Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humour, which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest.

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal Love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite Pity; he could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shews such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness, that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. His look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suibut rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled mountain pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire!

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, this of Teufelsdröckh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw him laugh; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing some single billow in that vast WorldMahlstrom of Humour, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of Death! The

large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privileged to listen; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable Extra-harangues;' and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for a Cast-metal King: gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a radiant ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like the neighing of all Tattersall's, tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,-loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: however, Teufelsdröckh composed himself, and sank into his old stillness; on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdröckh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain shew of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; a Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and

indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavour.

3

CHAPTER V.

THE WORLD IN CLOTHES.

'As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws,' observes our Professor, 'so could I write a Spirit of Clothes; thus, with an Esprit 'des Loix, properly an Esprit de Coutumes, we should have an 'Esprit de Costumes. For neither in tailoring nor in legislating 'does man proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided 'on by mysterious operations of the mind. In all his Modes, 'and habilatory endeavours, an Architectural Idea will be found 'lurking; his Body and the Cloth are the site and materials 'whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a Person, is to 'be built. Whether he flows gracefully out in folded mantles, 'based on light sandals; tower up in high headgear, from amid 'peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell out in starch ruffs, buck'ram stuffings and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into 'separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four 'limbs, will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: 'whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, 'and Parisian or Anglo-Dandical. Again, what meaning lies in 'Colour! From the soberest drab to the high-flaming scarlet, 'spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in choice of Colour: 'if the Cut betoken Intellect and Talent, so does the Colour 'betoken Temper and Heart. In all which, among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though 'infinitely complex working of Cause and Effect: every snip of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ever-active 'Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible.

'For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philoso'phy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter'evening entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences,

'like men, such Philosophies have always seemed to me unin'structive enough. Nay, what is your Montesquieu himself but 'a clever infant spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic 'Book, the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven?—Let 'any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not why I wear such 'and such a Garment, obey such and such a Law; but even why 'I am here, to wear and obey any thing!-Much, therefore, if not 'the whole, of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as 'hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, 'and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that 'omniscient style, are my humbler and proper province.'

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdröckh has nevertheless contrived to take in a well-nigh boundless extent of field; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being indispensable, we shall here glance over his First Part only in the most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness at the same time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the Compilers of some Library of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, 'at present the glory of British Literature? If so, the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof.

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do with 'Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, 'according to the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore 'him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and 'terrestrial Devils,'-very needlessly, we think. On this portion of the Work, with its profound glances into the Adam-Kadmon, or Primeval Element, here strangely brought into relation with the Nift and Muspel (Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say that its correctness of deduction, and