'Clothes), into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less incompetent Diges'tive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the 'meanest Tinker that sees with eyes!'

For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in the feeling of Wonder; insists on the necessity and high worth of universal Wonder; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizen of so singular a Planet as ours. 'Won'der,' says he, 'is the basis of Worship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man; only at certain stages (as the 'present), it is, for some short season, a reign in partibus infidelium. That progress of Science, which is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdröckh, much as he otherwise venerates these two latter processes.

'Shall your Science,' exclaims he, 'proceed in the small chink'lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone; ' and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is 'the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, 'and Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were 'it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set ' in a basin, to keep it alive, could persecute without shadow of a ' heart, but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, 'for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble 'an organ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, 'perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like cookery with the day that 'called it forth; does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plenteous inเ crease to all Time.'

In such wise does Teufelsdröckh deal hits, harder or softer, according to ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above all, that class of 'Logic'choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to 'Wonder; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night-con'stables about the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, 'like true Old-Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on 'any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated Sceptics.

1

'walk abroad into peaceable society, in full daylight, with rattle 'and lantern, and insist on guiding you and guarding you there'with, though the Sun is shining, and the street populous with 'mere justice-loving men' that whole class is inexpressibly wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon animation he perorates:

'The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder '(and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal So'cieties, and carried the whole Mécanique Céleste and Hegel's Phi'losophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories 'with their results, in his single head,-is but a Pair of Spec'tacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes 'look through him, then he may be useful.

'Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through 'thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even 'by the hand-lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic; and “explain" 'all, "account" for all, or believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt 'attempt laughter; whoso recognizes the unfathomable, all-per'vading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet ' and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an Oracle and ( Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall, he shall be a 'delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt pro'trusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, 'when he kicks his foot through it?-Armer Teufel! Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender? Thou thyself, wert 'thou not born, wilt thou not die? Explain" me all this, 'or do one of two things: Retire into private places with thy 'foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not 'that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all disembel'lished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and 'sandblind Pedant.'

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CHAPTER XI.

PROSPECTIVE.

THE Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicated it would do, unfolding itself into new.boundless expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hellon-Earth?

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a Whole:

'Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the wings of the 'morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God 'is there." Thou too, O cultivated reader, who too probably art 'no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing GoD only by tradition, 'knowest thou any corner of the world where at least FORCE is 'not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; 'already, on the wings of the Northwind, it is nearing the Tropic ' of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? 'Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without Force and 'utterly dead?

'As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That 'little fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing (nach'tende) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and

thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe,-is it a detached, 'separated speck, cut off from the whole Universe; or indis'solubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was '(primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that circulates 'from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein, 'with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of 'Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force 'brought about it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an un'conscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron 'sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through the All; whose Dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and 'sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay preaches forth '(exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and one day to 'be all-commanding.

'Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it ' only a withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward 'on the bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and lives through 'perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and 'lost, there are Forces in it and around it, though working in in( verse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from 'which man makes Paper, or the litter from which the Earth 'makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; 'all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye 'looks into Infinitude itself.'

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us?

'All visible things are Emblems; what thou seest is not there ' on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter ' exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body it 'forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are Emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold 'cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all Emblem'atic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven :

'must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, 'wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our Rea'son are, like Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful;'the rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by 'wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward 'eye?

Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed 'with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider 'it, what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an 'Emblem; a Clothing or visible Garment for that divine ME of 'his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus ' is he said also to be clothed with a Body.

'Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it 'should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; 'and does she not? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Lan'guage; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of 'natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no longer recognised: still fluid and florid, or now solid'grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are 'the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are 'Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. An 'unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very 'Attention a Stretching-to? The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are ' even quite pallid, hunger-bitten, and dead-looking; while others 'again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, some'times (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. 'Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, 'or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous 'show-cloaks (Putz-Mäntel), and tawdry woolen rags: whereof 'he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers, and burn 'them.'

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor continues :

'Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and