decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself.

We are

enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return; for Teufelsdröckh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half rational or altogether irrational friend, and, at best, loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and, as he fondly imagined, far more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his little sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdröckh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost; and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging, nasal Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdröckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion and godlike indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred.

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdröckh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and meditate. Here, perched up in his high Wahngasse watchtower, and often, in solitude, outwatching the bear, it was that

the indomitable inquirer fought all his battles with dulness and darkness; here, in all probability, that he wrote this surprising volume on Clothes. Additional particulars; of his age, which was of that standing, middle sort you could only guess at; of his wide surtout ; the color of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. The wisest truly is, in these times, the greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity, leaving kings and such like to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the philosophic class; nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdröckh could be brought home to him, till once the documents arrive? His life, fortunes, and bodily presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. But, on the other hand, does not his soul lie enclosed in this remarkable volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the buried bag of doubloons? To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, to his opinions, namely, on the "Origin and Influence of Clothes," we for the present gladly

return.

CHAPTER IV.

CHARACTERISTICS.

IT were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this work on Clothes entirely contents us; that it is not,like all works of genius, like the very sun, which,

though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence, a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness, double vision, and even utter blindness.

Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger, we admitted that the book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. More specially it may now be declared that Professor Teufelsdröckh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigor, are here made indisputably manifest; and, unhappily, no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold inaptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens in the author a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable, in a German, but fatal to his success with our public.

Of good society Teufelsdröckh appears to have seen little, or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks out with a strange plainness; calls many things by their mere dictionary names. To him the upholsterer is no pontiff, neither is any drawingroom a temple,

were it never so begilt and overhung; "A whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and or-molu," as he himself expresses it, "cannot hide from me that such drawingroom is simply a section of infinite space, where so many God-created souls do for the time meet together." To Teufelsdröckh the highest duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl-bracelets, and Malines laces. In his eyes, the star of a lord is little less and little more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a clown's smock; "Each is an implement," he says, "in its kind; a tag for hooking together; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a stithy before smiths' fingers." Thus does the Professor look in men's face with a strange impartiality, a strange, scientific freedom; like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his whole system of thought, that all these short-comings overshootings, and multiform perversities, take rise; if, indeed, they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his transcendental philosophies, and humor of looking at all matter and material things as spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable.

To the thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the work; nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as Teufelsdröckh maintains, that, "within the most starched cravat there passes a windpipe and wesand, and under the thickliest embroidered waist

coat beats a heart,"

the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through? In our wild seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious strength, which, except in the higher walks of literature, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious life of man. Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep, into the true centre of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it. -On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often, after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest common-places, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is.

Of his boundless learning, and how all reading and literature in most known tongues, from Sanchoniathon to Dr. Lingard, from your oriental Shasters, and Talmuds, and Korans, with Cassini's Siamese Tables, and Laplace's Mécanique Céleste, down to Robinson Crusoe, and the Belfast Town and Country Almanac, are familiar to him, we shall say nothing; for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned?