CHAPTER VI.

SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH.

We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, matters must often be expected to take a course of their own; that in so multiplex, intricate a nature, there might be channels, both for admitting and emitting, such as the Psychologist had seldom noted; in short, that on no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor in the woe-storm, could you predict his de

meanour.

To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdröckh, precipitated through 'a shivered Universe' in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things which he can next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing Satanic Poetry; or blow out his brains. In the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself?

Nowise so does Teufelsdröckh deport him. He quietly lifts his Pilgerstab (Pilgrim-staff), 'old business being soon wound up;' and begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous globe! Curious it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such intensity of feeling; above all, with these unconscionable habits of Exaggeration in speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his, that stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement, in this matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real Doomsday and Dissolution of Nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared to himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather is compressed closer. For once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things rush out

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tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their glass phial but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than the strange casket of a heart springs-to again; and perhaps there is now no key extant that will open it: for a Teufelsdröckh, as we remarked, will not love a second time. Singular Diogenes! No sooner has that heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. 'One highest hope, seemingly legible in the 'eyes of an Angel, had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into 'celestial life but a gleam of Tophet passed over the face of his Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter ' of Demons. It was a Calenture,' adds he, 'whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean-waters: a lying 'vision, yet not wholly a lie, for he saw it.' But what things soever passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings soever Teufelsdröckh's soul was the scene of, he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence. We know it well; the first mad paroxysm past, our brave Gneschen collected his dismembered philosophies, and buttoned himself together; he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather, and the Journals only by a transient knitting of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of those eyes, glancing one knew not whether with tear-dew or with fierce fire,―might you have guessed what a Gehenna was within; that a whole Satanic School were spouting, though inaudibly, there. To consume your own choler, as some chimneys consume their own smoke; to keep a whole Satanic School spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these times.

Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent Insanity; whereof indeed the actual condition of these Documents in Capricornus and Aquarius is no bad emblem. His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable aim; internal Unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had fallen on him, and he were 'made like unto a wheel.' Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these Paperbags aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note of preparation, for example, we come upon the fol

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lowing slip: A peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the Travel'ler, when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a toybox, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their 'multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is then truly a starward'pointing finger; the canopy of blue smoke seems like a sort of 'Life-breath for always, of its own unity, the soul gives unity to 'whatso it looks on with love; thus does the little Dwellingplace ' of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts, become for us an ' individual, almost a person. But what thousand other thoughts 'unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena of joy6 ous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were 'rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, 'if our Buried ones there slumber!' Does Teufelsdröckh, as the wounded eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in the direction of their birth-land,-fly first, in this extremity, towards his native Entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits him, take but one wistful look from the distance, and then wend elsewhither?

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Little happier seems to be his next flight into the wilds of Nature; as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. So at least we incline to interpret the following Notice, separated from the former by some considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing note-worthy:

'Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are Mountains เ seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks 'are of that sort called Primitive by the mineralogists, which 'always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged, gigantic cha'racter; which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by a singu. lar airiness of form, and softness of environment: in a climate 'favourable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots up through a garment of foliage or verdure; and 'white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the everlasting 'granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with Grandeur: 'you ride through stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding amid

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'broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly 'emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects 'itself into a Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and 'it seems as if Peace had established herself in the bosom of 'Strength.

'To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the Son ' of Time not pretend: still less if some Spectre haunt him from 'the Past; and the Future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, spectre'bearing. Reasonably might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: 'Are not the gates of this world's Happiness inexorably shut 'against thee; hast thou a hope that is not mad? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original Greek if that 'suit better: "Whoso can look on Death will start at no 'shadows."

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'From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called out'wards; for now the Valley closes in abruptly, intersected by a 'huge mountain mass, the stony waterworn ascent of which is 'not to be accomplished on horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds 'himself again lifted into the evening sunset light; and cannot 'but pause, and gaze round him, some moments there. An up'land irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in complex branch'ings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent towards 'every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are beneath 'your feet, and folded together: only the loftier summits look 'down here and there as on a second plain; lakes also lie clear 'and earnest in their solitude. No trace of man now visible; un'less indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of 'Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite 'Province with Province. But sunwards, lo you! how it towers 'sheer up, a world of Mountains, the diadem and centre of the 'mountain region! A hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in 'the last light of Day; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like 'giant spirits of the wilderness; there in their silence, in their 'solitude, even as on the night when Noah's Deluge first dried! 'Beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. 'He gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost 'with longing desire; never till this hour had he known Nature, 'that she was One, that she was his Mother and divine. And as

itself

'the ru v was fading into clearness in the sky, and the 'Sun b w departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, 'of Death and of Life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if 'Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, as if 'the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splendour, and his 6 own spirit were therewith holding communion.

The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon into the hidden 'Southward, came a gay barouche-and-four: it was open; ser'vants and postilions wore wedding-favours: that happy pair, 'then, had found each other, it was their marriage evening! Few 'moments brought them near: Du Himmel! It was Herr Tow' good and Blumine! With slight unrecognising saluta'tion they passed me; plunged down amid the neighbouring 'thickets, onwards, to Heaven, and to England; and I, in my 'friend Richter's words, I remained alone, behind them, with the 'Night.'

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Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the great Clothes- Volume, where it stands with quite other intent: 'Some 'time before Small-pox was extirpated,' says the Professor, there came a new malady of the spiritual sort on Europe: I mean the 'epidemic, now endemical, of View-hunting. Poets of old date, 'being privileged with Senses, had also enjoyed external Nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup which holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary: never, as I compute, till after the Sorrows of 'Werter, was there man found who would say: Come let us make a Description! Having drunk the liquor, come let us eat the เ glass! Of which endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek.' Too true!

We reckon it more important to remark that the Professor's Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered up what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him: Life has become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our Friend, flying from spec