ly, wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits;
nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to
overflowing, and inexorably shut! Besides, to state the Philosophy of
Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh without
something of his personality, was it not to insure both of entire
misapprehension? Now for Biography, had it been otherwise admissible,
there were no adequate documents, no hope of obtaining such, but rather,
owing to circumstances, a special despair. Thus did the Editor see
himself, for the while, shut out from all public utterance of these
extraordinary Doctrines, and constrained to revolve them, not without
disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind.

So had it lasted for some months; and now the Volume on Clothes, read
and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the
personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all
that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic; whereby
the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent,--when
altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke,
our Professor's chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, with whom
we had not previously corresponded. The Hofrath, after much quite
extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the "agitation and
attention" which the Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own
German Republic of Letters; on the deep significance and tendency of his
Friend's Volume; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted
at the practicability of conveying "some knowledge of it, and of him, to
England, and through England to the distant West:" a work on Professor
Teufelsdrockh "were undoubtedly welcome to the _Family_, the _National_,
or any other of those patriotic _Libraries_, at present the glory
of British Literature;" might work revolutions in Thought; and so
forth;--in conclusion, intimating not obscurely, that should the present
Editor feel disposed to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he,
Hofrath Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite
Documents.

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but would
not crystallize, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is
introduced, crystallization commences, and rapidly proceeds till the
whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and this offer of
Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and d