grade man below most animals, except those jacketted Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equality with the gods.

'To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; 'whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for ❝ himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colours and 'Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over'shrouded yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a God. 'Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He feels; power has been 'given him to Know, to Believe; nay does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even 'here, though but for moments, look through? Well ' said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, "the true SHEKINAH is Man:" where else is the GOD'S-PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our 'hearts, as in our fellow man ?'

:

In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic Mysticism of our Author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapour and tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, we seem to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and Love ;-though, alas, the grim

coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from

view.

Such tendency to Mysticism is every where traceable in this man; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. Nothing that he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings: thus, if in the highest Imperial Sceptre and CharlemagneMantle, as well as in the poorest Ox-goad and GipsyBlanket, he finds Prose, Decay, Contemptibility; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverend Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit: were it never so honourable, can it be more? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial Invisible, unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright?' Under which point of view the following passage, so strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough:

'The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on ' Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become 'transparent. "The Philosopher," says the wisest of this age, must station himself in the middle:" how 'true! The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest ' has descended, and the Lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.

'Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, ' whether woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that weave unrestingly in our Imagination? < Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot 'love; since all was created by God?

'Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a

Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper ' and State-paper Clothes), into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate,

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a more or less incompetent Digestive-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. 'Wonder,' 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 pro

cesses.

'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 prosecute 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 Re

' verence 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 increase 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-constables 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, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full daylight, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding 'you and guarding you therewith, 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 innu'merable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Méca'nique Céleste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome ' of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, ' in his single head,-is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look ' through him, then he may be useful.

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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 At

'torney Logic; and " explain" all, "account" for all, or believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognises 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 protrusively proffer thy 'Handlamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks. 'his foot through it?-Armer Teufel! Doth not thy

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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 disembellished and prosaic,

' but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind