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'and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work 'done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou 'art he!

Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the 'loftiest height; and for the Poor also a Gospel has been 'published. Surely, if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Moderns, and 10 'greater than Diogenes himself: for he too stands on 'the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting aside all 'props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage Pride, under'valuing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield 'him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his 15 Earth, and dwells in an element of Mercy and Worship, ' with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did nowise 'witness. Great, truly, was that Tub; a temple from 'which man's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached 'abroad; but greater is the Leather Hull, for the same 20 sermon was preached there, and not in Scorn but in 'Love.'

George Fox's 'perennial suit,' with all that it held, has been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, 25 in a discussion on the Perfectibility of Society, reproduce it now? Not out of blind sectarian partisanship: Teufelsdröckh himself is no Quaker; with all his pacific tendencies, did we not see him, in that scene at the North Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms?

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For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more meant in this passage than meets the ear. At the same time, who can avoid smiling at the earnestness and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an underhand satire in it), with which that 'Incident' is here brought

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forward; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation ! Does Teufelsdröckh anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable class of the community, by way of testifying against the 'Mam- 5 mon-god,' and escaping from what he calls Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair,' where doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked sufficiently, will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of Leather? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay 10 aside its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and traingowns, for a second-skin of tanned hide? By which change Huddersfield and Manchester, and Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were reduced to hungry solitudes; and only Day and Martin could profit. For 15 neither would Teufelsdröckh's mad daydream, here as we presume covertly intended, of levelling Society (levelling it indeed with a vengeance, into one huge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the political effects of Nudity without its frigorific or other consequences, be thereby 20 realised. Would not the rich man purchase a waterproof suit of Russia Leather; and the high-born Belle stepforth in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy: the black cowhide being left to the Drudges and Gibeonites of the world; and so all the old Distinctions be reëstab- 25 lished?

Or has the Professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but a part thereof?

CHAPTER II.

CHURCH-CLOTHES.

Nor less questionable is his Chapter on Church-Clothes, which has the farther distinction of being the shortest in the Volume. We here translate it entire :

By Church-Clothes, it need not be, premised, that I 5 'mean infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices; and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday Clothes 'that men go to Church in. Far from it! Church'Clothes are, in our vocabulary, the Forms, the Vestures, ' under which men have at various periods embodied and 10 'represented for themselves the Religious Principle; that 'is to say, invested the Divine Idea of the World with a 'sensible and practically active Body, so that it might dwell among them as a living and life-giving WORD.

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These are unspeakably the most important of all the 15 vestures and garnitures of Human Existence. They are 'first spun and woven, I may say, by that wonder of 'wonders, SOCIETY; for it is still only when "two or 'three are gathered together," that Religion, spiritually 'existent, and indeed indestructible, however latent, in 20 each, first outwardly manifests itself (as with "cloven tongues of fire "), and seeks to be embodied in a visible Communion, and Church Militant. Mystical, more than 'magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, both 'looking heavenward: here properly Soul first speaks 25 with Soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in 'what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to 'be possible. How true is that of Novalis: "It is cer'tain, my Belief gains quite infinitely the moment I can 30 convince another mind thereof "! Gaze thou in the

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'face of thy Brother, in those eyes where plays the lam*bent fire of Kindness, or in those where rages the lurid 'conflagration of Anger; feel how thy own so quiet Soul 'is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye 'blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one 5 'limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of 'deadly-grappling Hate); and then say what miraculous 'virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, through all 'the thick-plied hulls of our Earthly Life; how much more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, and 10 'inmost ME is, as it were, brought into contact with in' most ME!

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'Thus was it that I said, the Church-Clothes are first 'spun and woven by Society; outward Religion originates by Society, Society becomes possible by Religion. 15 Nay, perhaps, every conceivable Society, past and present, may well be figured as properly and wholly a *Church, in one or other of these three predicaments: 'an audibly preaching and prophesying Church, which is the best; second, a Church that struggles to preach 20 and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and third and worst, a Church gone dumb with 'old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to disso'lution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant 'Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and 25 'prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular Professor, read on, light of heart (getrosten Muthes).

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'But with regard to your Church proper, and the 'Church-Clothes specially recognised as Church-Clothes, 30 'I remark, fearlessly enough, that without such Vestures ' and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will not 'exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body Politic, holding the whole together

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'and protecting it; and all your Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the 'Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues, (lying under such SKIN), whereby Society stands and 5 ' works; then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and 'Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circula'tion to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue 'the Bones and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or ani'mated only by a Galvanic vitality: the SKIN would 10 become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting raw-hide; and *Society itself a dead carcass, deserving to be buried. Men were no longer Social, but Gregarious; which latter state also could not continue, but must gradually 'issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isola15 'tion, and dispersion; whereby, as we might continue 'to say, the very dust and dead body of Society would 'have evaporated and become abolished. Such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the Church-Clothes, to 'civilised or even to rational man.

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'Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same 'Church-Clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows : 'nay, far worse, many of them have become mere hol'low Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or 'Spirit any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean 'beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade; and 'the mask still glares on you with its glass-eyes, in 'ghastly affectation of Life, some generation-and-half 'after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in un'noticed nooks in weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or 'grandsons. As a Priest, or Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest of all men, so is a Sham-priest (Schein-priester) the falsest and basest; neither is it 'doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras,