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other hand, shew 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 five-and-thirty miles an hour; and they do it: he 'collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscella'neous 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 stand'ard 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 wire-drawing 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 beatified Ghost of an 'Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, 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 otherwise 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-coloured, iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society 'works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and 'stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy (Teufels-schmiede) of a world 'But of all Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the

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'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 de'serving 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 em'ploy fire as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. 'However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In 'the meanwhile, 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 Elec'tricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the 'mighty, billowy, stormtost 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 as 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

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'all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and proce'dure, 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 (vermöchte 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 !

CHAPTER VII.

MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL.

HAPPIER is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the Seventeenth Century; the true era of extravagance in costume. It is here that the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and every way interesting have we found these Chapters, that it may be thrown out as a pertinent question for parties concerned, Whether or not a good English Translation thereof might henceforth be profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work On Ancient Armour? Take, by way of example, the following sketch; as authority for which Paulinus's Zeitkurzende Lust (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, referred to:

'Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century, we might smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, 'were they to rise again, and see our haberdashery, would cross 'themselves, and invoke the Virgin. But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus the Present is not needlessly 'trammelled with the Past; and only grows out of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but 'lie peaceably under ground. Nay it is very mournful, yet not 'useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and Dearest, in a 'short while, would find his place quite filled up here, and no 'room for him; the very Napoleon, the very Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were now a foreigner to 'his Europe. Thus is the Law of Progress secured; and in

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