English ladies do not appear to have adopted the fashion of wearing wigs until about the year 1550. Junius, in his Commentarium de Comâ, says that false hair came into use here about that time, and that such use had never be fore been adopted by English matrons. Some three hundred years before this the Benedictine monks at Canterbury, who were canons of the cathedral, very pathetically represented to Pope Innocent IV. that they were subject to catch very bad colds from serving in the wide and chilly cathedral bareheaded. The pontiff gave them solemn permission to guard against catarrh, rheum, bronchitis, and phthisis, by covering their heads with the hood common to their order, having especial care, however, to fling back the hood at the reading of the Gospel and at the elevation of the Host. Zealous churchmen have been very indignant at the attempts made to prove that the permission of Innocent IV. might be construed as a concession to priests for wearing wigs, if they were so minded. The question was settled at the great Council of England held in London in 1268. That council refused to sanction the wearing by clerics of " vulgo coifas vocant," except when they were travelling. In church and in presence of their bishop they were ordered to appear bareheaded. If a coif even was profane, a wig to this council would have taken the guise of the unpardonable sin. It is, however, well known, that though Rome forbade a priest to officiate with covered head, permission to do so was purchaseable. In fact the rule of Rome was not founded, as it was declared to be, on Scripture. Permission was readily granted to the Romish priests in China to officiate with covered heads, as being more agreeable to the native idea there of what was seemly. Native sentiment nearer home was much less regarded. Thus, when the Bulgarians complained to Pope Nicholas that their priests would not permit them to wear during church-time those head-wrappers or turbans which it was their habit never to throw off, the pontiff returned an answer which almost took the brief and popular form of "Serve you right!" and the Bulgarians took nothing by their motion.

quas

Our Anselm of Canterbury was as

little conceding to the young and longhaired nobles of his day as was Pope Nicholas to the Bulgarians. Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, relates that on one occasion (Ash Wednesday) the primate soundly rebuked the hirsute aristocracy, put them in penance, and refused them absolution until they had submitted to be close-shorn. The prelate in question would allow none to enter his cathedral who wore either long or false hair. Against both, the objection remained for a lengthened period insuperable. When Henry I. of England was in France, Serron, Bishop of Seez, told him that heaven was disgusted at the aspect of Christians in long hair, or wearing on manly heads locks that had perhaps come from women's brows; they were as sons of Belial for so offending: "Pervicaces filii Belial capita sua comis mulierum ornant." The King looked grave. The prelate insinuatingly invited the father of his people, who wore long if not false locks, to set a worthy example. "We'll think of it," said the sovereign. "No time like the present," rejoined the prelate, who produced a pair of scissars from his episcopal sleeve, and advanced towards Henry, prepared to sweep off those honours which the monarch would fain have preserved. But what was the sceptre of the prince to the forceps of the priest? The former meekly sat down at the entrance to his tent, while Bishop Serron clipped him with the skilful alacrity of a Figaro. Noble after noble submitted to the same operation; and while these were being docked by the more dignified clergy, a host of inferior ecclesiastics passed through the ranks of the grinning soldiers, and cut off hair enough to have made the fortunes of all the perriwigbuilders who rolled in gilded chariots during the palmy days of the “Grand Monarque.'

In what then but in profligate days could wigs have triumphed in England? Perriwigs established themselves victoriously dividing even the Church— under Louis XIV. When a boy that King had such long and beautiful hair that it became the fashion for all classes to wear at least an imitation thereof. When Louis began to lose his own, he also took to false adornment, and fullbottomed wigs bade defiance to the canons of the Church. Charles II. did

