man who had manfully defied the "Time-Prince," or Devil, to his face; nay, perhaps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. In such a cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack Scythe-man, shall be welcome.

Still the question returns on us: How could a man occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd? Which question he were wiser than the present Editor who should satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps necessity as well as choice was concerned in it. Seems it not conceivable that, in a life like our Professor's, where so much bountifully given by nature had in practice failed and misgone, literature also would never rightly prosper; that, striving with his characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other picture, and ever without success, he at last desperately dashes his brush full of all colors, against the canvass, to try whether it will paint foam ? With all his stillness, there were perhaps in Teufelsdröckh desperation enough for this.

A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. It is, that Teufelsdröckh is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytize. How often already have we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really stoicism and despair, or love and hope only seared into the figure of these! Remarkable, moreover, is this saying of his "How were friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the good and

true.

Otherwise impossible; except as armed neutrality, or hollow commercial league. A man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man.” And now in conjunction therewith consider this other: "It is the night of the world, and still long till it be day. We wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the sun and the stars of heaven are as blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable phantoms, HYPOCRISY and ATHEISM, with the Gowle, SENSUALITY, stalk abroad over the earth, and call it theirs. Well at ease are the sleepers for whom existence is a shallow dream.

But what of the awestruck wakeful who find it a reality? Should not these unite; since even an authentic spectre is not visible to two? In which case were this enormous Clothes-volume properly an enormous pitchpan, which our Teufelsdröckh in his lone watch-tower had kindled, that it might flame far and wide through the night, and many a disconsolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a brother's bosom! We say as before, with all his malign indifference, who knows what mad hopes this man may harbor?

Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here which harmonizes ill with such conjecture; and, indeed, were Teufelsdröckh made like other men, might as good as altogether subvert it. Namely, that while the beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the watchman had quitted it; that no pilgrim could now ask him: Watchman, what of the night? Professor Teufelsdröckh, be it known, is no longer visibly present at Weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space!

Some time ago the Hofrath Heuschrecke was pleased to favor us with another copious epistle; wherein much is said about the "Population Institute;" much repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which our Hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in the following paragraph:

66

· Ew. Wohlgebohren will have seen, from the public prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of her sage. Might but the united voice of Germany prevail on him to return; nay, could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! But, alas, old Leischen experiences or affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance. In the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the privy council itself can hitherto elicit no answer.

"It had been remarked that while the agitating news of those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to mouth, and dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdröckh was not known, at the Ganse or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once these three; Es geht an (It is beginning). Shortly after, as Ew. Wohlgebohren knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want evilwishers, or perhaps mere desperate alarmists, who asserted that the closing chapter of the Clothes-volume was to blame. In this appalling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable. Nay, perhaps, through one humble individual, something thereof might pass into the Rath (Council) itself, and so con

tribute to the country's deliverance

The Tailors are

now entirely pacificated. 'To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss. Yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its politics. For example, when the Saint-Simonian Society transmitted its propositions hither, and the whole Ganse was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation, and astonishment, our sage sat mute; and at the end of the third evening, said merely: Here also are men who have discovered, not without amazement, that man is still man; of which high, long-forgotten truth you already see them make a false application.' Since then, as has been ascertained by examination of the Post Director, there passed at least one letter with its answer between the Messieurs Bazard Enfantin and our Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. On the fifth night following, he was seen for the last time!

"Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile sects that convulse our era, been spirited away by certain of their emissaries; or did he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them, and confront them? Reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the Lost still living. Our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, must his archives, one day, be opened by authority; where much, perhaps the Palingenesie itself, is thought to be reposited."

Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too, like an ignis fatuus, leaving the dark still darker.

-So that Teufelsdröckh's public history were not done, then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor;

nay, perhaps, the better part thereof were only beginning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. May time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this also. Our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is, that safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie alway still, Teufelsdröckh is actually in London !

Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers likewise, it is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought he not to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou, too, miraculous Entity, that namest thyself YORKE and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all-too Irish mirth and madness, and odor of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, fare-well! Have we not, in the course of eternity, travelled some months of our life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not lived together, though in a state of quarrel?

THE END..