hair from the cranium (particularly from
the superior regions of the frontal and parietal divisions) proves a
departure from the instincts and practices of brute humanity, and
indicates surely the growth of the understanding.

It occurred to the Judge long ago to prepare a list of the names of the
famous bald men in the history of human society, and this list has
grown until it includes the names of thousands, representing every
profession and vocation. Homer, Socrates, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato,
Cicero, Pliny, Maecenas, Julius Caesar, Horace, Shakespeare, Bacon,
Napoleon Bonaparte, Dante, Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Israel
Putnam, John Quincy Adams, Patrick Henry--these geniuses all were bald.
But the baldest of all was the philosopher Hobbes, of whom the revered
John Aubrey has recorded that "he was very bald, yet within dore he
used to study and sitt bare-headed, and said he never took cold in his
head, but that the greatest trouble was to keepe off the flies from
pitching on the baldness."

In all the portraits and pictures of Bonaparte which I have seen, a
conspicuous feature is that curl or lock of hair which depends upon the
emperor's forehead, and gives to the face a pleasant degree of
picturesque distinction. Yet this was a vanity, and really a laughable
one; for early in life Bonaparte began to get bald, and this so
troubled him that he sought to overcome the change it made in his
appearance by growing a long strand of hair upon his occiput and
bringing it forward a goodly distance in such artful wise that it right
ingeniously served the purposes of that Hyperion curl which had been
the pride of his youth, but which had fallen early before the ravages
of time.

As for myself, I do not know that I ever shared that derisive opinion
in which the unthinking are wont to hold baldness. Nay, on the
contrary, I have always had especial reverence for this mark of
intellectuality, and I agree with my friend Judge Methuen that the
tragic episode recorded in the second chapter of II. Kings should serve
the honorable purpose of indicating to humanity that bald heads are
favored with the approval and the protection of Divinity.

In my own case I have imputed my early baldness to growth in
intellectuality and spirituality induced by my fondness for and
devotion to books. Miss Susan, my sister, lays it to other causes,
first among which she declares to be my unnatural practice of reading
in bed, and the se