Beard, the hair which grows on the chin and lower parts of the human face. That portion which is found on the upper lip is generally distinguished as the mustache, while that upon the sides of the face is known by the name of whisker. Although the beard is ordinarily only seen on the male adult, it appears occasionally in certain exceptional cases on the faces of women and children. Full beards were cultivated among eastern nations in early times, and have always been regarded by them as a badge of dignity. The fact that the ancient Egyptian pictures frequently represent the human male figure, especially when of a king or dignitary, without the beard, would seem to indicate that it was a mark of rank in Egypt to be devoid of that appendage. In ancient India, Persia, and Assyria, how ever, the beard was allowed to grow long, and was always esteemed a symbol of dignity and wisdom. The Turks let the beard grow in full luxuriance, while the Persians cut and trim that upon the chin and the sides of the face, according to fashion or caprice.

In Turkey it is considered an infamy to have the beard cut off, and the slaves of the seraglio are shaved as a mark of their servile condition.' Previous to the reign of Alexander the Great the Greeks wore beards, but during the wars of that monarch they commenced shaving, the practice having been suggested, it is said, by Alexander for the purpose of depriving the enemy of an opportunity of catching the soldiers by the beard. The fashion thus begun continued until the reign of Justinian, when long beards again became customary. The year 300 B. C. is given as the time about which the Romans commenced the practice of shaving, and Scipio Africanus was, according to Pliny, the first of the Romans who daily submitted to the razor. The antique busts and coins prove that the Roman emperors shaved until the time of Hadrian, who is said to have let his beard grow to conceal an ugly scar. The philosophers, however, from the earliest periods seem to have affected the full-grown beard, it being esteemed by them, as among the Greeks, a symbol of wisdom. All the ancient inhabitants of Europe wore beards at the earliest period of which any record exists. The fashion, however, seems to have varied with them subsequently at different times.

The Lombards or Longobards derived their name from the practice of going unshaved. We learn from Tacitus that the ancient Germans cultivated the beard from its first growth until they had killed an enemy in battle, and from Julius Caosar that the Britons merely allowed the mustache to grow. Until the introduction of Christianity the Anglo-Saxons all wore beards without distinction, but then the clergy were compelled by law to shave. The English princes were in the habit of wearing mustaches till the conquest of William I., and they felt it to be a very great indignity when the conqueror compelled them to cut them off, in accordance with the Norman fashion. The practice and precepts of the Christian fathers, who, like the Jewish rabbis, denounced shaving as a violation of the law of God, made the wearing of the beard during the early mediaeval centuries a distinguishing fashion of the continental kings, nobles, and dignitaries. Royal personages were in the habit of weaving gold with the beard, or ornamenting it with tags of that metal. Of long beards, one of the most wonderful was that of a German artist of the name of John Mayo, who was called John the Bearded; it reached the ground when he stood up, and he was consequently obliged to tuck it into his girdle.

Till the separation of the Greek from the Latin church, which began in the 8th century, the popes, emperors, nobles, and, except in England, the priests had scrupulously abstained from the use of the razor. Leo III., to distinguish himself from the patriarch of Constantinople, removed his beard. Thirty years later Gregory IV., pursuing the same system, enjoined penalties upon every bearded priest. In the 12th century the prescription which required all the clergy to shave their faces was extended to the laity, and even to monarchs. Godefroi, bishop of Amiens, refused the offerings of any one who wore a beard. A preacher directed his eloquence against King Henry I. of England because he wore a beard, and the monarch yielded. Frederick Barbarossa offered a similar example of resignation. The confessor of Louis VII. of France refused him absolution till he submitted to lose his beard. This was not long kept up. In the 13th century Pope Honorius III., in order to conceal a disfigured lip, allowed his beard to grow, and inaugurated anew the fashion, which became prevalent in Europe in the age of Francis I. The right of the clergy to wear their beards was then again disputed.

Francis imposed a heavy tax upon every bearded bishop, and in 1561 the college of the Sorbonne decided, after mature deliberation, that a beard was contrary to sacerdotal modesty. In the reign of Henry IV. there were various styles, distinguished as the pointed beard, the square beard, the round beard, the aureole beard, the fan-shaped beard, the swallow-tailed beard, and the artichoke-leaf beard. In England, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the beard was worn generally by those of higher rank, and was trimmed in a style more or less distinctive of each class. The fashion of wearing the beard declined under the Stuarts, and at the restoration there was no hair worn upon the face but the mustache, which, however, was luxuriantly cultivated by the courtiers and gallants of those days. The decline of the beard in France dates from Louis XIIL, and in Spain from the accession of Philip V. The Russians retained their beards until Peter the Great returned from his western tour, when one of his first edicts toward the compulsory civilization of his people had reference to the beard. He taxed this appendage, and afterward ordered all those he found bearded to have the hair plucked out with pincers or shaven with a blunt razor.

Thus the practice of shaving became almost universal in Europe until a comparatively recent period. France was the first to return to the old fashion of wearing the beard, and England was the last. - The practice of wearing the beard is advocated by many physicians for hygienic reasons, as protecting the throat from cold and damp.

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Beard. I. James H., an American painter, born in Buffalo, N. Y., in 1815. In early infancy he was removed to Painesville in northern Ohio, where at the age of 14 he began to paint portraits, after having received only four lessons from a travelling artist. He subsequently practised portraiture in many parts of Ohio, and finally settled in Cincinnati, where he gained the friendship of Henry Clay, Gens. Harrison and Taylor, and other public men, of most of whom he painted portraits. For many years he was esteemed the leading artist in his peculiar walk. In 1846 he produced his first original picture, "The North Carolina Emigrants," which was exhibited and sold in New York, and at once established his reputation as a genre painter. Among his other pictures are "The Long Bill" and "The Land Speculator;" and his latest work, "Out all Night," has been engraved in London. Of late years he has devoted himself principally to composition and the painting of domesticated animals. His works are characterized by natural force and simplicity, with correct drawing, and a keen sense of humor.

II. William II., an American painter, brother of the preceding, born in Painesville, Ohio, about 1824. At 21 years of age he took up portrait painting, and about 1850 opened a studio at Buffalo, N. Y., where he soon after began to devote himself exclusively to genre and animal painting. After acquiring a considerable local reputation he visited Europe in 1858-'60, and in the latter year settled in New York. He is noted for the production of a series of works conceived in a vein of grotesque humor, in which bears, apes, and other animals enact scenes from the drama of human life. Promi-nent among these are his "Bears on a Bender," "Court of Justice," "Dance of Silenus," "Bear Dance," and "Watchers." In some of his pictures the comic element predominates; others are almost entirely satirical.