indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, 'a forked straddling Animal with bandy legs'; yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries."

Upon which passage, Mr. Carlyle, speaking in his own name, and as commentator upon the utterances of the Weissnichtwo Professor, says: "Let no courteous reader take exceptions at the opinions here broached. The Editor himself, on first glancing over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: 'What, have we got not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? A new Adamite in this century, which flatters itself that it is the Nineteenth, and destructive both to Superstition and Enthusiasm ?' 'Or,' cries the courteous reader, 'has your Teufelsdröckh forgotten what he lately said about "Aboriginal Savages," and their "condition miserable indeed"? Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves to the "matted cloak," and go sheeted in a "thick natural fell"?'-Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he is saying, and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes, in these times, so tailorize and demoralize us,' have they no redeeming value? Can they not be altered to serve better? Must they of necesssity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is Teufelsdröckh, though a Sansculottist, is no Adamite ; and much, perhaps, as he might wish to go forth before this degenerate age as a Sign,' would no

wise wish to do it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of Clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay, perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite and almost mystic qualities,-what we might call the Omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before vouchsafed to any man. For example":

SOCIETY IN ITS STATE CLOTHES.

"You see two individuals, one dressed in fine Red, the other in coarse, threadbare Blue: Red says to Blue, 'Be hanged and anatomized'! Blue hears with a shudder and (O wonder of wonders!) marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed up, vibrates his hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. How is this? or what make ye of your 'Nothing can act but where it is'? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no clutch upon him, is nowise in contact with him: neither are those ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tipstaves so related to commanding Red that he can tug them hither and thither; but each stands distinct in his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so it is done: the articulated Word sets all hands in Action and Rope and Improved Drop perform their work.

"Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: First, That Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible bonds to All Men; Secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are visible emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush gown; whereby, all mortals know that he is a

Judge-Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth."

The professor then goes off into this grim imaginary picture :

SOCIETY OUT OF CLOTHES.

"Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous Ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levées, Couchées; and how ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Duke this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that Solemnity,-on a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the-shall I speak it?— the clothes fly off the whole dramatic corps; the Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not a shirt on them; and I know not whether to laugh or weep.

"What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality, should all the buttons simultaneously start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as here in dreams? Ach Gott! How each skulks into the nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (Haupt- und Staats-Action) becomes a Pickle-herring Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of Farce; the tables (according to Horace), and with them the whole fabric of Govment, Legislation, Property, Police, and Civilized Society, are dissolved, in wails and howls."

"Lives there the man," adds Carlyle, now speaking

in his own person, "that can figure a naked duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the Ministerial, the Opposition Benches-infandum! infandum! And yet why is the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body of these Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; 'a forked Radish with a head fantastically carved'? And why might he not, did our stern Fate so order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, as well as into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar Radishes, hold a Bed of Justice?"

"It will remain to be examined," continues Teufelsdröech, "in how far the Scarecrow, as a Clothed Person, is not also entitled to Benefit of Clergy, and English Trial by jury: nay, perhaps, considering his high function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, and a Sovereign armed with the terrors of the Law?) to a certain royal Immunity and Inviolability; which, however, misers and the meaner class of persons are not always volúntarily dispose to grant him. . . . . O my friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's words) but as 'turkeys driven, with a stick and red clout, to the market;' or if some drivers, as they do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle thereof terrifies the boldest."

In quite a different vein is the following, which may be set down as the gist and purport of "Sartor Resartus":

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.

"Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the woolen and fleshly, and official Bank-paper,

and State-paper clothes), into the Man himself; and discern, it may be in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less incompetent Digestive Apparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees with eyes! . . . . All visible things are Emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly it is not there at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant. (Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are Emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold cunning victory over Want. On the other hand, all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven. Must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our Reason are like Spirits revealed, and first become all powerful;the rather, if as, we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye? . . . .

"Why multiply instances? It is written, 'The Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture'; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever 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 pregnant subject of Clothes, rightly understood, is included 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."

It would not be easy to find anywhere a piece of satire more trenchant than the following: