'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 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, close-bordering 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 (Weltansicht), and how he actively and pas

'sively 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 speculative scineitfic '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 Fic'tion, 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 Weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else 'but Biography or Autobiography; ever humano-anecdotical "(menschlich-anecdotisch). Biography is by nature the most uni'versally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially 'Biography of distinguished individuals.

By this time, mein Verehrtester (my Most Esteemed),' 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 (verteift) in that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all readers ao, with astonishment enough. Such portions 'and passages as you have already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curiosity touching the 'mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleled psychical 'mechanism, which manufactured 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 prophetic '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 Pil'grim, 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 sym'pathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these nowhere 'forthcoming? 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 Autobiography: 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 will stand clear to the wondering eyes of Eng'land, nay thence, through America, through Hindostan, and the 'antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (einnehmen) great part ' of this terrestrial Planet!'

(

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 China-ink, 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 scarce legible 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!

Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here speaking in the third person calls himself, the Wanderer,' is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, Detached Thoughts on the Steamengine,' or, The continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall

meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are long purely Autobiographical delineations; yet without connexion, without recognisable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they almost remind us of P.P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus does famine of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order appears to be unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio; only perhaps in the Bag Capricorn, and those near it, the confusion a little worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, 'On receiving the Doctor's Hat,' lie wash-bills marked bezahlt (settled). His Travels are indicated by the Street-Advertisements of the various cities he has visited; of which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection extant.

So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a Chaos, we have now instead of the solar Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo which by intermixture will further volatilise and discompose it! As we shall perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper-Bags in the British Museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, may be spared. Biography or autobiography of Teufelsdröckh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of-efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader, rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it.

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed cursiv-schrift; collating them with the almost equally unimaginable Volume, which stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for British travellers. Never perhaps since our

first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor. For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished up from the welter ing deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil beneath; nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply the Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeavouring to evolve printed Creation out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why to the far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed up.

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith? And what work nobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domestic soil; except indeed planting Thought of your own, which the fewest are privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and already budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a prize worth some striving? Forward with us, courageous reader; be it towards failure, or towards success! The latter thou sharest with us, the former also is not all our own.