Leon M Gambetta
Léon Gambetta, an eminent French statesman and founder of the French Republic. When he died from a pistol wound, in 1882 ,at 44 years of age, his brain was found to weigh 40.9 ounces, whereas boys of 7 to 14 years of age average a fraction less than 46 ounces. Dr. Flint, in his “Physiology,” gives the average male brain in New York at a little over 50 ounces. Here we find one of the most powerful of the statesmen of his time with a receding forehead and exceedingly small brain.
Thomas Parr
Sir Richard Greenvill
Sir Richard Greenvill was Vice-Admiral under Lord Thomas Howard, son to the Duke of Norfolk, who was sent with a squadron of seven ships to America, to intercept the Spanish galleons laden with treasure from the West-Indies, Sir Richard, who happened to be separated from the rest of the squadron, unfortunately, fell in with the enemy's fleet of fifty-two sail, which he engaged and repulsed fifteen times. He continued fighting till he was covered with blood and wounds, and nothing remained of his ship but a battered hulk. He died on board the Spanish fleet three days after, expressing the highest satisfaction at the moment of death, at his having acted as a true sailor ought to have done. He was the grandfather of the famous Sir Bevil Greenvill.
Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison will long be remembered as an exemplary President, if patriotism and the performance of those pledges made to the people who elected him, entitle a President to remembrance. The sympathy of the whole nation went out to President Harrison when he sustained the loss of that example of virtue and womanly excellence in the death of his wife. It was so deep and strong, that had the “Common People” not seen the party he represented through a glass clouded by the smoke and soot of sham aristocracy, he would have been re-elected
Jay Gould
Died December, 1892, worth $70,000,000.
Druids
ALTHOUGH these Britons did not worship images, they believed that there were many gods and their religion was very different from that which is taught us in the Bible. They had priests who were called DRUIDS, who lived mostly in the forests, and taught the people that the Oak was a sacred tree. They worshipped the mistletoe, a plant which grows on the branches of the oak and on other trees. This mistletoe was cut off every year, with a golden knife, by the chief Druid, amid great rejoicing, and was very carefully preserved. The priests wore white linen robes, and let their beards grow very long to distinguish them from the rest of the people. The savages obeyed them because they knew more than anybody else, and tried to find out medicines to cure those who were ill. They used various means to make the people give them presents. On a certain day, at the beginning of winter, they obliged all persons to put out their fires, and light them again from the fire of the sacred altar, telling them, that by so doing they would have good fortune throughout the year; but if any one did not act as they wished, they would not allow him to enter their temples, and his friends were forbidden to give him any help.
Dr. William Slater. Cathedral Beard
King Narmer
Among the most ancient representations of Egyptian costume which are known to us is that of the figure of the pre-dynastic King Narmer (3407 B.C.). In the figure he is seen wearing the tall white crown of Upper Egypt (the " Het "), also a plain corselet held in place by one brace, and a short plain kilt with a belt from which ornamental pendants hang down in front. Each pendant has at the top a representation of the goddess Hathor's head, and this is shewn at the side of the figure to a larger scale. At the back of the belt is fastened the ceremonial animal's tail which persists as a part of the kings of Egypt until the end of their history. On the chin of Narmer we see the ceremonial artificial beard of a king, which is fastened by straps to his crown. The figure of this king is taken from that very ancient fragment decorated with figures in relief and called " The Palette of Narmer," a memorial tablet shewing the king in battle. The beards of gods, kings and noblemen were each different in shape, each symbolic of their wearers.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
A New Zealander
A New Zealander with moko (tattoo)
Charlemagne
Portrait of Charlemagne, whom the Song of Roland names the King with the Grizzly Beard.--Fac-simile of an Engraving of the End of the Sixteenth Century. Charlemagne was the first who recognised that social union, so admirable an example of which was furnished by Roman organization, and who was able, with the very elements of confusion and disorder to which he succeeded, to unite, direct, and consolidate diverging and opposite forces, to establish and regulate public administrations, to found and build towns, and to form and reconstruct almost a new world. We hear of him assigning to each his place, creating for all a common interest, making of a crowd of small and scattered peoples a great and powerful nation; in a word, rekindling the beacon of ancient civilisation. When he died, after a most active and glorious reign of forty-five years, he left an immense empire in the most perfect state of peace
Man with long beard
Man with long beard
Man in buckskin
Man in buckskin - dawn by Frederick Remington
Man in buckskin
Man in buckskin - dawn by Frederick Remington
William de Langley
William de Langley, who gave to the monastery a well-built house in Dagnale Street, in the town of St. Alban’s, for which the monastery received sixty shillings per annum, which Geoffrey Stukeley held at the time of writing. William de Langley is a man of regular features, partly bald, with pointed beard and moustache, the kind of face that might so easily have been merely conventional, but which has really much individuality of expression. The house—his benefaction—represented beside him, is a two-storied house; three of the square compartments just under the eaves are seen, by the colouring of the illumination, to be windows; it is timber-built and tiled, and the upper story overhangs the lower. The gable is finished with a weather-vane, which, in the original, is carried beyond the limits of the picture.
