tle mutilated Notes, which perhaps
throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer's
name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: "The (_Inkblot_), tied
down by previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the
Herr Teufelsdrockh's views on the Assessorship in question; and sees
himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, what
were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a
man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting." The other
is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now
dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in
the original: "_Herr Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grafinn, auf
Donnerstag, zum AESTHETISCHEN THEE schonstens eingeladen_."

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most
urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash of
quite fluid _AEsthetic Tea_! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual hand-grips
with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical and
Literary dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast
of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence,
and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all,
it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the rest,
as this Frau Grafinn dates from the _Zahdarm House_, she can be no
other than the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual
tendencies, and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, whether on the footing of
Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. That some
sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our
Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, we
have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it
was in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses
of the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have been
always excluded. "The Zahdarms," says he, "lived in the soft, sumptuous
garniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, attracted and
attached from without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was
to the _Gnadigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was
due: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing
was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." Was Teufelsdrockh
also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising