'both looking heavenward: here properly Soul first 'speaks with Soul; for only in looking heavenward, take 'it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. How true is that of Novalis : "It is certain, my Belief gains quite infinitely the 'moment I can convince another mind thereof!" Gaze 'thou in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where 'plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those where 'rages the lurid conflagration of Anger; feel how thy own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled 'with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of em'bracing Love, or of deadly-grappling Hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. 'But if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our 'Earthly Life; how much more when it is of the 'Divine Life we speak, and inmost ME is, as it were, 'brought into contact with inmost ME!

'Thus was it that I said, the Church Clothes are first spun and woven by Society; outward Religion ori'ginates by Society, Society becomes possible by Re'ligion. Nay, perhaps every conceivable Society, past and present, may well be figured as properly and wholly a Church, in one or other of these three predicaments: 'an audibly preaching and prophesying Church, which is the best; second, a Church that struggles to preach ' and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and third and worst, a Church gone dumb with 'old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to "dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here 'meant Chapter houses and Cathedrals, or by preaching

' and prophesying, mere speech and chaunting, let him,' says the oracular Professor, 'read on, light of heart '(getrosten Muthes).

'But with regard to your Church proper, and the 'Church Clothes specially recognised as Church Clothes, 'I remark, fearlessly enough, that without such Vestures ' and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will ' not exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the out'ward SKIN of the Body Politic, holding the whole toge'ther and protecting it; and all your Craft-Guilds, and 'Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues ' (lying under such SKIN), whereby Society stands and works; then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and 'Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circu'lation to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or 'animated only by a Galvanic vitality; the SKIN would 'become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting raw-hide; and 'Society itself a dead carcass,-deserving to be buried. Men were no longer Social, but Gregarious; which 'latter state also could not continue, but must gradually 'issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isola'tion, and dispersion ;-whereby, as we might continue 'to say, the very dust and dead body of Society would 'have evaporated and become abolished. Such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the Church Clothes, 'to civilised or even to rational man.

'Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same 'Church Clothes have gone sorrowfully out at elbows: nay, far worse, many of them have become mere hollow 'Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or

Spirit any longer dwells; but only spiders and un'clean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade; and the Mask still glares on you with its glass-eyes, in 'ghastly affectation of Life,—some generation and half ' after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in un'noticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, 'wherewith to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or 'grandsons. As a Priest, or Interpreter of the Holy, 'is the noblest and highest of all men, so is a Shampriest (Scheinpriester) the falsest and basest neither is it doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make band'ages for the wounds of mankind; or even to burn into 'tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes.

'All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my Second Volume, On the Palingenesia, or New'birth of Society; which volume, as treating practically ' of the Wear, Destruction, and Re-texture of Spiritual 'Tissues, or Garments, forms, properly speaking, the Transcendental or ultimate Portion of this my Work ' on Clothes, and is already in a state of forwardness.'

And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or com. mentary being added, does Teufelsdröckh, and must his Editor now, terminate the singular Chapter on Church Clothes!

CHAPTER III.

SYMBOLS.

PROBABLY it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our Professor's speculations on Symbols. To state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of 'Fantasy being the organ of the Godlike;' and how 'Man thereby, though based, to all seeming, on the 'small Visible, does nevertheless extend down into the 'infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible, indeed, his Life is properly the bodying forth.' Let us, omitting these high transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from the Paperbags or the Printed Volume) what little seems logical and practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as it will assume. By way of proem, take the following not injudicious remarks:

'The benignant efficacies of Concealment,' cries our Professor, who shall speak or sing? SILENCE and ་ SECRECY ! Altars might still be raised to them (were 'this an altar-building time) for universal worship. Silence is the element in which great things fashion 'themselves together; that at length they may emerge, 'full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, 'which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the

'Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, ' and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, 'forebore to babble of what they were creating and pro'jecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou 'thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes, and duties ; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen 'within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were 'shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman 'defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite 'stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is 'golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.

Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought 'will not work except in Silence: neither will Virtue 'work except in Secrecy. Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate ' even to thy own heart of " those secrets known to all." 'Is not Shame the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners,

' and good morals? Like other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of 'the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay, do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends, when we view the fair clustering flowers that over-wreathe, for example, the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues of Heaven, what hand will not 'smite the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the 'roots, and, with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shews