Man with beard
Man with beard
Man with cane
Man with cane
Study of a head
Study of a head
Tufted Beard
Tufted Beard
Top hat with beard
Top hat with beard
Shrugging man
Shrugging man
Shrugging man with beard
Shrugging man with beard
Santa type beard
Santa type beard
Really long beard
Really long beard
Poirot perhaps
Poirot perhaps
Pastor with beard
Pastor with beard
Oriental with Beard
Oriental with Beard
Long Beard
Long Beard
Goatee Beard
Goatee Beard
Full beard - full hair
Full beard - full hair
Farmer with beard
Farmer with beard
Chinaman with beard
Chinaman with beard
Captain with Beard
Captain with Beard
Bowrtie man with beard
Bowrtie man with beard
Bowler with beard
Bowler with beard
Biker with beard
Biker with beard
Beastly Beard
Beastly Beard
Bearded man waiting for dinner
Bearded man waiting for dinner
Van Dyke Beard
Van Dyke Beard
Unhappy man with beard
Unhappy man with beard
Samuel Finley Breese Morse
Inventor of the Electric Telegraph In a short time he had worked out on paper the whole scheme of transmitting thought over long distances by means of electricity. And now began twelve toilsome years of struggle to devise machinery for his invention. To provide for his three motherless children, Morse had to devote to painting much time that he otherwise would have spent in perfecting the mechanical appliances for his telegraph. His progress therefore was slow and painful, but he persistently continued in the midst of discouraging conditions.
The Old-Clothes Man
The Old-Clothes Man Fifty years ago the appearance of the street-Jews, engaged in the purchase of second-hand clothes, was different to what it is at the present time. The Jew then had far more of the distinctive garb and aspect of a foreigner. He not unfrequently wore the gabardine, which is never seen now in the streets, but some of the long loose frock coats worn by the Jew clothes’ buyers resemble it. At that period, too, the Jew’s long beard was far more distinctive than it is in this hirsute generation. In other respects the street-Jew is unchanged. Now, as during the last century, he traverses every street, square, and road, with the monotonous cry, sometimes like a bleat, of “Clo’! Clo’!”
The Bearded Crossing sweeper at the Exchange
The Bearded Crossing sweeper at the Exchange That portion of the London street-folk who earn a scanty living by sweeping crossings constitute a large class of the Metropolitan poor. We can scarcely walk along a street of any extent, or pass through a square of the least pretensions to “gentility,” without meeting one or more of these private scavengers. Crossing-sweeping seems to be one of those occupations which are resorted to as an excuse for begging; and, indeed, as many expressed it to me, “it was the last chance left of obtaining an honest crust.” The advantages of crossing-sweeping as a means of livelihood seem to be: 1st, the smallness of the capital required in order to commence the business; 2ndly, the excuse the apparent occupation it affords for soliciting gratuities without being considered in the light of a street-beggar; And 3rdly, the benefits arising from being constantly seen in the same place, and thus exciting the sympathy of the neighbouring householders, till small weekly allowances or “pensions” are obtained.
Assyrian Bas-relief
Layard's "Nineveh." Beards were curled and probably dyed and powdered, the powder, however, being gold. As a matter of fact, gold was employed in various ways as an enrichment to the hair.