'light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said ' also to be clothed with a Body.

'Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Gar'ment, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does she not? Meta'phors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), 'what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no 'longer recognised; still fluid and florid, or now solid'grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Lan'guage, then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues ' and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for is not your very Attention a Stretching-to? The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten, and dead'looking; while others again glow in the flush of health 'and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own 'case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, 'there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizen'ing, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, 'superfluous show-cloaks (Putz-Mäntel), and tawdry 'woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may 'gather whole hampers,-and burn them.'

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Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor continues:

'Why multiply instances? It is written the Heavens

and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which 'indeed they are the Time-vesture of the Eternal. 'Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit 'to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, 'put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, ' is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, 6 and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds 'is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in 'the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.'

Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, closebordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburgh Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honourable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,-the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again taken up.

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already: that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating in the Head (Verstand) alone, no Life-Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie), such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the Character (Gemüth), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is known and seen; 'till the Author's View of the World (Weltan'sicht), and how he actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in short till a Biography of him has 'been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico'poetically read.' Nay, adds he, were the specula'tive scientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How?-and rest not, till, if no better may be, Fancy have shaped out an answer; and either in the authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of 'Fiction, a complete picture and Genetical History of the 'Man and his spiritual Endeavour lies before you. But why,' says the Hofrath, and indeed say we,' do I dilate on the uses of our Teufelsdröckh's Biography? The great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that "Man is properly the only object that ' interests man:" thus I too have noted, that in Weiss' nichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing 'else but Biography or Autobiography; ever humano'anecdotical (menschlich-anecdotisch). Biography is by 'nature the most universally profitable, universally

6

'pleasant of all things: especially Biography of distin'guished individuals.

'By this time, mein Verehrtester (my Most Es'teemed),' continues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from Teufelsdröckh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well nigh unaccountable, by 'this time you are fairly plunged (vertieft) in that mighty 'forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as 'all readers do, with astonishment enough. Such por'tions and passages as you have already mastered, and 'brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curio'sity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps 'unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactered such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. Had 'Teufelsdröckh also a father and mother; did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's 'bosom to his; looks he also wistfully into the long burial' aisle of the Past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? Has he fought duels ; '—good Heaven! how did he comport himself when in 'Love? By what singular stair-steps, in short, and 'subterranean passages, and sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful pro'phetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now 'dwells?

To all these natural questions the voice of public History is as yet silent. Certain only that he has 'been, and is, a Pilgrim, and Traveller from a far 'Country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled; has 'parted with road-companions; fallen among thieves, 'been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with bugbites ;

nevertheless, at every stage (for they have let him 'pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole 'particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, 'the picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly 'jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these nowhere forth'coming? Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that 'mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, ' unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; ' and rot, the sport of rainy winds?

No, verehrtester Herr Herausgeber, in no wise! I 'here, by the unexampled favour you stand in with our Sage, send not a Biography only, but an Autobiogra'phy at least the materials for such; wherefrom if I misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight; and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher ' of Clothes stands clear to the wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through America, through Hindostan, ' and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (einnehmen) great part of this terrestrial Planet!'

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And now let the sympathising reader judge of our feeling when, in place of this same Autobiography with ' fullest insight,' we find-Six considerable PAPER-BAGS, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in gilt Chinaink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdröckh's scarcelegible cursiv-schrift; and treating of all imaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner!