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not, manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, observance of it, which, could emotion of any ki confidently predicated of so still a man, we might real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-bree cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of w the History of Dress offers so many, escape him; especially the mischances, or striking adventures, inci to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke li enthusiasm in him; he merely asks, Whether att period the Maiden Queen' was red-painted on the no ' and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tirewome when from spleen and wrinkles she would no long 'look in any glass, were wont to serve her?' answer that Sir Walter knew well what he was doing We c and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dye in verdigris, would have done the same.

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, the were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swo len out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,-o -our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously einitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflection :

By what strange chances do we live in History! 'Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darn'ley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs;

ost Kings and Queens by being born under such and ch a bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Pelvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred dividual by a rent in his breeches,-for no Memoirist f Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer f Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, ield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.' -Has Teufelsdröckh to be put in mind that, nearly lated to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands that lent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen hanifest?

The simplest costume,' observes our Professor,' which I anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as regimental, by Bolivar's Cavalry, in the late Columbian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is 'provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and make it circular) in the centre a slit is effected ' eighteen inches long; through this the mother-naked 'Trooper introduces his head and neck; and so rides 'shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not 'only dressed, but harnessed and draperied.'

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of our subject.

6

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES.

Ir in the Descriptive-Historical Portion of this Volume, Teufelsdröckh, discussing merely the Werden (Origin and successive Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will he in the SpeculativePhilosophical Portion, which treats of their Wirken, or Influences. It is here that the present Editor first feels the pressure of his task; for here properly the higher and new Philosophy of Clothes commences: an untried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos: in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably important is it to know what course, of survey and conquest, is the true one; where the footing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us! Teufelsdröckh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political, even religious Influences. of Clothes; he undertakes to make manifest, in its thousandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's earthly interests' are all hooked and buttoned together, ' and held up, by Clothes.' He says in so many words, Society is founded upon Cloth;' and again, Society 'sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's 'Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean 'beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such 'Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths, or

'mount to inane limboes, and in either case be no ' more.'

By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of Meditation this grand Theorem is here unfolded, and innumerable practical Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in any case, that of common school Logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other; but at best that of practical Reason, proceeding by large Intuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature: a mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay, we complained above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, too, must we exclaim: Would to Heaven those same Biographical Documents were come! For it seems as if the demonstration lay much in the Author's individuality; as if it were not Argument that had taught him, but Experience. At present it is only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked often at wide enough intervals from the original Volume, and carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more invited to favour us with their most concentrated attention let these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvass

to sail thither?-As exordium to the whole, stand here the following long citation :

'With men of a speculative turn,' writes Teufelsdröckh, there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself ' that unanswerable question: Who am I; the thing that can say “I” (das Wesen das sich ICH nennt)? The ' world, with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and 'thick-plied tissues of Commerce and Polity, and all the 'living and lifeless Integuments (of Society and a Body), 'wherewith your Existence sits surrounded,—the sight 'reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with 'the Universe, and silently commune with it, as one mysterious Presence with another.

'Who am I; what is this ME? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance ;-some embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind? Cogito ergo sum. Alas, poor 'Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, 'I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? 'Whereto? The answer lies around, written in all co'lours and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious 'Nature but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom ' that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the re'motest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: 'sounds and many-coloured visions flit round our sense; 'but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream ' and Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare halfwaking moments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies