annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, pri 'and sold, returned thither; filling so many! 'mouths by the way? Thus is the Laystall, especia 'its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion, from which and to which the 5 'Social Activities (like vitreous and resinous Electricities) '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.

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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 Dynas'ties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of Stamped Broad'sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, ac- 15 'cording 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 all, ' and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and 'procedure, a valuable descriptive History already exists, 20 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. 25 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 30 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

5 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 10 breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and everyway 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 15 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 Zeitkürzende Lust (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, referred to :

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'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 25 '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 30 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 obsol'ete, and were now a foreigner to his Europe. Thus is 'the Law of Progress secured; and in Clothes, as in all 'other external things whatsoever, no fashion will 5 continue.

'Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff'belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, ' and other riding and fighting gear have been bepainted 'in modern Romance, till the whole has acquired some- 10 'what of a sign-post character, I shall here say nothing: 'the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are 'wonderful enough for us.

'Rich men, I find, have Teusinke' (a perhaps untranslateable article); 'also a silver girdle, whereat hang little 15 'bells; so that when a man walks it is with continual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have a whole. 'chime of bells (Glockenspiel) fastened there; which, ' especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of 'walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too how fond 20 'they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch intersections. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang 'bobbing over the side (schief): their shoes are peaked ' in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on the 'side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell- 25 'long noses some also clap bells on the peak. Further, ' according to my authority, the men have breeches with'out seat (ohne Gesäss): these they fasten peakwise to 'their shirts; and the long round doublet must overlap 'them.

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Rich maidens, ågain, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and before, so that back and breast are 'almost bare. Wives of quality, on the other hand, have 'train-gowns four or five ells in length; which trains

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'there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in 'their silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman! Consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long flood of silver 5 'buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, 'wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The 'maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with 'gold spangles, and pendent flames (Flammen), that is, 'sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother's headgear Io who shall speak? Neither in love of grace is comfort 'forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair 'creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts 'wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient 'handbroad welts; all ending atop in a thick well15 'starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are 'their Ruff-mantles (Kragenmäntel).

'As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; 'but the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie 'multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter (mit 20 Teig zusammengekleistert), which create protuberance 'enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger 'carries it.'

Our Professor, whether he have humour himself or not, 25 manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it, which, could emotion of any kind be confidently predicted of so still a man, we might call a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, cornuted shoes or other the like phenomena, of which the History 30 of Dress offers so many, escape him more especially the mischances, or striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusi

asm in him: he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen' was red-painted on the nose, and white'painted on the cheeks, as her tirewomen, when from 'spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in any 'glass, were wont to serve her?' We can answer that 5 Sir Walter knew well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same.

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swol- 10 len-out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of Bran, our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously 15 emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflection :

'By what strange chances do we live in History! Eros- 20 'tratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, 'an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most 'Kings and Queens by being born under such and such. 'a bedtester; Boileau Despréaux (according to Helvetius) 'by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual 25 'by a rent in his breeches, - for no Memoirist of Kaiser 'Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of The'mistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield 'cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.'Has Teufelsdröckh to be put in mind that, nearly related 30 to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands that talent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen manifest?

'The simplest costume,' observes our Professor, 'which 'I anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as