CHAPTER XI.

PROSPECTIVE.

THE Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth?

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a whole :

'Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts ' of the universe, God is there." Thou too, O cultivated 'reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, 'knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any corC ner of the world where at least FORCE is not? The

drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not

'where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; of the Northwind, it is nearing How came it to evaporate, and Thinkest thou there is aught

already, on the wings the Tropic of Cancer. 'not lie motionless?

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'motionless; without Force, and utterly dead?

'As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire which glows star-like across the dark'growing (nachtende) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy 'lost horse-shoe,-is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) 'kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that circulates from 'before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein,

with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stronger 'Force of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about: it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. 'Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on 'the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron 'smoke and influence reach quite through the All; 'whose Dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet 'from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and one day to be all-com'manding.

Detached, separated! I say there is no such separa'tion: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless,

morphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, 'there are Forces in it and around it, though working in 'inverse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from which the Earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no 'meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as 'windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into 'Infinitude itself.'

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald SmithyAltar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us?

'All visible things are Emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably sig'nificant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are Emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible 'creations and inspirations of our Reason are, like Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful;-the rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye ?

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'Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, 'clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay,

if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole ' terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible 'Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a

light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothed with a Body.

'Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does she not? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you 'except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), 'what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no longer recognised; still fluid and florid, or now solidgrown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language, then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues ' and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you 'shall in vain seek for is not your very Attention a Stretching-to? The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous ; 'some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten, and deadlooking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, 'there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (Putz-Mäntel), and tawdry "woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,-and burn them.'

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Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor continues:

'Why multiply instances? It is written the Heavens

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and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which 'indeed they are the Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, 'put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, ' is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, ' and been the whole External Universe and what it holds 'is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in 'the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.'

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:

Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, closebordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburgh Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honourable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,-the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often. thrown down, and again taken up.