"But, on the whole," continues our eloquent Professor, "man is a tool-using animal (Hanthierendes Thier). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most, for the flattest-soled, of some half square-foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools. With these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with is ools he is all."

ba Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the

tream of oratory with a remark that this definition of lothe tool-using animal appears to us, of all that animalsnort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is likalled a laughing animal; but do not the apes also a augh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man shhe greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdröckh himself, as Still we said, laughed only once. less do we make of that other French definition of the cooking animal; which, indeed, for rigorous, scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whaleblubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinoco Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge

in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under water? But, on the other hand, show us the human being, of any period or climate, without his tools; those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their flint-ball, and thong to it, such as no brute has or can have.

"Man is a tool-using animal," concludes Teufelsdröckh in his abrupt way; "of which truth Clothes are but one example. And surely, if we consider the interval between the first wooden dibble fashioned by man, and those Liverpool steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, Transport me, and this luggage, at the rate of fiveand-thirty miles an hour; and they do it. He collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscel laneous individuals, and says to them, Make this nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger, and sorrow, and sin for us; and they do it."

CHAPTER VI.

APRONS.

ONE of the most unsatisfactory sections in the whole volume is that on Aprons. What though stout old Gao, the Persian blacksmith, "whose apron, now, indeed, hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt

which proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country;" what though John Knox's daughter, "who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her husband's head in her apron, rather than he should lie and be a bishop;" what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other apron worthies, -figure here? An idle, wiredrawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following?

"Aprons are defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beautified ghost of an apron) which some highestbred house wife, sitting at Nürnberg workboxes and toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling, sheet-iron aprons, wherein your half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace, is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this vestment? How much has been concealed, how much has been defended in aprons! Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole military and police establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge, scarlet-colored, iron-fastened apron, wherein society works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's smithy (Teufels-schmeide) of a world? But of all aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the Episcopal, or Cassock. Wherein consists the

usefulness of this apron? The Overseer (Episcopus) of Souls, I notice, has tucked in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done; what does he shadow forth thereby?" &c. &c.

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as we shall now quote?

"I consider those printed paper aprons, worn by the Parisian cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for typography; therefore as an encouragement to modern literature, and deserving of approval; nor is it without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London firm having in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in England."

We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and, indeed, have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our literature, exuberant as it is. Teufelsdröckh continues: "If such supply of printed paper should rise so far as to choke up the highways and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse to. In a world existing by industry, we grudge to employ fire as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it not beautiful to see five million quintals of rags picked annually from the laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, printed on, and sold, returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths by the way? Thus is the laystall, especially with its rags or clothes-rubbish, the grand electric battery, and fountain of motion, from which and to which the social activities (like vitreous and resinous electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller

circles, through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost chaos of life, which they keep alive!" Such passages fill us who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling.

Farther down we meet with this: "The journalists are now the true kings and clergy. Henceforth historians, unless they are fools, must write, not of Bourbon dynasties, and Tudors, and Hapsburgs; but of stamped, broad-sheet dynasties, and quite new successive names, according to this or the other able editor, or combination of able editors, gains the world's ear. Of the British newspaper press, perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive history already exists, in that language, under the title of Satan's Invisible World Displayed; which, however, by search in all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring (vermöcht nicht aufzutreiben)."

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufelsdröckh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old, authentic, Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary historian of the Brittische Journalistik; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in modern literature !