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'him, Kings to mount guard over him,-to the length of six'pence.-Clothes too, which began in foolishest love of Orna'ment, what have they not become! Increased Security, and 'pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of these? Shame, 'divine Shame (Schaam, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthro'pophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a 'mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes 'gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have 'made Men of us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens ' of us.

'But on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, Man is 'a Tool-using Animal (Hanthierendes Thier). Weak in himself, ' and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flat'test-soled, of some half square-foot, insecurely enough; has to 6 straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest 'of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the 'Steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Never'theless he can use Tools, can devise Tools: with these the gra'nite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glow'ing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, 'winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him 'without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all.'

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a remark that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal, appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdröckh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whale-blubber, as a marmot in the like case, might do? Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under water? But on the

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other hand, shew us the human being, of any period or climate, without his Tools: those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can have.

'Man is a Tool-using animal,' concludes Teufelsdröckh in his abrupt way; 'of which truth Clothes are but one example: and 'surely if we consider the interval between the first wooden 'Dibble fashioned by man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, we shall note what progress 'he has made. He digs up certain black stones from the bosom ' of the Earth, and says to them, Transport me and this luggage, at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour; and they do it: he 'collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscella'neous individuals, and says to them, Make this nation toil for us, 'bleed for us, hunger and sorrow, and sin for us; and they do it.'

CHAPTER VI.

APRONS.

ONE of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on Aprons. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, whose Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because 'raised in revolt which proved successful, is still the royal stand'ard of that country;' what though John Knox's Daughter, 'who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her 'husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should lie and be 'a bishop' what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other Apron worthies,-figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following?

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'Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, 'to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of 'notched silk (as it were, the Emblem and beatified Ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nürnberg 'Workboxes and Toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the 'thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the 'Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those 'jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked 'Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,—is there not 'range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How 'much has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole Military 'and Police Establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-coloured, iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society 'works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and 'stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy (Teufels-schmiede) of a world? 'But of all Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the

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Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (Episcopus) of Souls, I notice, has 'tucked-in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done: what 'does he shadow forth thereby?' &c. &c.

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as we shall now quote?

'I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian 'Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for Typography; 'therefore as an encouragement to modern Literature, and deserving of approval: nor is it without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having in view to introduce the same 'fashion, with important extensions, in England.'-We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our Literature, exuberant as it is.-Teufelsdröckh continues: 'If such supply of 'printed Paper should rise so far as to choke up the highways and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had ' recourse to. In a world existing by Industry, we grudge to em'ploy fire as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. 'However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In 'the meanwhile, is it not beautiful to see five million quintals of 'Rags picked annually from the Laystall; and annually, after 'being macerated, hot-pressed, printed on, and sold,―returned 'thither; filling so many hungry mouths by the way? Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, the 'grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion, from which and 'to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and resinous Elec'tricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the 'mighty, billowy, stormtost Chaos of Life, which they keep alive!' -Such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling.

Farther down we meet with this: The Journalists are now 'the true Kings and Clergy; henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of Stamped Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite 'new successive Names, according as this or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able Editors, gains the world's ear. "Of the British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important of

'all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and proce'dure, a valuable descriptive History already exists, in that lan'guage, under the title of Satan's Invisible World Displayed; 'which, however, by search in all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, 'I have not yet succeeded in procuring (vermöchte nicht ' aufzutreiben).'

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufelsdröckh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder, with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the Brittische Journalistik; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Literature !

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