not bring the fashion with him to Whitehall. On the contrary he withstood it. He forbade the members of the university to wear perriwigs, smoke tobacco, or read their sermons. The members did all three, and Charles soon found himself doing the first two. On the 2nd November, 1663, says Pepys, "I heard the Duke say that he was going to wear a perriwig; and they say the King also will. I never till this day," he adds, "observed that the King was so mighty grey." This perhaps was the reason that Charles stooped to assume what he had before denounced. Pepys himself had ventured upon the step in the previous May; and what a business it was for the little man: Hear him" 8th. At Mr. Jervas's, my old barber. I did try two or three borders and perriwigs, meaning to wear one; and yet I have no stomach for it, but that the pains of keeping my hair clean is so great. He trimmed me, and at last I parted, but my mind was almost altered from my first purpose, from the trouble that I foresee will be in wearing them also." He took some time to make up his mind, and only in October of the same year does he take poor Mrs. Pepys to "my perriwig maker's, and there showed my wife the perriwig made for me, and she likes it very well." In April 1665 the wig was in the hands of Jervas under repair. In the meantime our old friend took to his natural hair; but early in May we find him recording that "this day, after I had suffered my own hayre to grow long, in order to wearing it, I find the convenience of perriwiggs is so great that I have cut off all short again, and will keep to perriwiggs." In the autumn, on Sunday the 3rd of September, the wicked little gallant moralizes thus on "perriwiggs" and their prospects:"Up and put on my coloured silk suit, very fine, and my new perriwigg bought a good while since, but durst not wear, because the plague was in Westminster, when I bought it; and it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to perriwiggs, for nobody will dare to buy any hayre for fear of the infection, that it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague." The plague and fear thereof were clean forgotten before many months had passed, and in June 1666

Pepys "walking in the galleries at Whitehall, I find the ladies of honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just for all the world like mine; and buttoned their doublets up their breasts, with perriwigs and with hats; so that, only for a long petticoat dragging under their men's coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever, which was an odd sight, and a sight did not please me." The moralist at Whitehall, however, could forget his mission when at "Mercer's." There, on the 14th of August, 1666, the thanksgiving day for the recent naval victory, after "hearing a piece of the Dean of Westminster's sermon," dining merrily, enjoying the sport at the Bear Garden, and letting off fireworks, the perriwigged philosopher, with his wife, Lady Penn, Pegg, and Nan Wright, kept it up at Mrs. Mercer's after midnight,"and there mighty merry, smutting one another with candlegrease and soot, until most of us were like devils. And that being done, then we broke up and to my house; and there I made them drink, and up stairs we went, and then fell into dancing, W. Battelier dancing well; and dressing him and I, and one Mr. Banister, who with my wife came over also with us, like women; and Mercer put on a suit of Tom's, like a boy, and Mr. Wright and my wife and Pegg Penn put on perriewigs; and thus we spent till three or four in the morning, mighty merry," and little troubled with the thought whether the skull which had afforded the hair for such perriwig were lying in the pestfields or not. By the following year our rising gentleman grows extravagant in his outlay for such adornments, and he who had been content to wear a wig at 238. buys now a pair for 4l. 10s.

"mighty fine; indeed, too fine, I thought, for me." And yet amazingly proud was the maccaroni of his purchase, recording two days afterwards that he had been "to church, and with my mourning, very handsome, and new perriwig, made a great show."

Doubtless under James II. his perriwigged pate made a still greater show, for then had wigs become stupendous in their architecture. The beaux who stood beneath them carried exquisite combs in their ample pockets, with which, whether in the Mall, at the

rout, in the private box, or engaged in the laborious work of "making love," they ever and anon combed their perukes, and rendered themselves irresistible. Wisdom was even then thought to be under the wig. "A full wig," says Farquhar in his "Love and a Bottle," (1698) "is as infallible a token of wit as the laurel,"-an assertion which I should never think of disputing. Tillotson is the first of our clergy represented in a wig, and that a mere substitute for the natural head of hair. "I can remember," he says in one of his sermons, "since the wearing of the hair below the ears was looked upon as a sin of the first magnitude, and when ministers generally, whatever their text was, did either find, or make occasion, to reprove the great sin of long hair; and if they saw any one in the congregation guilty in that kind, they would point him out particularly, and let fly at him with great zeal."

The victory at Ramilies introduced the Ramilies wig, with its peculiar gradually diminishing plaited tail, and tie consisting of a great bow at top and a smaller one at the bottom. This wig survived till the reign of George III. The maccaronis of 1729 wore a "macaw-like toupee and a portentous tail." But when the French Revolution came in contact with any system-from the Germanic empire to perukes that system perished in the collision. So perriwigs ceased, like the dynasty of the Doges of Venice; and all that remains to remind us of bygone glories in the former way is to be found in the Ramilies tie, which stillclings to court coats long after wigs had fallen from the head, never again to rise.

