In addition
to the charm of sweet perfumes, the women who can afford the
luxury, suspend from their necks a few pieces of the dried glands
of the musk cat, which is a native of the country; such an
addition completes the toilet, when the coiffure has been
carefully arranged.
Hair-dressing in all parts of the world, both civilized and
savage, is a branch of science; savage negro tribes are
distinguished by the various arrangements of their woolly heads.
Arabs are marked by similar peculiarities, that have never
changed for thousands of years, and may be yet seen depicted upon
the walls of Egyptian temples in the precise forms as worn at
present, while in modern times the perfection of art has been in
the wig of a Lord Chancellor. Although this latter example of the
result of science is not the actual hair of the wearer, it adds
an imposing glow of wisdom to the general appearance, and may
have originated as a necessity where a deficiency of sagacity had
existed, and where the absence of years required the fictitious
crown of grey old age. A barrister in his wig, and the same
amount of learning without the wig, is a very different affair;
he is an imperfect shadow of himself.
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