Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the use of Health, or of Life, if not to do some work therewith? And what work nobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domestic soil; except indeed planting Thought of your own, which the fewest are privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a prize worth some striving? Forward with us, courageous reader; be it towards failure, or towards success! The latter thou sharest the former also is not all our own. with us, BOOK II. CHAPTER I. GENESIS. In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinised soever, much insight is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner of Public Entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any so that this Genesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or transit out of Invisibility into Visibility); whereof the preliminary portion is nowhere forthcoming. 'In the village of Entepfuhl,' thus writes he, in the Bag Libra, on various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife; child'less, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging 'towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a 'little Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincin'natus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the 'peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came < in their season; all which Andreas knew how to sell: 'on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours that would listen about the Victory of Rossbach; and 'how Fritz the Only (der Einzige) had once with his ' own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass"word, "Schweig Du Hund (Peace, hound!)" before any ' of his staff-adjutants could answer. "Das nenn 'ich 'mir einen König, there is what I call a King," would 'Andreas exclaim: "but the smoke of Kunersdorf was 'still smarting his eyes." Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran 'Othello, lived not in altogether military subordination; for, as Andreas said, "the womankind will not drill (wer kann die Weiberchen dressiren) :" nevertheless 'she at heart loved him both for valour and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment'sSchoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid: 6 what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness (Geradheit); that understood Büsching's Geography, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade of Hoch |