Lady Wortley Montague makes a severe remark in her Letters, less against wigs indeed, than their wearers. She is alluding to the alleged custom in the East of branding every convicted liar on the forehead; and adds, that if such a custom prevailed in England, the entire world of beaux here would have to pull their perriwigs down to their eyebrows.

Tillotson, as I have noticed above, makes reference to the opposition which perukes met with from the pulpit. The hostility in that quarter in England was faint compared with the fiery antagonism which blazed in France. In

the latter country, the privilege of wearing long hair belonged, at one time, solely to royalty. Lombard Bishop of Paris, in the middle of the twelfth century, induced royalty not to make the privilege common, but to abolish it altogether. The French monarchs wore their own hair cut short until the reign of Louis XIII. who was the first King of France that wore a wig. To the fashion set by him is owing that France ultimately became the paradise of perruquiers. In 1660 they first appeared on the heads of a few dandy abbés. As Ireland in Edward Dwyer or "Edward of the Wig," has preserved the memory of the first of her sons who took to a perriwig, so France has handed down the Abbé de la Riviere, who died Bishop of Langres, as the ecclesiastical innovator on whose head first rested a wig, with all the consequences of such guilty outrage of canonical discipline. The indignation of strict churchmen was extreme, and, as the fashion began to spread among prelates, canons, and curés, the Bishop of Toul sat himself down and wrote a "blast" against perukes, the wearing of which, he said, unchristianised those who adopted the fashion. It was even solemnly announced that a man had better not pray at all, than pray with his head so covered. No profanity was intended when zealous, close-cropped, and bare-headed ecclesiastics reminded their bewigged brethren that they were bound to imitate Christ in all things, and then asked them if the Saviour were likely to recognise a resemblance to himself in a priest under a wig!

Nor was this feeling confined to the Romish Church in France. The Reformed Church was fully as determined against the new and detested fashion. Bordeaux was in a state of insurrection for no other reason than that the Calvinist pastor there had refused to admit any of his flock in wigs to the sacrament. And when Rivius, Protestant professor of theology at Leyden, wrote in defence of perukes his "Libertas Christiana circa Usum Capillitii Defensa," the ultra-orthodox in both churches turned upon him. The Romanists asked what could be expected from a Protestant but rank heresy; and the Protestants disowned

a brother who defended a fashion that had originated with a Romanist! Each

party stood by the words of Paul to the Corinthians. In vain did some suggest that the apostolic injunction was only local. The ultras would heed no such suggestion, and would have insisted on bare heads at both poles. And yet, remarked the wiggites, it is common for preachers to preach in caps. Aye, but, retorted the orthodox, that is simply because they are then speaking only in their own name. Reading the gospel, or offering up the adorable sacrifice, they are speaking or acting in the name of the universal Church. Of course, they added, there are occasions when even a priest may be covered. If a Pope invented the baret, a curé may wear a cap. Sylvester was the first pontiff who wore a mitre; but even that fashion became abused, and in the year 1000 a Pope was seen with his mitre on his head during mass, a sight which startled the faithful, and a fact which artists would be none the worse for remembering. After that period, bishops took to them so pertinaciously that they hardly laid them by on going to bed. These prelates were somewhat scandalised when the popes granted to certain dukes the privilege of wearing the mitre; but when the like favour was granted to abbots of a certain class, the prelatic execration was uttered with a jealous warmth that was perfectly astounding. When the moderns brought the question back to its simple principles, and asked the sticklers for old customs if wigs were not as harmless as mitres, they were treated with as scant courtesy as Mr. Gorham or the Lord Primate is in the habit of experiencing at the hands of a medieval bishop. If, it was said, a priest must even take off his calotte in presence of a king or pope, how may he dare to wear a wig before God? Richelieu was the first ecclesiastic of his rank in France who wore the modern calotte, but I very much doubt if he ever took it off in the presence of Louis XIII. It is known, however, that the French king's ambassador, M. d'Oppeville, found much difficulty in obtaining an audience at Rome. He wore a wig à calotte. The officials declared he could not be introduced unless he took off the calotte. He could not do this without taking off his wig also, as he shewed the sticklers of court etiquette,

and stood before them with cleanshaven head, asking, at the same time, "Would the pope desire to see me stand before him in such a plight as this? Whom do you take me for ?" The pontiff did not yield the point without difficulty. Perhaps his Holiness, had he received the ambassador under bare poll, would have graciously served him as a predecessor had served the Irish saint Malachi-put his pontifical tiara on the good man's head, to prevent him from catching cold!

