'and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly 'escaped me. Great Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) 'Texts of that divine BOOK OF REVELATIONS, whereof a Chapter 'is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named HISTORY; 'to which inspired Texts your numerous talented men, and your 'innumerable untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic 'Commentaries, and wagonload of too-stupid, heretical or ortho'dox, weekly Sermons. For my study, the inspired Texts them'selves! Thus did I not, in very early days, having disguised me 'as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, under that shady 'Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena Highway; waiting upon the great 'Schiller and greater Goethe; and hearing what I have not for'gotten. For

But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. Let not the sacredness of Laurelled, still more, of Crowned Heads, bo tampered with. Should we, at a future day, find circumstances altered, and the time come for Publication, then may these glimpses into the privacy of the Illustrious be conceded; which for the present were little better than treacherous, perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron, therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the White Water-roses' (Chinese Carbonari) with their mysteries, no notice here! Of Napoleon himself we shall only, glancing from afar, remark that Teufelsdröckh's relation to him seems to have been of very varied character. At first we find our poor Professor on the point of being shot as a spy; then taken into private conversation, even pinched on the ear, yet presented with no money; at last indignantly dismissed, almost thrown out of doors as an 'Ideologist.' 'He himself,' says the Professor, was among the completest Ideologists, at least 'Ideopraxists in the Idea (in der Idee) he lived, moved, and 'fought. The man was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious 'of it; and preached, through the cannon's throat, that great 'doctrine, La carrière ouverte aux talens (The Tools to him that 'can handle them), which is our ultimate Political Evangel, 'wherein alone can Liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is 'true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imper'fect utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately per

'haps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American 'Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle 'with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, notwithstanding, the 'peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless har'vest, bless.'

More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdröckh's appearance and emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the North Cape, on that June Midnight. He has a light-blue Spanish cloak' hanging round him, as his 'most commodious, principal, indeed sole upper-garment;' and stands there, on the World-promontory, looking over the infinite Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred to ring quaintest changes.

'Silence as of death,' writes he; 'for midnight, even in the Arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs 'ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar 'Ocean, over which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch 'wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream ' over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting 'downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my feet. In 'such moments, Solitude also is invaluable; for who would speak, 'or be looked on, when behind him lies all Europe and Africa, 'fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but 'a porch-lamp.

'Nevertheless, in this solemn moment, comes a man, or mon'ster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, 'huge as the Hyperborean Bear, hails me in Russian speech: 'most probably, therefore, a Russian Smuggler. With courteous 'brevity, I signify my indifference to contraband trade, my hu'mane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. In vain: the 'monster, counting doubtless on his superior stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it with mur'der, continues to advance; ever assailing me with his importu'nate train-oil breath; and now has advanced, till we stand both 'on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea rippling greedily down

'below. What argument will avail? On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. Pre'pared for such extremity, I, deftly enough, whisk aside one step; 'draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham 'Horse-pistol, and say, "Be so obliging as retire, Friend (Er 'ziehe sich zurück, Freund), and with promptitude!" This logic 'even the Hyperborean understands: fast enough, with apolo'getic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need not return.

'Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it 'makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than 'I, if thou have more Mind, though all but no Body whatever, 'then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. Hereby, at 'last, is the Goliath powerless, and the David resistless; savage 'Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all.

'With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few 'things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. 'Too little visual Spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough 'cohesion in the midst of the UNFATHOMABLE, and to dissolve 'therein, at any rate, very soon,-make pause at the distance of 'twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, simultaneously by the 'cunningest mechanism, explode one another into Dissolution; 'and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant! Deuse on it (ver' dammt), the little spitfires !-Nay, I think with old Hugo von 'Trimberg: "God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing 'be, to see his wondrous Manikins here below."

But amid these specialities, let us not forget the great generality, which is our chief quest here: How prospered the inner man of Teufelsdröckh under so much outward shifting? Does Legion still lurk in him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood? We can answer that the symptoms continue promising. Experience is the grand spiritual Doctor; and with him Teufelsdröckh has now been long a patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong to the numerous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, some cure will doubtless be effected. We should rather say that Legion, or the Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next to

nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable state.

'At length, after so much roasting,' thus writes our Autobiographer, I was what you might name calcined. Pray only that 'it be not rather, as is the more frequent issue, reduced to a 'caput-mortuum! But in any case, by mere dint of practice, I 'had grown familiar with many things. Wretchedness was still 'wretched; but I could now partly see through it, and despise it. 'Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not found 'a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and, when I looked 'through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? Thy wishes 'have all been sniffed aside, thought I: but what, had they even 'been all granted! Did not the Boy Alexander weep because he 'had not two Planets to conquer; or a whole Solar System; or 'after that, a whole Universe? Ach Gott, when I gazed into 'these Stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity, 'from their serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly 'tears over the little lot of man! Thousands of human genera'tions, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of Time, ' and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus 'and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in 'their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted 'them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? 'Thou art still Nothing, Nobody: true; but who then is Some'thing, Somebody? For thee the Family of Man has no use; it 'rejects thee; thou art wholly as a dissevered limb: so be it; 'perhaps it is better so !'

Too heavy-laden Teufelsdröckh! Yet surely his bands are loosening; one day he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free, and with a second youth.

'This,' says our Professor,' was the CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 'I had now reached; through which whoso travels from the 'Negative Pole to the Positive must necessarily pass.'

CHAPTER IX.

THE EVERLASTING YEA.

'TEMPTATIONS in the Wilderness!' exclaims Teufelsdröckh: 'Have we not all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the 'old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life 'itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force; thus have 'we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought bat'tle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou in Welldoing, 'lies mysteriously written, in Promethean, Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be 'deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a 'visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given man'date, Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively 'proclaims itself through every nerve,-must there not be a con'fusion, a contest, before the better Influence can become the ' upper ?

'To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, 'when such God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within 'him, and the Clay must now be vanquished or vanquish,—should 'be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting 'the Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him 'at naught, till he yield and fly. Name it as we choose: with or 'without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of rocks and 'sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness, '-to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not. 'Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwrit 'ing has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendour; 'but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull 'pain, in darkness, under earthly vapours!-Our Wilderness is 'the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are