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no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and be"booted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged up in pouches of leather; "there, topladen, and with four swift horses, rolls in the country "Baron and his household; here, on timber leg, the lamed Soldier "hops painfully along, begging alms: a thousand carriages, and "wains, and cars, come tumbling in with Food, with young Rus"ticity, and other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with Produce manufactured. That living "flood, pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages,, "knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? Aus “der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin: From Eternity, onwards "to Eternity! These are Apparitions: what else? Are they "not Souls rendered visible; in Bodies, that took shape and "will lose it, melting into air? Their solid pavement is a Picture "of the Sense; they walk on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time "is behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou, the red "and yellow Clothes screen yonder, with spurs on its heels, and "feather in its crown, is but of To day, without a Yesterday or a "To-morrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst "and Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a "living link in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: “watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more."

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Ach, mein Lieber!" said he once, at midnight, when he had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a "true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, "struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks "Boötes of them, as he leads his Hunting Dogs over the Zenith, "in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, "when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are "bearing her to Halls roofed in, and lighted to the due pitch for "her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like night"birds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet "slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hid"eous coverlet of vapours, and putrefactions, and unimaginable "gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! The "joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men

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66 are being born: men are praying,-on the other side of a brick "partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, "void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed "saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cow66 ers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of "straw in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir languidly emits its "voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry Villians; while Councillors "of State sit plotting, and playing their high chess-game, where"of the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that "the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more silently, sets"to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen "first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms, "and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling "hearts; but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats "tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the "darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last "morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no "hammering from the Rabenstein ?—their gallows must even now "be o'building. Upwards of five hundred thousand two-legged "animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal position; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. "Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of "shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her "pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now "moisten. All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing "but a little carpentry and masonry between them;-crammed "in, like salted fish, in their barrel;—or weltering, shall I say, "like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed Vipers, each struggling to get "its head above the other such work goes on under that smoke66 counterpane-But I, mein Werther, sit above it all; I am alone "with the Stars."

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallowlight, and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was visible.

These were the Professor's talking seasons: most commonly

he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent and smoked; while the visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take himself away. It was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 'united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Blücher Boots. Old Leischen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stovelighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of Teufelsdröckh; only. some once in the month, she half-forcibly made her way thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdröckh hastily saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not Literary. These were her Erdbebungen (Earthquakes), which Teufelsdröckh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would he have been to sit here philosophising for ever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors: but Leischen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. We can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for Teufelsdröckh and Teufelsdröckh only would she serve or give heed to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee ever at the due moment; and the speechless Leischen herself looked out on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence.

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath

Heuschrecke, already known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, 'they never appear without their umbrella.' Had we not known with what 'little wisdom' the world is governed; and how, in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety and nine Public Men can for most part be but mute trainbearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,-it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,-you traced rather confusion worse confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was 'the very Spirit of Love embodied;' blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we shall now hope for many reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless friend Teufelsdröckh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: Er hat Gemüth und Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-gunst; ist gegenwärtig aber halb-zerrüttet, halb-erstarrt, "He has heart and "talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, "or favour of Fortune; and so is now half-cracked, half-congeal"ed."-What the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder: we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are careless.

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdröckh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return; for Teufelsdröckh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protec

tion, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdröckh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging, nasal Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdröckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like Indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred.

In such environment, social, domestic, and physical, did Teufelsdröckh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and meditate. Here, perched up in his high Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude, outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable Inquirer fought all his battles with Dulness and Darkness; here, in all probability, that he wrote this surprising Volume on Clothes. Additional particulars of his age, which was of that standing middle sort you could only guess at; of his wide surtout; the colour of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the Greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity, leaving Kings and such like to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all our writing and reporting Teufelsdröckh could be brought home to him, till once the Documents arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in this remarkable Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the buried Bag of Doubloons? To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, to his opinions, namely, on the 'Origin and Influence of Clothes,' we for the present gladly return.