depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like astonishment.

But quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdröckh hastens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as the Nürnbergers give an Orbis Pictus) an Orbis Vestitus; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is Learning an irregular Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamides, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the name Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us,even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. For most part too we must admit that the Learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled down quite pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside.

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first purpose of clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. Miserable indeed,' says he, 'was the condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from 'under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to 'his loins, and hung round him like a matted cloak; the rest of 'his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. He loitered in the 'sunny glades of the forest, living on wild fruits; or, as the an'cient Caledonian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his 'bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, save 'the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole possession and de'fence might not be lost, he had attached a Jong cord of plaited 'thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly un'erring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once

'satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (Putz). 'Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves ' in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for 'Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we 'find tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first 'spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we 'still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.

'Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene Highness: nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom thou 'lovest, worshippest as a divine Presence, which, indeed, symboli'cally taken, she is has descended, like thyself, from that same 'hair-mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out ' of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth 'sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by Time, yet in 'Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or 'beholds, is in continual growth, re-genesis and self-perfecting vi'tality. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, everworking Universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed 'to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove '(perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years.

He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering 'most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic 'world: he had invented the Art of Printing. The first ground 'handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's 'pestel through the ceiling: what will the last do? Achieve the 'final undisputed prostration of Force under Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was in the old'world Grazier,-sick of lugging his slow Ox about the country 'till he got it bartered for corn or oil,-to take a piece of Lea'ther, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or Pecus); put it in his pocket, and call it Pecunia, Money. 'Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now 'Golden and Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: 'for there are Rothschilds and English National Debts; and 'whoso has sixpence is Sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over 'all men; commands Cooks to feed him, Philosophers to teach

'him, Kings to mount guard over him,-to the length of six'pence.-Clothes too, which began in foolishest love of Orna'ment, what have they not become! Increased Security, and 'pleasurable Heat soon followed but what of these? Shame, 'divine Shame (Schaam, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthro'pophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a 'mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have 'made Men of us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us.

'But on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, Man is 'a Tool-using Animal (Hanthierendes Thier). Weak in himself, 'and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flat'test-soled, of some half square-foot, insecurely enough; has to 'straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest 'of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the 'Steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Never'theless he can use Tools, can devise Tools: with these the gra'nite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glow'ing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, 'winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him 'without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all.'

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a remark that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal, appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdröckh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whale-blubber, as a marmot in the like case, might do? Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under water? But on the

other hand, shew us the human being, of any period or climate, without his Tools: those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can have.

'Man is a Tool-using animal,' concludes Teufelsdröckh in his 'abrupt way; 'of which truth Clothes are but one example: and 'surely if we consider the interval between the first wooden 'Dibble fashioned by man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, we shall note what progress 'he has made. He digs up certain black stones from the bosom ' of the Earth, and says to them, Transport me and this luggage, at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour; and they do it he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, Make this nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow, and sin for us; and they do it.'

CHAPTER VI.

APRONS.

ONE of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on Aprons. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, whose Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because 'raised in revolt which proved successful, is still the royal stand'ard of that country;' what though John Knox's Daughter, 'who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her 'husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should lie and be 'a bishop' what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other Apron worthies,-figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following?

'Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, 'to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of 'notched silk (as it were, the Emblem and beatified Ghost of an 'Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nürnberg 'Workboxes and Toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the 'thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the 'Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those 'jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked 'Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,-is there not 'range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How 'much has been concealed, how much has been defended in 'Aprons! Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole Military and Police Establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, but 'a huge scarlet-coloured, iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society 'works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and 'stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy (Teufels-schmiede) of a world? 'But of all Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the