'ful flow; the Waistcoat hides no evil passion, no riotous desire; 'hunger or thirst now dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from 'the grossness of sense, from the carking cares and foul vices of 'the World; and rides there, on its Clothes-horse; as, on a Pe'gasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified Apparition, 'visiting our low Earth.

Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of 'Civilized Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and 'questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapour, black, thick, ' and multifarious as Spartan broth; and was one lone Soul amid 'those grinding millions;-often have I turned into their Old'Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart I walk 'through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through 'a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expres'sive in their silence: the past witnesses and instruments of 'Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathom'less tumult of Good and Evil in "the Prison men call Life." 'Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom old Clothes ' are not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that bearded 'Jewish Highpriest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of 'Doom, summons them from the four winds! On his head, like 'the Pope, he has three Hats,—a real triple tiara; on either 'hand, are the similitude of wings, whereon the summoned Gar'ments come to alight; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, 'sounds forth his deep fearful note, as if through a trumpet he ' were proclaiming: "Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment!" Reck 'not, ye fluttering Ghosts he will purify you in his Purgatory, 'with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall 'reappear. Oh! let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready 'to go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to 'worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement 'of Monmouth Street, and say whether his heart and his eyes 'still continue dry. If Field Lane, with its long fluttering rows 'of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear, where, in stifled 'jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty and 'Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there cast ' out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness, and the Devil,'then is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley

us;

'vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes awfully before with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, 'church-bells and gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,— 'the Bedlam of Creation!'

To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged. We too have walked through Monmouth Street; but with little feeling of Devotion: probably in part because the contemplative process is so fatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers, who nestle in that Church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. Whereas Teufelsdröckh might be in that happy middle-state, which leaves to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be allowed to linger there without molestation.-Something we would have given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, 'pacing and repacing in austerest thought' that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whispering gallery, where the Ghosts of Life' rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdröckh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest the grass grow!

At the same time is it not strange that, in Paperbag Documents destined for an English Work, there exists nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in London; and of his Meditations among the Clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his Travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject.

For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find how early the significance of Clothes had dawned on the now so distinguished Clothes-Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth Street, at the bottom of our own English ink-sea,' that this remarkable Volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his soul,-as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into a Universe!

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CHAPTER VII.

ORGANIC FILAMENTS.

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FOR us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdröckh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to have done 'within two centuries,' there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however, does the Professor figure it. In 'the living subject,' says he, 'change is wont to be gradual: 'thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already 'formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning of a World6 Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn out, and lie as a 'dead cinereous heap; and therefrom the young one start up by 'miracle, and fly heavenward. Far otherwise! In that Fire'whirlwind, Creation and Destruction proceed together; ever as 'the ashes of the Old are blown about, do organic filaments of 'the New mysteriously spin themselves and amid the rushing ' and the waving of the Whirlwind-Element, come tones of a me'lodious Deathsong, which end not but in tones of a more melo'dious Birthsong. Nay, look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see.' Let us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the spectacle. First, therefore, this of Mankind in general:

In vain thou deniest it,' says the Professor; thou art my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish Lies 'thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour: what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I a Steam-engine, wouldst thou 'take the trouble to tell Lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well.

'Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all

;

'whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of 'Necessity, as we like to choose it. More than once have I said 'to myself of some perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, such as 'provokes whimsical thoughts: "Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, 'suddenly covered up within the largest imaginable Glass-bell,'what a thing it were, not for thyself only but for the world! 'Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge 'against thy Glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from 'within comes there question or response into any Postbag; thy 'Thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture 'into no purchasing hand; thou art no longer a circulating ve'nous-arterial Heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest through 'all Space and all Time: there has a Hole fallen out in the im'measurable, universal World-tissue, which must be darned up ' again!"

'Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal Messages, 'paper and other Packages, going out from him and coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to the eye; but the finer nervous 'circulation, by which all things, the minutest that he does, mi'nutely influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing: all this you cannot see, but only imagine. I 'say, there is not a red Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipic, can ' quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for it: 'will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical fact that 'the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre-ofgravity of the Universe.

เ

'If now an existing generation of men stand so woven to'gether, not less indissolubly does generation with generation. 'Hast thou ever meditated on that word, Tradition: how we in'herit not Life only, but all the garniture and form of Life; and เ work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, and 'primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us ?--'Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Stillschweigen and Company: but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and 'innumerable others whom thou knowest not. Had there been 'no Mosogothic Ulfila, there had been no English Shakspeare,

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or a different one.

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Simpleton it was Tubalcain that made

thy very Tailor's needle, and sewed that court suit of thine. Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, 'much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates Na' ture, without which Nature were not. As palpable life-streams ' in that wondrous Individual Mankind, among so many lifestreams that are not palpable, flow-on those main-currents of 'what we call Opinion; as preserved in Institutions, Politics, 'Churches, above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand and 'know that a Thought did never yet die; that as thou, the origi'nator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole Future. It is thus 'that the heroic Heart, the seeing Eye of the first times, still 'feels and sees in us of the latest; that the Wise Man stands 'ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of witเ nesses and brothers; and there is a living, literal Communion of Saints, wide as the World itself, and as the History of the World.

Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into Generations. ' Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind; Death and 'Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the 'Father has made, the Son can make and enjoy; but has also 'work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax, and roll 'onwards; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, nothing is completed, 'but ever completing. Newton has learned to see what Kepler 'saw; but there is also a fresh heaven-derived force in Newton; 'he must mount to still higher points of vision. So too the He'brew Lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an Apostle of the 'Gentiles. In the business of Destruction, as this also is from 'time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like sequence and 'perseverance for Luther it was as yet hot enough to stand by 'that burning of the Pope's Bull; Voltaire could not warm him'self at the glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. 'Thus likewise, I note, the English Whig has, in the second gen'eration, become an English Radical; who, in the third again, it 'is to be hoped, will become an English Rebuilder. Find mankind