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Teufelsdröckh left the other young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or gosling.

Perhaps too what little employment he had was performed ill, at best unpleasantly. Great practical method and expertness' he may brag of; but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with his Independence, and so forth do not his own words betoken as much? Like a 'very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and not 'also with Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I have been 'appointed to struggle.' Be this as it may, his progress from the passive Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently of the slowest. By degrees, those same established men, once partially inclined to patronise him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give him up as a man of genius' against which procedure he, in these Papers, loudly protests. As if,' says he, 'the higher did not presuppose the lower; as if he who 'can fly into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved on it! 'But the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing 'for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated she will thence'forth trust nothing but the common copper.

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner, contrived, in the meanwhile, to keep himself from flying skyward without return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the Earth; other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so that the prompt nature of Hunger being well known,' we are not without our anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, to use his own words,' does 'the young Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary 'gift; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide fac'ulty of Translation. Nevertheless,' continues he, that I sub'sisted is clear, for you find me even now alive.' Which fact, however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old

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Proverb, that there is always life for a living one,' we must profess ourselves unable to explain.

Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like an independent Hearth-holder, if not Householder, paid his way. Here also occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhaps throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer's name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: The (Inkblot), tied down by pre'vious promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the Herr 'Teufelsdröckh's views on the Assessorship in question; and sees 'himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, 'what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are 'yet waiting.' The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the original: Herr Teufels'dröckh wird von der Frau Gräfinn, auf Donnerstag, zum ÆSTHE'TISCHEN THEE, schönstens eingeladen.'

Thus in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most urgent need, comes epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid Esthetic Tea! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual handgrips with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical and Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Gräfinn dates from the Zähdarm House, she can be no other than the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and good will to Teufelsdröckh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses of

the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded. The Zähdarms,' says he, 'lived in the 'soft sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature 'and Art, attracted and attached from without, were to serve as 'the handsomest fringing. It was to the Gnädigen Frau (her 'Ladyship) that this latter improvement was due: assiduously 'she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing was to be 'had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded.' Was Teufelsdröckh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? 'With his Excellenz (the Count),' continues he, 'I have more 'than once had the honour to converse; chiefly on general affairs, 'and the aspect of the world, which he, though now past middle 'life, viewed in no unfavourable light; finding indeed, except the 'Outrooting of Journalism (die auszurottende Journalistik), little 'to desiderate therein. On some points, as his Excellenz was 'not uncholeric, I found it more pleasant to keep silence. Be'sides, his occupation being that of Owning Land, there might 'be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use, were lit'tle developed in him.

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That to Teufelsdröckh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless, and many things besides the Outrooting of Journalism,' might have seemed improvements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a barren Auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from within, his position was no easy one. The Universe, he says, 'was as a mighty Sphinxriddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, or be devoured. 'In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the black'ness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished Thought, un'folding itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as yet 'knew not the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can 'spring only from discords set in unison; that but for Evil there 'were no Good, as victory is only possible by battle.'

'I have heard affirmed (surely in jest),' observes he elsewhere, 'by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of 'human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen 'be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and 'there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they

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'emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. With 'which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of a practi'cal scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide. Never'theless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (Mädchen) 'are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (Bübchen) do then attain their maximum 'of detestability. Such gawks (Gecken) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence: so obstinate, obstreperous, vain-glorious; in all senses, 'so froward and so forward. No mortal's endeavour or attain'ment will, in the smallest, content the as yet unendeavouring, 'unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all infi'nitely better, were it worthy of him. Life every where is the 'most manageable matter, simply as a question in the Rule of 'Three: multiply your second and third term together, divide 'the product by the first, and your quotient will be the answer, '-which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The booby 'has not yet found out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there 'is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no 'net integer quotient so much as to be thought of.'

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In which passage does there not lie an implied confession that Teufelsdröckh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of head? Alas! on the former side alone, his case was hard enough. 'It contin6 ues ever true,' says he, that Saturn, or Chronos, or what we 'call TIME, devours all his Children: only by incessant Running, 'by incessant Working, may you (for some threescore and ten 'years) escape him; and you too he devours at last. Can any 'Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time stand still; 'even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our whole 6 terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is 'wholly a Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, 'the material of it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to 'move, to work,-in the right direction. Are not our Bodies and 'our Souls in continual movement, whether we will or not; in a 'continual Waste, requiring a continual Repair? Utmost satis

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'faction of our whole outward and inward Wants were but satis'faction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done, is done, 'and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. 0 Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and 'sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that, only ' in lucid moments, can so much as glimpses of our upper Azure 'Home be revealed to us! Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time threatening to eat quite 'prematurely; for, strive as I might, there was no good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet.' That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that Teufelsdröckh's whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, 'to work,-in the right direction,' and that no work was to be had; whereby he became wretched enough. As was natural: with haggard Scarcity threatening him in the distance; and so vehement a soul languishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword by rust,

To eat into itself, for lack

Of something else to hew and hack!

But on the whole, that same 'excellent Passivity,' as it has all along done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance, may we not trace the beginnings of much that now characterises our Professor; and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy itself? Already the attitude he has assumed towards the World is too defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. So far hitherto,' he says, as I had mingled with mankind, I was notable, if for any thing, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends ' often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardour of 'my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of 'love and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever 'divine, to him that has a sense for the Godlike. Often, notwith'standing, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my so'called Hardness (Härte), my Indifferentism towards men; and 'the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favourite dia

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