' reign of wonder is done, and God's world all disembel'lished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante ' and sandblind Pedant.'

CHAPTER XI.

PROSPECTIVE.

THE philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we 5 predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more 10 and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us. into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth?

15 Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggre20 gate but a Whole:

'Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God is there." Thou too, O cultivated reader, 'who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, know25ing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of

'the world where at least FORCE is not? The drop which 'thou shakest from thy wet hand rests not where it falls,

'but tomorrow thou findest it swept away; already, on 'the wings of the Northwind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie motion'less? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without 'Force and utterly dead?

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'As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said. to myself: That little fire which glows star-like across the dark'growing (nachtende) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horseshoe, is it a detached, separated speck, cut-off from 10 'the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole ? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of 15 Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about: it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, 'if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and 20 'influence reach quite through the All; whose Dingy 'Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches 'forth the mystery of Force; nay, preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Free'dom, the Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and one 25 'day to be all-commanding.

'Detached, separated! I say there is no such separa'tion: nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; 'but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with 'all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood 30 of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. 'The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order; 'else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from which

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man makes Paper, or the litter from which the Earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the 'philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself.'

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald SmithyAltar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us?

'All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body it forth. Hence Clothes, as despic'able as we think them, are so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are Emble' matic, not of want only, but of a manifold cunning Vic15tory over Want. On the other hand, all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or handwoven must not the Imagination weave Garments, 'visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible creations and 'inspirations of our Reason are, like Spirits, revealed, 20 and first become all-powerful; - the rather if, as we

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often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye?

Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, 'if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole 'terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible

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Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a 'light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said also 'to be clothed with a Body.

'Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove 'this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some

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'few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no longer recognised still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and ९ colourless? If those same primitive elements are the 'osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,'then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living 'integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for is not your very Attention a Stretching-to? 'The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, 'wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even 10 quite pallid, hunger-bitten, and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous 'self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without 'an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's- 15 'Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bol'stering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous 'show-cloaks (Putz-Mäntel), and tawdry woollen rags; ' whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole ham'pers, and burn them.'

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor continues:

'Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens

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' and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which in- 25 'deed they are the Time-vesture of the Eternal. What'soever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to 'Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on 'for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one preg'nant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included 30 'all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: 'the whole External Universe and what it holds is but 'Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the 'PHILOSOPHY of Clothes.'

Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, closebordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. Till lately a 5 cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, grey half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these To so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honourable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary 15 stranger, he cannot soon forget, — the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what 20 breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again taken up.

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining 25 repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already: that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating in the Head (Verstand) alone, no Life-Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie), such as this of Clothes pre30 tends to be, which originates equally in the Character (Gemüth), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is known and seen; 'till the Author's View of the World (Weltansicht), and 'how he actively and passively came by such view, are