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' attached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby recover'ing as well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. 'Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once 'satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration '(Putz). Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for Decoration he must 'have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first 'spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as 'indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in 'civilised countries.

'Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer ; loftiest Serene Highness; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike 'almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a 'divine Presence, which indeed, symbolically taken, she 'is, has descended, like thyself, from that same hair'mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus ! 'Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong 'cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, 'not by Time, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, ' but all that Mankind does or beholds, is in continual 'growth, re-genesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast 'forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever'working Universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; ' unnoticed to-day (says one) it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years.

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'He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by ' device of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, ' and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a

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'whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art ' of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sul'phur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will the last do? Achieve 'the final undisputed prostration of Force under 'Thought, of Animal Courage under Spiritual. A sim'ple invention it was in the old-world Grazier,-sick of lugging his slow Ox about the country till he got it 'bartered for corn or oil,—to take a piece of Leather, ' and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an 'Ox (or Pecus); put it in his pocket, and call it 'Pecunia, Money. Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all I miracles have been out-miracled for there are Roths'childs and English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is Sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over 'all men; commands Cooks to feed him, Philosophers 'to teach him, Kings to mount guard over him,—to the 'length of sixpence.-Clothes too, which began in foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not be'come! 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

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' 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 flattest-soled, of some half square

foot, insecurely enough; has to 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. Ne'vertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before 'him; he kneads glowing 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.'

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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 Animalsort, 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 whaleblubber, 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 crownests, 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 other hand, show 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 lug'gage, at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour; and 'they do it he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous 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.'

5*

CHAPTER VI.

APRONS.

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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 standard 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?

'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 Work boxes and Toy'boxes, 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

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