6

Nay how knowest thou,' cries he, but this and the ' other pregnant Device, now grown to be a world' renowned far-working Institution; like a grain of right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and

now stretching out strong boughs to the four winds, for 'the birds of the air to lodge in,-may have been 'properly my doing? Some one's doing it without 'doubt was; from some Idea, in some single Head, it did 'first of all take beginning: why not from some Idea in 'mine ?' Does Teufelsdröckh here glance at that "SoCIETY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF PROPERTY (Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschaft)," of which so many ambiguous notices glide spectre-like through these inexpressible Paperbags ? An Institution,' hints he, 'not ' unsuitable to the wants of the time; as indeed such 'sudden extension proves for already can the Society ' number, among its office-bearers or corresponding 6 members, the highest Names, if not the highest Persons, in Germany, England, France; and contributions, 'both of money and of meditation, pour in from all quarters; to, if possible, enlist the remaining Integrity of the world, and, defensively and with forethought, 'marshal it round this Palladium.' Does Teufelsdröckh mean, then, to give himself out as the originator of that so notable Eigenthums-conservirende (Owndom-conserving') Gesellschaft; and, if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it? He again hints: 'At a time when the divine Commandment, Thou shalt not steal, wherein truly, if well understood, is comprised the whole Hebrew Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitutions, 'Justinian's Pandects, the Code Napoleon, and all 'Codes, Catechisms, Divinities, Moralities whatsoever,

that man has hitherto devised (and enforced with Altar-fire and Gallows-ropes) for his social guidance: ' at a time, I say, when this divine Commandment has all but faded away from the general remembrance; ' and, with little disguise, a new opposite Commandment, "Thou shalt steal, is everywhere promulgated,-it per'haps behoved, in this universal dotage and deliration, "the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and ' rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that 'divine right of Property, the only divine right now ex'tant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear it ' asserted that we have no Property in our very Bodies, but only an accidental Possession, and Liferent, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, 'keep down the smaller sort of vermin: but what, ex

cept perhaps some such Universal Association, can 'protect us against whole meat-devouring and mandevouring hosts of Boa Constrictors? If, therefore, the 'more sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written Program in the Public Journals, with its high PrizeQuestions and so liberal Prizes, could have proceeded, -let him now cease such wonder; and, with undivided faculty, betake himself to the Concurrenz (Compe'tition).'

We ask Has this same 'perhaps not ill-written Program, or any other authentic Transaction of that Property-conserving Society, fallen under the eye of the British Reader, in any Journal, foreign or domestic? If so, what are those Prize Questions; what are the terms

of Competition, and when and where? No printed Newspaper leaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met with in these Paperbags! Or is the whole business one other of those whimsicalities, and perverse inexplicabilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdröckh, meaning much or nothing, is pleased so often to play fast and loose with us?

Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utterance to a painful suspicion which, through late Chapters, has begun to haunt him; paralysing any little enthusiasm, that might still have rendered his thorny Biographical task a labour of love. It is a suspicion grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into certainty by the more and more discernible humouristico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdröckh, in whom underground humours, and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one word, that these Auto-biographical Documents are partly a Mystification! What if many a so-called Fact were little better than a Fiction; if here we had no direct Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's History; but only some more or less fantastic Adumbration, symbolically, perhaps significantly enough, shadowing forth the same! Our theory begins to be that, in receiving as literally authentic what was but hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple not to name Hofrath Nose-of-Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools of others. Could it be expected, indeed, that a man so known for impenetrable reticence as Teufelsdröckh, would all at once frankly unlock his private citadel to an English Editor and a German Hofrath; and not rather de

ceptively inlock both Editor and Hofrath, in the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered ways of said citadel (having enticed them thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, how the fools would look?

Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps find himself short. On a small slip, formerly thrown aside as blank, the ink being all but invisible, we lately notice, and with effort decipher, the following: 'What are your historical Facts; still more your bio' graphical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all, a Mankind, by stringing together beadrolls of what thou ' namest Facts? The man is the spirit he worked in ; 'not what he did, but what he became. Facts are en"graved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. And then how your Blockhead (Dummkopf) studies 'not their Meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse is it with your Bungler (Pfüscher): such I have seen 'reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous Reptile.' Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdröckh Serpent-ofEternity in like manner? For which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a Figure, he cares not whither it gallop? We say not with certainty; and indeed, so strange is the Professor, can never say. If our Suspicion be wholly unfounded, let his own questionable ways, not our necessary circumspectness, bear the blame.

But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed exhausted Editor determines here to shut these Paper bags, for the present. Let it suffice that we know of Teufelsdröckh, so far, if not what he did, yet what he became the rather, as his character has now taken its ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of importance, is to be looked for. The imprisoned Chrysalis is now a winged Psyche; and such, wheresoever be its flight, it will continue. To trace by what complex gyrations (flights or involuntary waftings) through the mere external Life-element, Teufelsdröckh reaches his University Professorship, and the Psyche clothes herself in civic Titles, without altering her now fixed nature,-would be comparatively an unproductive task; were we even unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a false and impossible one. His outward Biography, therefore, which, at the Blumine Lover's-Leap, we saw churned utterly into spray-vapour, may hover in that condition, for aught that concerns us here. Enough that by survey of certain 'pools and plashes,' we have ascertained its general direction: do we not already know that, by one way and other, it has long since rained down again into a stream; and even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, fraught with the Philosophy of Clothes, and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon? Over much invaluable. matter that lies scattered, like jewels among quarryrubbish, in those Paper-catacombs, we may have occasion to glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place: meanwhile be our toilsome diggings therein suspended.

If now, before reopening the great Clothes-Volume, we ask what our degree of progress, during these Ten