles and gentry wear their
own heraldic colours and livery buttons; and humbler domesticated
creatures walk, as modest gentlefolks do now, in what sundry have
presumed to call "Mufti." To be briefer; in dress, if nothing more, let
us sensibly retrograde to the days of good Queen Bess: I will not say,
copy a Sir Piercie Shafton, who boasts of having "danced the salvage man
at the mummery of Clerkenwell, in a suit of flesh-coloure