who, according to
Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half
the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under
water? But, on the other hand, show us the human being, of any period or
climate, without his Tools: those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their
Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can have.

"Man is a Tool-using Animal," concludes Teufelsdrockh, in his abrupt
way; "of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we
consider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man,
and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons,
we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain black stones
from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _Transport me and this
luggage at the rate of file-and-thirty miles an hour_; and they do
it: he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight
miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this nation toil for
us, bleed for us, hunger and, sorrow and sin for us_; and they do it."

CHAPTER VI. APRONS.

One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that
on _Aprons_. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, "whose
Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which
proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country;" what
though John Knox's Daughter, "who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she
would catch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should lie
and be a bishop;" what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other
Apron worthies,--figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes
even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too
clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such sentences
as the following?

"Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to
modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as
it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of an Apron), which some
highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nurnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes,
has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him
with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his
trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise
half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,--is there
not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much
has been concealed, how much