A word, therefore, on the expression of Bearded faces. The works of the Greeks,[4] the paintings of the old Masters, but above all the productions of the pencil of Raphael, justly styled “the Painter of Expression,” is a sufficient general answer to this ill-considered charge. It would indeed be strange if He who made the male face, and fixed the laws of every feature—clothing it with hair, as with a garment, should in this last particular have made an elaborate provision to mar the excellency of His own work! Nothing indeed but the long effeminizing of our faces could have given rise to the present shaven ideal—to the forgetfulness of the true standard of masculine beauty of expression, which is naturally as antipodal as the magnetic north and south poles, to that of female loveliness, where delicacy of line, blushing changeable colour, and eyes that win by seeming not to wish it, are charms we all feel, and at the same time understand how inappropriate they are when applied to the opposite sex; where the bold enterprizing brow—the deep penetrating eye—the daring, sagacious nose, and the fleshy but firm mouth, well supported on the decided projecting chin, proclaim a being who has an appointed path to tread, and hard rough work to do, in this world of difficulties and ceaseless transition.
Elmes says, “The Beard in Art has an ideal character as an attribute, and distinguished by its undulating curl the Beard of Jupiter Olympius from that of Jupiter Serapis (who has a longer and straighter Beard) the lank Beard of Neptune and the river Gods, from the short and frizzly Beards of Hercules, Ajax, Diomede, Ulysses, &c.”
So much for the general charge; if we examine the separate features, there can be no question that the upper part of the face—the most godlike portion—where the mind sits enthroned, gains in expression by the addition of and contrast with the Beard; the nose also is thrown into higher relief, while the eyes acquire both depth and brilliancy. The mouth, which is especially the seat of the affections, 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 nor chin are, as we have said, unsightly in early life, but at 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.