ine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting,
to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled _Institute for
the Repression of Population_; which lies, dishonourable enough (with
torn leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into
the Bag _Pisces_. Not indeed for the sake of the Tract itself, which
we admire little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in
Teufelsdroeckh's hand, which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these
may be in their right place here.

Into the Hofrath's _Institute_, with its extraordinary schemes, and
machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall not so much
as glance. Enough for us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple
of Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost
literally eats him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the
Hofrath; something like a fixed-idea; undoubtedly akin to the more
diluted forms of Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual
world, is there light; nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger; open
mouths opening wider and wider; a world to terminate by the
frightfullest consummation: by its too dense inhabitants, famished
into delirium, universally eating one another. To make air for himself
in which strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the
Hofrath founds, or proposes to found, this _Institute_ of his, as the
best he can do. It is only with our Professor's comments thereon that
we concern ourselves.

First, then, remark that Teufelsdroeckh, as a speculative Radical, has
his own notions about human dignity; that the Zaehdarm palaces and
courtesies have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On
the blank cover of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following
indistinctly engrossed:

'Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toil-worn Craftsman that
with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes
her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein
notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the
Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all
weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the
face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy
rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee!
Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy
straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on
whom the lot fell, and fighting our bat