held aloft, foot clutched into the air, loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: however, Teufelsdröckh 5 composed himself, and sank into his old stilness; on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no 10 man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are 15 able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outward; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool; of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, 20 stratagems, and spoils; but his whole life is already a

treason and a stratagem.

Considered as an author, Herr Teufelsdröckh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, 25 it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; 30 a Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative : but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many

sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and 5 fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavour.

CHAPTER V.

THE WORLD IN CLOTHES.

IO 'As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws,' observes our Professor, so could I write a Spirit of Clothes; thus, with an 'Esprit des Loix, properly an Esprit de Coutumes, we 'should have an Esprit de Costumes. For neither in 'tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere 15 Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious operations of the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory 'endeavours, an Architectural Idea will be found lurking 'his Body and the Cloth are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautiful edifice, of a Person, 20 is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded 'mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high head'gear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell'out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings and monstrous 'tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and 'front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs, will 'depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: 'whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether

९

Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. 'what meaning lies in Colour!

Again,

From the soberest drab

'to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold 'themselves in choice of Colour: if the Cut betoken Intel'lect and Talent, so does the Colour betoken Temper and 5 'Heart. In all which, among nations as among indi'viduals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though in'finitely complex working of Cause and Effect: every snip of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed 'by ever-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelli- 10 'gences of a superior order are neither invisible nor 'illegible.

'For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a * comfortable winter-evening entertainment nevertheless, 15 'for inferior Intelligences, like men, such Philosophies 'have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, 'what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant 'spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, 'the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven? — Let 20 'any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not why I

wear such and such a Garment, obey such and such a 'Law; but even why I am here, to wear and obey any *thing! Much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as hypothetical, 25 'ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that ' omniscient style, are my humbler and proper province.' Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdröckh has nevertheless contrived to take-in a well-nigh boundless 30 extent of field; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being indispensable, we shall here glance-over his First Part only in the most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, dis

tinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the Compilers of some Library of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even 5 Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, 'at present the glory 'of British Literature'? If so, the Library Editors are Io welcome to dig in it for their own behoof.

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with 15 giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do with Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to the 'Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, in 'that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and 'terrestrial Devils,' - very needlessly, we think. On this 20 portion of the Work, with its profound glances into the Adam-Kadmon, or Primeval Element, here strangely brought into relation with the Nifl and Muspel (Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say that its correctness of deduction, and depth of 25 Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like astonishment.

But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdröckh hastens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of 30 Mankind over the whole habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed. shape (as the Nürnbergers give an Orbis Pictus) an Orbis

Vestitus; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is Learning: an irregular Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which 5 twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the name 10 Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us, even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. For most part too we must admit that the Learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite 15 pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside.

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first purpose of clothes, as 20 our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. 'Miserable indeed,' says he, 'was the condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from ' under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted 25 'cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural 'fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, 'living on wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, 'squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his bestial or 'human prey; without implements, without arms, save 30 'the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole possession 'and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long 'cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as 'hurling it with deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the