"Enclosure, and Declaration aloud, you could not be sure ' of gulling.

'Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; ' and gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards 'any thing like a Statistics of Imposture, indeed, little as yet has been done with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for minor Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the 'grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our 'whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of ' that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at

'all! Can any one, for example, so much as say, 'What monies, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are 'realised by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish; 'what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; ́ 'specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circula'tions, disbursements, incoming of said monies, with 'the smallest approach to accuracy? But to ask, How ⚫ far, in all the several infinitely complected departments ' of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's 'Want is supplied by true Ware; how far by the mere 'Appearance of true Ware :-in other words, To what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various 'times and countries, Deception takes the place and wages of Performance: here truly is an Inquiry big 'with results for the future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the pre'sent, in our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a Hun

dred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, Rus

'sian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably ⚫ not far from the mark),—what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated, as the Statistics of Imposture advances, and so the manufacturing of Shams "(that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly unnecessary!

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'This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, for the present brazen one, is, that in several 'provinces, as in Education, Polity, Religion, where so 'much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can as yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, and man's Gullibility not his worst blessing. Suppose your sinews of war quite broken; 'I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but exhausted; and that the whole army is about to * mutiny, disband, and cut your and each other's throat, '-then were it not well could you, as if by miracle, pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on co'agulated water, or mere imagination of meat; whereby, 'till the real supply came up, they might be kept toge'ther, and quiet? Such perhaps was the aim of Nature, 'who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her fa'vourite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather ⚫ omni-patient Talent of being Gulled.

'How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism;

nay, almost makes mechanism for itself! These Pro'fessors in the Nameless lived with ease, with safety, by a mere Reputation, constructed in past times, and then too with no great effort, by quite another class of persons. Which Reputation, like a strong brisk-going ' undershot-wheel, sunk into the general current, bade

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'fair, with only a little annual repainting on their part, 'to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously grind for them. Happy that it was so for the Mil'lers! They themselves needed not to work; their ' attempts at working, at what they called Educating, now when I look back on it, fill me with a certain mute ⚫ admiration.

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'Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational University; in the highest degree, hostile to Mysticism; 'thus was the young vacant mind furnished with much ' talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages, Prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough 'blown out into a state of windy argumentativeness; ' whereby the better sort must soon end in sick, impo⚫tent Scepticism; the worser sort explode (crepiren) in 'finished Self-conceit and to all spiritual intents become dead. But this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our era is the Era of Unbelief, why murmur under it; is 'there not a better coming, nay come? As in longdrawn Systole and longdrawn Diastole, must the period of "Faith alternate with the period of Denial; must the ' vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual Representations and Creations, be followed 'by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. For man lives in Time, has his whole earthly being, endeavour, and destiny shaped for him by Time: only in the transitory Time-Symbol is the ' ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made manifest. 'And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for the ' nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have 'been born, and to be awake, and work; and for the 'duller a felicity, if like hibernating animals, safe-lodged

in some Salamanca University, or Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptuous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber through, in stupid dreams, and only ' awaken when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all done 'their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new Spring has been vouchsafed.'

That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth, Teufelsdröckh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. The hungry young,' he says, 'looked up to their spiritual Nurses; and, for food, were bidden eat the east wind. What vain jargon of con'troversial Metaphysic, Etymology, and mechanical Manipulation falsely named Science, was current 'there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than the most. 'Among eleven hundred Christian youths, there will not 'be wanting some eleven eager to learn. By collision 'with such, a certain warmth, a certain polish was com'municated; by instinct and happy accident, I took less to rioting (renommiren), than to thinking and reading, which latter also I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of that Library, I succeeded in fishing up more books perhaps than had been known to the very 'keepers thereof. The foundation of a Literary Life was hereby laid: I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivated languages, on ' almost all subjects, and sciences; farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it was my 'favourite employment to read character in speculation, ' and from the Writing to construe the Writer. A cer'tain groundplan of Human Nature and Life began to 'fashion itself in me; wondrous enough, now when I 'look back on it; for my whole Universe, physical and

spiritual, was as yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, recognized groundplan, the truest I had, was beginning to be there, and by additional experi'ments, might be corrected and indefinitely extended.'

Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the destitution of the wild desert, does our young Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help. Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. Teufelsdröckh gives us long details of his feverparoxysms of Doubt;' his Inquiries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of religious Faith; and how in ⚫ the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the Allseeing, and with audible prayers, cried vehemently for 'Light, for deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not 'till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the ' believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the nightmare, Unbelief; and, in this hag' ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a ⚫ pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain,' continues he,' it is ap'pointed us to pass: first must the dead Letter of Reli'gion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if 'the living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnelhouse, is to arise on us, newborn of Heaven, and with new healing under its wings.'

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To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid season of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet