ime, the only
important connection he had ever succeeded in forming, his connection
with the Zahdarm Family, seems to have been paralyzed, for all practical
uses, by the death of the "not uncholeric" old Count. This fact stands
recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain _Discourse on Epitaphs_,
huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which Essay the
learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than the
spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort
soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. "By request of that
worthy Nobleman's survivors," says he, "I undertook to compose his
Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following;
which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet
fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven;"--wherein, we may
predict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English
reader:

HIC JACET
PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS,
ZAEHDARMI COMES,
EX IMPERII CONCILIO,
VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI
EQUES.
QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT,
QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES
PLUMBO CONFECIT:
VARII CIBI
CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA,
PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE,
HAUD SINE TUMULT DEVOLVENS,
IN STERCUS
PALAM CONVERTIT.
NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM
OPERA SEQUUNTUR.
SI MONUMENTUM QUAERIS,
FIMETUM ADSPICE.
PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_].

CHAPTER V. ROMANCE.

"For long years," writes Teufelsdrockh, "had the poor Hebrew, in this
Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without
stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force:
For what?--_Beym Himmel_! For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth
nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable?--Come of it what
might, I resolved to try."

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though
perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdrockh is now a man without
Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers,
where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he
desperately steers off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass
of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdrockh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic,
nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not _a Fleet_, sailing in
prescribed track, for fi