But of all the tilters against wigs none was so serious and chivalresque as "Jean Baptiste Thiers, docteur en theologie et curé" (that is, vicar, according to our sense of the word,) of Champrond. Dr. Thiers, in the year 1690, wrote a book of some six hundred pages against the wearing of wigs by ecclesiastics. He published the same "aux depens de l'auteur," and high authority pronounced it conformable in every respect to the "Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church." Dr. Thiers wrote a brief preface to his long work, in which he invokes an abundant visitation of divine peace and grace on those who read his volume with tranquillity of mind, and who prefer truth to fashion. The invocation, I fear, is made in vain, for the tediousness of the author slays all tranquillity of spirit on the part of the reader, who cannot, however, refrain from smiling at seeing the very existence of Christianity made to depend upon the question of perukes. The book is a dull book; but the prevailing idea in it, that it is all over with religion if perukes be not abolished, is one that might compel a cynic to inextinguishable laughter. Yes, says the doctor, the origin of the tonsure is to be found in the cutting of Peter's hair by the Gentiles to make him ridiculous

therefore, he who hides the tonsure beneath a peruke insults the prince of the apostles! a species of reasoning anything comparable with which is probably not to be found in that book which Rome has honoured by condemning Whateley's Logic.

The volume, however, affords evidence of the intense excitement raised in France by the discussion of the bearing of wigs on Christianity. For a season the question in some degree resembled, in its treatment at least,

that of baptismal regeneration as now treated among ourselves. No primitively-minded prelate would license a curé who professed neutrality on the matter of wigs. The wearers of these were often turned out of their benefices, and then they were welcomed in other dioceses by bishops who were heterodoxly given to the mundane comfort of wiggery. Terrible scenes took place in vestries between wigged priests ready to repair to the altar, and their brethren or superiors, who sought to prevent them. Chapters suspended such priests from place and profit, parliament broke the suspension, and chapters renewed the interdict. Decree was abolished by counter decree, and the whole Church was split in twain by the contending parties. Louis XIV. took the conservative side of the question so far as it regarded ecclesiastics, and the Archbishop of Rheims fondly thought he had clearly settled the dispute by decreeing that wigs might or might not be worn, according to circumstances. They were allowed to the infirm and the aged, but never at the altar. One consequence was that many priests on approaching the altar used to take off their perukes, and deposit them in the hands of notaries, under protest! Such a talk about heads had not kept a whole city in confusion since the days wherein St. Fructuarus, Bishop of Braga, decreed the penalty of entirely shaven crowns against all the monks of that city caught in the fact of kissing any of its maidens.

Thiers could not see in the wig the uses discerned by Cumberland, who says, in his "Choleric Man," "Believe me, there is much good sense in old distinctions. When the law lays down its full-bottomed perriwig, you will find less wisdom in bald pates than you are aware of." The Curé of Champrond says that the French priests, who spent their thirty or forty pistoles yearly in wigs, were so irreligious that they kept their best wig for the world, and their oldest for God,-wearing the first in drawing-rooms, and the latter at church. This was certainly less ingenious than in the case of the man celebrated in the "Connoisseur," who having but one peruke made it pass for two; "It was naturally a kind of flowing bob, but, by the occasional addition of two tails, it sometimes passed as a major."

In France, wigs ended by assuming the appearence of nature. In the Reign of Terror, the modish blonde perukes worn by females were made of hair purchased from the executioner, of whom old ladies bought the curls which had clustered about the young necks that had been severed by the knife of Samson.* But after this the fashion ceased among women, as it had already done among men, beginning to do so with the latter when Franklin appeared in his own hair, and unpowdered, at the court of Louis XVI.-and from that period wigs have belonged only to history. JOHN DORAN.

Still less can a readiness be expected to exist in facilitating the operations of that disagreeable functionary, and the reluctant taxpayer feels doubly the infliction when he is required to prepare with his own hands the instruments of execution. Hence arises much of the unpopularity of the Income Tax. All feel a certain soreness at having to

GENT. MAG. VOL. XXXIX.

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