quenching conflagrations; indeed, maintains the same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not.

To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdröckh opened himself perhaps more than to the most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his importance, and scrutinise him with due power of vision! We enjoyed, what not three men in Weiss. nichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the Professor's private domicile. It was the attic floor of the highest house in the Wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. Moreover, with its windows it looked towards all the four Orte, or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, Airts: the sitting-room itself commanded three; another came to view in the Schlafgemach (bed-room) at the opposite end; to say nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, duplicates, and showing nothing new. So that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of Teufelsdröckh ; wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see the whole life-circulation of that considerable City; the streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (Thun und Treiben), were for the most part visible there.

"I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," have we heard him say, “and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the "Palace esplanade, where music plays while Serene Highness "is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in "her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits "to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except the Schloss"kirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive

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bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged-up "in pouches of leather: there, topladen, and with four swift "horses, rolls-in the country Baron and his household; here, "on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully along, begging alms a thousand carriages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling-in with Food, with young Rusticity, and other Raw "Produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again "with Produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring through "these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der

Ewigkeit hin: From Eternity, onwards to Eternity! These "are Apparitions: what else? Are they not Souls rendered "visible in Bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting "into air? Their solid Pavement is a Picture of the Sense; 'they walk on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind "them and before them. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow "Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in "its crown, is but of Today, without a Yesterday or a Tomor"row; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst and "Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living "link in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: "watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more."

"

'Ach, mein Lieber!" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it " is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, Istruggling up through smoke and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks "Boötes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith "in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, "when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are "bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch "for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like "" Inightbirds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under "that hideous coverlet of vapours, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and "hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying,—on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them "all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers "in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; "Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger"stricken into its lair of straw in obscure cellars, Rouge-et"Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry "Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing "their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The "Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she. "full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the "borders: the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his picklocks

"and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore "in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancingrooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; "but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous “and faint, and bloodshot eyes look-out through the darkness, "which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no hammering from the Rabenstein ?—their gallows must even now be o' building. Upwards of five-hundred-thousand twolegged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal positions; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the fool"ishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers "in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips "only her tears now moisten.-All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry be"tween them ;—crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel ;— "or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed I vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others: such "work goes on under that smoke-counterpane !—But I, mein "Werther, sit above it all; I am alone with the Stars."

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was visible.

These were the Professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent and smoked; while the visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take himself away. It was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 'united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffeepots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Blücher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, ’Liza), who was his bed-maker and stovelighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly creature, had no

sovereign authority in this last citadel of Teufelsdröckh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her way thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdröckh hastily saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not Literary. These were her Erdbeben (earthquakes), which Teufelsdröckh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would he have been to sit here philosophising forever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors: but Lieschen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. We can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for Teufelsdröckh, and Teufelsdröckh only, would she serve or give heed to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee ever at the due moment; and the speechless Lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence.

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, 'they never appear without their umbrella.' Had we not known with what 'little wisdom' the world is governed; and how, in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most part be but mute train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,—it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather

confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was the very Spirit cf Love embodied :' blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless friend Teufelsdröckh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: Er hat Gemüth und Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst; ist gegenwärtig aber halb-zerrüttet, halberstarrt, "He has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or favour of Fortune; and so is now half-cracked, half-congealed."—What the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder: we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are careless.

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdröckh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return; for Teufelsdröckh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdröckh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdröckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred.

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdröckh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he

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