wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdröckh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain shew of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; a Historical-Descriptive, and a PhilosophicalSpeculative but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavour.

CHAPTER V.

THE WORLD IN CLOTHES.

'As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws,' observes our Professor, so could I write a Spirit of Clothes; thus, 'with an Esprit des Loix, properly an Esprit de Coutumes, we should have an Esprit de Costumes. For 'neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed 'by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by 'mysterious operations of the mind. In all his Modes ' and habilatory endeavours an Architectural Idea will 'be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are the site ' and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow ' gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; 'tower up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell out in starched ruffs, buckram 'stuffings and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself ' into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,-will depend on the nature of 'such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, 'Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or 'Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in 'Colour! From the soberest drab to the high-flaming 'scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in 'choice of Colour: if the Cut betoken Intellect and 'Talent, so does the Colour betoken Temper and Heart.

'In all which, among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though infinitely complex working of Cause and Effect: every snip of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ' ever-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences ' of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible. For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect 'Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening entertainment : nevertheless, ' for inferior Intelligences, like men, such Philosophies 'have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, 'what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant 'spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, 'the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven?'Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not 'why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and 'such a Law; but even why I am here, to wear and 'obey any thing!-Much, therefore, if not the whole, 'of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as 'hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked 'Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite ' another than that omniscient style, are my humbler ' and proper province.'

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdröckh has nevertheless contrived to take in a well nigh boundless extent of field; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being indispensable, we shall here glance over his First Part only in the most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness at the same time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the Com

pilers of some Library of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, at present the glory of British Literature?' If so, the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof.

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do with Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to 'the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, ' and terrestial Devils,'-very needlessly, we think. On this portion of the work, with its profound glances into the Adam-Kadmon, or Primeval Element, here strangely brought into relation with the Nifl and Muspel (Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say that its correctness of deduction, and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore has filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like astonishment.

But quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdröckh hastens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as the Nürnbergers give an Orbis Pictus) an Orbis Vestitus; or view of the

costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is Learning: an irregular Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve waggons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamides, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the name Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us, even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. For most part too we must admit that the Learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled down quite pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside.

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. "Miserable indeed,' says he, " was the 'condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely 'from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard 'reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a ' matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick " natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild fruits; or, as the ancient Cale'donian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his 'bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his 'sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had