oirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was
the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends,
yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.'--Has
Teufelsdroeckh to be put in mind that, nearly related 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 regimental, by Bolivar's
Cavalry, in the late Columbian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in
diagonal, is provided (some were wont to cut-off the corners, and make
it circular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long;
through this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck:
and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many
strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed,
but harnessed and draperied.'

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity,
and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of
our subject.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES

If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume,
Teufelsdroeckh, discussing merely the _Werden_ (Origin and successive
Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will
he in the Speculative-Philosophical portion, which treats of their
_Wirken_, or Influences. It is here that the present Editor first
feels the pressure of his task; for here properly the higher and new
Philosophy of Clothes commences: an untried, almost inconceivable
region, or chaos; in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how
unspeakably important is it to know what course, of survey and
conquest, is the true one; where the footing is firm substance and
will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us!
Teufelsdroeckh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political,
even religious Influences of Clothes; he undertakes to make manifest,
in its thousandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's
earthly interests 'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up,
by Clothes.' He says in so many words, 'Society is founded upon
Cloth'; and again, 'Society sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as
on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean
beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would
sink to endless depths, or mount to inane limboe