betoken intellect and talent, so does the color betoken temper and heart. In all which, among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though infinitely complex working of cause and effect; every snip of the scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ever-active influences, which, doubtless to intelligences of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible.

"For such superior intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening entertainment; nevertheless, for inferior intelligences, like men, such philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity, in heaven? -Let any cause-and-effect philosopher explain, not why I wear such and such a garment, obey such and such a law; but even why I am here, to wear and obey any thing?-Much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent; naked facts, and deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient style, are my humbler and proper province."

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdröckh has nevertheless contrived to take in a well nigh boundless extent of field; at least the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being indispensable, we shall here glance over his first part only in the most cursory manner. This first part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and

utmost patience and fairness; at the same time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the compilers of some Library of general, entertaining, useful, or even useless knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this part of the book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, “at present the glory of British literature?" If so the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof.

To the first chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions, of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial, and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do with "Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aërial, aquatic, and terrestrial devils,"-very needlessly, we think. On this portion of the work, with its profound glances into the Adam-Kadmon, or primeval element, here strangely brought into relation with the Nift and Muspel (Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say that its correctness of deduction, and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like astonishment.

But quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdröckh hastens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the Dispersion of Mankind over the whole habitable and habilible globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient

and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as the Nürnbergers give an Orbis Pictus) an Orbis Vestitus; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the antiquarian, to the historian, we can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning; an irregular treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the hoard of king Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamides, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the name Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us,-even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. For most part, too, we must admit that the learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled down quite pell-mell, is true, concentrated and purified learning, the dropsy parts smelted out and thrown aside.

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the

following has surprised us. The first purpose of

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Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. "Miserable indeed," says he, was the condition of the aboriginal savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild fruits; or, as

the ancient Caledonian squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, save the ball of the heavy flint, to which, that his sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of hunger and revenge once satisfied, his next care was, not comfort, but decoration (Putz). Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto; but for decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as, indeed, we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.

"Reader, the heaven-inspired, melodious singer; loftiest Serene Highness; nay, thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is, has descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; and out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by time, yet in time! For not mankind only, but all that mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth, regenesis, and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working universe; it is a seedgrain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a banyan-grove

(perhaps, alas, as a hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years.

"He who first shortened the labor of copyists by device of movable types was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world; he had invented the Art of Printing. The first ground handfull of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling; what will the last do? Achieve the final, undisputed prostration of force under thought, of animal courage under spiritual. A simple invention was it in the old-world grazier, sick of lugging his slow ox about the country till he got it bartered for corn or oil, to take a piece of leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere figure of an ox (or Pecus) ;, put it in his pocket, and call it Pecunia, moneyeYet hereby did barter grow sale, and the leather, money is now golden and paper, and all miracles havдbeen out-miracled; for there are Rothschilds ands English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is, sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him, to the length of sixpence. Clothes, too, which began in foolishest love of ornament, what have they not become! Increased security and pleasurable heat soon followed; but what of these? Shame, divine shame (Schaam, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity. Clothes have made men of us; they are threatening to make clothes-screens of us.