aginable
Volume, which stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley of
high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by
union of like with like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for
British travellers. Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, Sin
and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did
any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor.
For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards
than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished-up from
the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass,
there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil
beneath: nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply
the Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor,
endeavouring to evolve printed Creation out of a German printed and
written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering,
clutching, piercing the Why to the far-distant Wherefore, his whole
Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed up.

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the
Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health
declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving
him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What
is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith?
And what work nobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the
barren domestic soil; except indeed planting Thought of your own,
which the fewest are privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this
Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to
reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding
germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a prize worth
some striving? Forward with us, courageous reader; be it towards
failure, or towards success! The latter thou sharest with us; the
former also is not all our own.

BOOK SECOND

CHAPTER I

GENESIS

In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether
from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinised soever, much insight
is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning
remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great
man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole
circumstances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner
of Public