'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, 6 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.'

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 continเ 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 '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

6

'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,

6

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 6 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

6

'lect in conversation.

Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as

a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelope myself; that

'so my own poor Person might live safe there, and in all friendli'ness, being no longer exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now 'see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason 'I have, long since, as good as renounced it. But how many 'individuals did I, in those days, provoke into some degree of 'hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his sly stillness, and 'ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man, from 'whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. 'Have we not seen persons of weight and name, coming forward, 'with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as 'an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (balkenhoch), 'and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on 'shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and ' a torpedo!'

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for himself in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdröckh too admits, is 'to unite yourself with some one, and with somewhat (sich anzuschliessen)?' Division, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only important connexion he had ever succeeded in forming, his connexion with the Zähdarm Family, seems to have been paralysed, for all practical uses, by the death of the 'not uncholeric' old Count. This fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain Discourse on Epitaphs, huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. By request of that worthy Nobleman's survivors,' says he, ‘I undertook to compose his Epitaph; and not unmindful of 'my own rules, produced the following; which, however, for an 'alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet fully visible to 'myself, still remains unengraven ;'—wherein, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English reader:

HIC JACET

PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, ZAEHDARMI COMES,

EX IMPERII CONCILIO,

VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI

EQUES.

QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT,
QUINQUIES MILLE PERDRICES

PLUMBO CONFECIT :

VARII CIBI

CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA,
PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE,
HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS,

IN STERCUS

PALAM CONVERTIT.

NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM

OPERA SEQUUNTUR.

SI MONUMENTUM QUÆRIS,

FIMETUM ADSPICE.

PRIMÙM IN ORBE DEJECIT [sub dato]; POSTREMÙM [sub dato].

CHAPTER V.

ROMANCE.

'FOR long years,' writes Teufelsdröckh, had the poor Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking 'bricks without stubble, before ever the question once struck him 'with entire force: For what?-Beym Himmel! For Food and 'Warmth ! And are Food and Warmth nowhere else, in the 'whole wide Universe, discoverable ?—Come of it what might, I ' resolved to try.'

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdröckh is now a man without Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, be desperately steers off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdröckh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not a Fleet, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the other? How wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and for thyself find that shorter North-west Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere?—A solitary rover on such a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, as we forthwith discover, a certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset; and as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. 'If in youth,' writes he once, 'the Universe is majestically un'veiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, no'where to the Young Man does this Heaven on Earth so imme'diately reveal itself as in the Young Maiden. Strangely 'enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed. 'On the whole, as I have often said, a Person (Personlichkeit) is