ons! Nay, rightly
considered, what is your whole Military and Police Establishment,
charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-coloured,
iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding
itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy
(_Teufelsschmiede_) of a world? But of all Aprons the most puzzling to
me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the
usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (_Episcopus_) of Souls, I
notice, has tucked-in the corner of it, as if his day's work were
done: what does he shadow forth thereby?' &c. &c.

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff
as we shall now quote?

'I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian Cooks, as
a new vent, though a slight one, for Typography; therefore as an
encouragement to modern Literature, and deserving of approval: nor is
it without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having
in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in
England.'--We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed
have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our
Literature, exuberant as it is.--Teufelsdroeckh continues: 'If such
supply of printed Paper should rise so far as to choke-up the highways
and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse
to. In a world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a
destroying element, and not as a creating one. However, Heaven is
omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it not
beautiful to see five-million quintals of Rags picked annually from
the Laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed,
printed-on, and sold,--returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths
by the way? Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or
Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion,
from which and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and
resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles,
through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost Chaos of Life, which they keep
alive!'--Such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem
him, with a very mixed feeling.

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 Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of
Stamped Broad-sheet Dynasties,