'meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The Heav( ens smiled on their endeavour: thus has that same mysterious 'Individual ever since had a status for himself in this visible Uni'verse, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground; ' and now expanded in bulk, faculty, and knowledge of good and 'evil, he, as HERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDRÖCKн, professes or is 'ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, in the 'new University of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of Things ' in General.

6

Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth year, produced on the boyish 'heart and fancy a quite indelible impression. Who this rever'end Personage,' he says, that glided into the Orchard Cottage 'when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's wings, glided 'out again, might be? An inexpressible desire, full of love and ' of sadness, has often since struggled within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my loneliness, has Fantasy ' turned, full of longing (sehnsuchtsvoll,) to that unknown Father, 'who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, 'might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened 'from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, shut 'out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly Space, 'wend to and fro among the crowd of the living? Or art thou 'hidden by those far thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye ' and outstretched arms need not strive to reach? Alas! I know ' not, and in vain vex myself to know. More than once, heart'deluded, have I taken for thee this and the other noble-looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with infinite regard; 'but he too had to repel me, he too was not thou.

6

'And yet, O Man born of Woman,' cries the Autobiographer, with one of his sudden whirls, wherein is my case peculiar? 'Hadst thou, any more than I, a Father whom thou knowest? 'The Andreas and Gretchen, or the Adam and Eve, who led thee ' into Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom 'thou namest Father and Mother; these were, like mine, but thy 'nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true Beginning and

'Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never 'behold, but only with the spiritual.'

'The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moralising, and embroiled discoursing, 'I yet keep; still more insepa'rably the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. From the veil can 'nothing be inferred: a piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the name I have many times ' meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any 'clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate 'to believe. To no purpose have I searched through all the 'Herald's Books, in and without the German Empire, and ' through all manner of Subscriber-Lists (Pränumeranten), Mili'tia-Rolls, and other Name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name Teufelsdröckh, except as ap'pended to my own person, nowhere occurs. Again what may 'the unchristian rather than Christian "Diogenes" mean? Did 'that reverend Basket-bearer intend by such designation, to sha'dow forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humour? Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred off'spring to be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influences ' of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by the worst "figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at and slung at, wounded, 'hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled, by the 'Time-Spirit (Zeitgeist) in thyself and others, till the good soul 'first given thee was seared into grim rage; and thou hadst no'thing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the Fu' ture, and living speaking Protest against the Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, is well named! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now modestly add, was not 'perhaps quite lost in air.

6

For indeed as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, 'nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment 'you wrap round the Earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are Names that have lasted 'nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. And now from with

'out, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to 'the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seed-grain will 'grow to be an all-overshadowing tree! Names? Could I un'fold the influence of Names, which are the most important of 'all clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not only 'all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if 'thou consider it, than a right Naming. Adam's first task was 'giving names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a 'continuation of the same; be the appearances exotic-vegetable, 'organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, God-attributes, 'Gods?—In a very plain sense the Proverb says, Call one a thief, 'and he will steal; in an almost similar sense, may we not per'haps say, Call one Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, and he will open the 'Philosophy of Clothes.'

'Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of 'his Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the 'kind Light; sprawling out his ten fingers and toes; listening, 'tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by 'his sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, 'spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavouring daily to acquire 'for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe where he 'had arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infinite was his 'his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the 'the miracle of-Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like 'brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is formless; 'powerless; yet by degrees organic elements and fibres shoot 'through the watery albumen; and out of vague Sensation, 'grows Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and we have Philoso'phies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions!

'Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such 'diminutive had they in their fondness named him, travelled for. 'ward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy stages. 'The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover keep the roll of 'gold Friedrichs safe, gave out that he was a grand-nephew; the 'orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in An'dreas's distant Prussian birth-land; of whom, as of her indi

'gent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at Entep'fuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took to his spoon'meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still infant, that 'kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never cried. He already felt that time was precious; that he had ' other work cut out for him than whimpering.'

Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdröckh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honour, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the 'good Gretchen Futteral,' or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating-Library, some cultivated native of that district might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and Tombuctoo itself is not safe from Britith Literature, may not some Copy find out even the mysterious Basket-bearing stranger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride?

CHAPTER II.

IDYLLIC.

'HAPPY season of Childhood!' exclaims Teufelsdröckh : 'Kind 'Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor 'man's hut with auroral radiance; and for thy Nurseling hast 'provided a soft swathing of Love and infinite Hope, wherein he 'waxes and slumbers, danced-round (umgäukelt) by sweetest 'Dreams! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as yet a prophet, priest and 'king, and an Obedience that makes us Free. The young spirit 'has awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful 'sunlit ocean; years to the child are as ages: ah! the secret of 'Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and ceaseless down'rushing of the universal World-fabric, from the granite moun'tain to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a motion'less Universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling 'Universe is forever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou 'fair Child, for thy long rough journey is at hand! A little 'while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams 'shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to 'say in stern patience: "Rest? Rest? Shall I not have all 'Eternity to rest in ?" Celestial Nepenthe! though a Pyrrhus 'conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds 'thee not; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, 'on the eyelids, on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, 'sleep and waking are one: the fair Life-garden rustles infinite ' around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of 'Hope; which budding, if in youth, too frostnipt, it grows to 'flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly, bitter'rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel.'