is the Leather Hull, for the
same sermon was preached there, and not in Scorn but in Love.'

* * * * *

George Fox's 'perennial suit,' with all that it held, has been worn
quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, in a discussion on the
_Perfectibility of Society_, reproduce it now? Not out of blind
sectarian partisanship: Teufelsdroeckh himself is no Quaker; with all
his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at the North
Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms?

For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more meant in this
passage than meets the ear. At the same time, who can avoid smiling at
the earnestness and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an
underhand satire in it), with which that 'Incident' is here brought
forward; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as
he durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! Does Teufelsdroeckh
anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable class of
the community, by way of testifying against the 'Mammon-god,' and
escaping from what he calls 'Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair,' where
doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked
sufficiently,--will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of
Leather? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay aside
its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a
second-skin of tanned hide? By which change Huddersfield and
Manchester, and Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were
reduced to hungry solitudes; and only Day and Martin could profit. For
neither would Teufelsdroeckh's mad daydream, here as we presume
covertly intended, of levelling Society (_levelling_ it indeed with a
vengeance, into one huge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the
political effects of Nudity without its frigorific or other
consequences,--be thereby realised. Would not the rich man purchase a
waterproof suit of Russia Leather; and the high-born Belle step-forth
in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy: the black cowhide being
left to the Drudges and Gibeonites of the world; and so all the old
Distinctions be re-established?

Or has the Professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his
sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but a part
thereof?

CHAPTER II

CHURCH-CLOTHES

Not less questionable is his Chapter on _Church-Clothes_, which has
the farther distinction of bei