allowed to grow again. Perhaps not. I must look into the point. If
not, it was a wise precaution. "Hair, the only grace of form,"{1} says
the _Arbiter elegantiarum_, who compares a bald head to a fungus.{2} A
head without hair, says Ovid, is as a field without grass, and a shrub
without leaves.{3} Venus herself, if she had appeared with a bald head,
would not have tempted Apuleius: {4} and I am of his mind. A husband, in
Menander, in a fit of jealous madness, shaves his wife's head; and when
he sees what he has made of her, rolls at her feet in a paroxysm of
remorse. He was at any rate safe from jealousy till it grew again. And
here is a subtlety of Euripides, which none of his commentators
have seen into. AEgisthus has married Electra to a young farmer, who
cultivates his own land. He respects the Princess from magnanimity, and
restores her a pure virgin to her brother Orestes. "Not probable," say
some critics. But I say highly probable: for she comes on with her head
shaved. There is the talisman, and the consummate artifice of the
great poet. It is ostensibly a symbol of grief; but not the less a
most efficient ally of the aforesaid magnanimity. "In mourning," says
Aristotle, "sympathising with the dead, we deform ourselves by cutting
off our hair." And truly, it is.

1 Quod solum formse decus est, cecidere capilli.--Petronius,
c. 109.

2. .. laevior. . . rotundo Horti tubere, quod creavit unda.
_Ibid_.
'A head, to speak in the gardener's style, is a bulbous
excrescence, growing up between the shoulders. '--G. A.
Steevens: _Lecture on Heads_.

3 Turpe pecus mutilum; turpe est sine gramme campus; Et sine
fronde frutex; et sine crine caput.
Ovid: Arks Amatorio, iii. 249.

4 At vero, quod nefas dicere, neque sit ullum hujus rei tam
dirum exemplum: si cujuslibet eximiae pulcherrimaeque
fominae caput capillo exspoliaveris, et faciem nativa specie
nudaveris, licet ilia coelo dejecta, mari edita, fluctibus
educata, licet, inquam, Venus ipsa fuerit, licet omni
Gratiarum choro stipata, et toto Cupidinum populo comitata,
et balteo suo cincta, cinnama fragrans, et balsama rorans,
calva processerit, placere non potent nee Vulcano suo.--
Apuleius: _Metamorph_. ii. 25.

But, indeed, what it is profanation to speak, nor let there be hereof
any so dire example, if you despoil of its hair the head of any most
transcendent and per