Ew. Wohlgebohren will have seen, from the public Prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of 'her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany prevail on him to return; nay, could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! But, alas, old Leischen experiences or affects 'the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in 'the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the 'Privy Council itself can hitherto elicit no answer.

6

'It had been remarked that while the agitating news of those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to 'mouth, and dinned very ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr 'Teufelsdröckh was not known, at the Ganse or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once these three: Es geht an (It is beginning). 'Shortly after, as Ew. Wohlgebohren knows, was the 'public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want Evilwishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the closing Chapter of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In this appalling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable: nay, perhaps, through one humble individual, something thereof might pass into the Rath (Council) itself, and so con

6

tribute to the country's deliverance. The Tailors are

now entirely pacificated.-To neither of these two inci'dents can I attribute our loss: yet still comes there the 'shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Politics. 'For example, when the Saint-Simonian Society trans'mitted its Propositions hither, and the whole Ganse

was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation, and asto

nishment, our Sage sat mute; and at the end of the 'third evening, said merely : Here also are men who ' have discovered, not without amazement, that Man is 'still Man; of which high, long-forgotten Truth you already see them make a false application." Since then, as has been ascertained by examination of the 'Post-Director, there passed at least one Letter with its 'Answer between the Messieurs Bazard-Enfantin and our Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. On the fifth night following, he was seen for the last time!

'Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile Sects that convulse our Era, been spirited < away by certain of their emissaries: or did he go forth ⚫ voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them, ⚫ and confront them? Reason we have, at least of a nega'tive sort, to believe the Lost still living: our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will himself 'give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, must his archives, one day, be opened by Authority; where much, perhaps 'the Palingenesie itself, is thought to be reposited.'

Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker.

So that Teufelsdröckh's public History were not done, then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps, the better part thereof were only beginning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. May Time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this also. Our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is

that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, Teufelsdröckh is actually in London!

Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion, not without a certain. irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought he not to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, that namest thyself Yorke and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all-too Irish mirth and madness, and odour of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, fare-well! Have we not, in the course of Eternity, travelled some months of our Life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not lived together, though in a state of quarrel?

THE END.

London: Printed by W. CLOWES and SONS, Stamford-street.