The International Weekly Miscellany - Volume I, No. 4 | Page 8

each other and themselves to be under the direct 'rule and governance' of the Wicked One, is most skillfully administered. The supernatural here never becomes grossly palpable:--the thrill is all the deeper for its action being indefinite, and its source vague and distant."
[Footnote 2: The Scarlet Letter: a Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor & Co.]
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The Emperor Nicholas has just published an ordonnance, which regulates the pensions to which Russian and foreign actors at the imperial theaters at St. Petersburgh shall be entitled. This ordonnance divides the actors (national as well as foreign) into four classes. The first class obtains, after twenty years' service, pensions averaging from 300 to 1140 silver rubles. The others, after fifteen years' service, will receive pensions from 285 to 750 silver rubles.
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THE HAIR
CHEMICALLY AND PHYSIOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.--Each hair is a tube, containing an oil, of a color similar to its own. Hair contains at least ten distinct substances: sulphate of lime and magnesia, chlorides of sodium and potassium, phosphate of lime, peroxide of iron, silica, lactate of ammonia, oxide of manganese and margaim. Of these, sulphur is the most prominent, and it is upon this that certain metallic salts operate in changing the color of hair. Thus when the salts of lead or of mercury are applied, they enter into combination with the sulphur, and a black sulphuret of the metal is formed. A common formula for a paste to dye the hair, is a mixture of litharge, slacked lime, and bicarbonate of potash. Different shades may be given by altering the proportions of these articles. Black hair contains iron and manganese and no magnesia; while fair hair is destitute of the two first substances, but possesses magnesia.
No one ever possessed all the requisites of masculine or feminine beauty without a profusion of hair. This is one of the crowning perfections of the human form, upon which poets of all ages have dwelt with the most untiring satisfaction. However perfect a woman may be in other respects; however beautiful her eyes, her mouth, teeth, lips, nose or cheeks; however brilliant her expression, in conversation or excitement, she is positively disagreeable without this ornament of nature. The question is sometimes asked, "What will cure love?" We answer, scissors. Let the object be shorn of hair, and you may take the word of a physiologist, that the tender passion will lose its distinctiveness; it may subside into respect: it is more likely to change into a less agreeable emotion.
In man, the hair is an excellent index of character. As the beard distinguishes man from woman, so its full and luxuriant growth often indicates strength and nobleness, intellectual and physical; while a meager beard suggests an uncertain character--part masculine, part feminine. Was there ever a truly great man, or one with a generous disposition, with a thin beard and a weazen face? On the other hand, show me a man with "royal locks," and I will trust his natural impulses in almost every vicissitude. When we see a genuine man, upon whom Nature has declined to set this seal of her approval, we cannot help an involuntary emotion of admiration for the virtuous and persevering energy with which he must have overcome his destiny.
Pertinent hereto: we have read with unusual satisfaction the arguments for Beards in Dr. Marcy's Theory and Practice of Medicine and the pleasant essays in the same behalf which John Waters has printed in the Knickerbocker. Our conservatism yields before these reformers, who would bring custom to the proprieties of nature.
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WHAT'S IN A NAME?--A good deal, sometimes. Thus, the truth of the adage of "give a dog a bad name," &c., has lately been exemplified in a singular manner. Eugene Sue, you may remember, causes some of the most terrible events in the Mysteres de Paris to occur in the Allée des Venves, a fine avenue in the Champs Elysees. This has had the effect of giving the unfortunate Allée--though as quiet, modest, well-behaved, moral street as need be--a detestable reputation; people have shunned it as if it were a cavern of cutthroats--those condemned to live in it have felt themselves quasi-infamous--its rents have fallen, its shops stood empty, its business has dwindled away. The owners of its houses, and its few remaining inhabitants and shopkeepers, have for months past been pestering the municipality of Paris to devise means of restoring its fallen prosperity, and removing the monstrous stigma attached to it. At last, moved by compassion, the municipality has given permission to have the name changed to "Avenue de Montaigne." The ex-Allée, says the writer who informs us of the circumstance, is in great jubilation, and is crying with enthusiasm "Je suis sauvee!"
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"NAMES HIGH INSCRIBED."--It is stated that the