dual 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.

'Often in my atrabiliar-moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials,
Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how
the 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; and 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. This physical or psychical infirmity, in
which perhaps I am not singular, I have, after hesitation, thought
right to publish, for the solace of those afflicted with the like.'

Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret!
Who is there now that can read the five columns of Presentations in
his Morning Newspaper without a shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all
men are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently
treated. With what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the
nerves, follows out the consequences which Teufelsdroeckh, with a
devilish coolness, goes on to draw:

'What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality;
should the buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool
evaporate, in very Deed, as here in Dream? _Ach Gott!_ How each skulks
into the nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (_Haupt- und
Staats-Action_) becomes a Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is the
worst kind of Farce; _the tables_ (according to Horace), and with
them, the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police,
and Civilised Society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls.'

Lives the man 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
the