verence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like Cookery with the day that called it forth; does not 'live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spread'ing harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to 'all Time.'

In such wise does Teufelsdröckh deal hits, harder or softer according to ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above all, that class of Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, ' and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the 'Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like true 'Old Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated 'Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full ' daylight, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and guarding you therewith, though the Sun is 'shining, and the street populous with mere justice'loving men' that whole class is inexpressibly wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon animation he perorates:

'The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he President of innu'merable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Méca'nique Céleste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome ' of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single head,-is but a Pair of Spectacles behind 'which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look 'through him, then he may be useful.

'Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the Hand-lamp of what I call At

'torney Logic; and "explain" all, "account" for all, 'or believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt 'laughter; whoso recognises the unfathomable, all-per'vading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe 'is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and 'Cattle-stall, he shall be a (delirious) Mystic; to him 'thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy 'Handlamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks 'his foot through it?-Armer Teufel! Doth not thy 'Cow calve, doth not thy Bull gender? wert thou not Born, wilt thou not Die? me all this, or do one of two things: Retire into private 'places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, 'give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is 'done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, 'but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind 'Pedant.'

Thou thyself, "Explain"

CHAPTER XI.

PROSPECTIVE.

THE Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly ques tionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth?

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a whole :

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'Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts ' of the universe, God is there." Thou too, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any cor'ner of the world where at least FORCE is not? The

drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not

'where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; 'already, on the wings of the Northwind, it is nearing 'the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and " not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught 'motionless; without Force, and utterly dead?

'As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: 'That little fire which glows star-like across the darkgrowing (nachtende) moor, where the sooty smith ' bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy 'lost horse-shoe,-is it a detached, separated speck, cut 'off from the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to 'the whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) 'kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that circulates from 'before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein, 'with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stronger 'Force of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on 'the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron 'smoke and influence reach quite through the All; 'whose Dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and 'sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay 'preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet 'from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's 'Force, commanding, and one day to be all-com'manding.

'Detached, separated! I say there is no such separa'tion: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; 'but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together 'with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless 'flood of Action, and lives through perpetual meta

'morphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, 'there are Forces in it and around it, though working in 'inverse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from 'which the Earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no 'meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as 'windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into 'Infinitude itself.'

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald SmithyAltar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us?

'All visible things are Emblems; what thou seest is 'not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably sig'nificant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, ' are emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold 'cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all 'Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven : must not the Imagination weave 'Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible 'creations and inspirations of our Reason are, like 'Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful ;-the 'rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the ' outward eye?

'Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, 'clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible • Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a