Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, according as
this or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able Editors, gains the
world's ear. Of the British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important
of all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and procedure, a
valuable descriptive History already exists, in that language, under the
title of _Satan's Invisible World Displayed_; which, however, by search
in all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring
(_vermochte night aufzutreiben_)."

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does
Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where he had little business,
confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new,
spurious, imaginary Historian of the _Brittische Journalistik_; and so
stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Literature!

CHAPTER VII. MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL.

Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic,
when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the
Seventeenth Century; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here
that the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest.
Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed
each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole too
in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of
genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise,
graphical, and every way interesting have we found these Chapters, that
it may be thrown out as a pertinent question for parties concerned,
Whether or not a good English Translation thereof might henceforth be
profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work _On Ancient
Armor_? Take, by way of example, the following sketch; as authority
for which Paulinus's _Zeitkurzende Lust_ (ii. 678) is, with seeming
confidence, referred to:

"Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century, we
might smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were they to rise again,
and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin.
But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus the Present is
not needlessly trammelled with the Past; and only grows out of it, like
a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but lie
peaceably underground. Nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to see
and know, how the Greatest and Dearest,