or
no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of
Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully to
Destiny, and read since it is written."--Has Teufelsdrockh, to be put in
mind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands
that talent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen manifest?

"The simplest costume," observes our Professor, "which I anywhere find
alluded to in History, is that used as regimental, by Bolivar's Cavalry,
in the late Colombian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal,
is provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and make it
circular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long;
through this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck; and
so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many strokes (for
he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed, but harnessed and
draperied."

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity,
and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of
our subject.

CHAPTER VIII. THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES.

If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume, Teufelsdrockh,
discussing merely the _Werden_ (Origin and successive Improvement)
of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will he in the
Speculative-Philosophical portion, which treats of their _Wirken_, or
Influences. It is here that the present Editor first feels the pressure
of his task; for here properly the higher and new Philosophy of Clothes
commences: all untried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos; in
venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably important is it
to know what course, of survey and conquest, is the true one; where the
footing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or
mere cloud, and may engulf us! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no less than to
expound the moral, political, even religious Influences of Clothes; he
undertakes to make manifest, in its thousand-fold bearings, this grand
Proposition, that Man's earthly interests "are all hooked and buttoned
together, and held up, by Clothes." He says in so many words, "Society
is founded upon Cloth;" and again, "Society sails through the Infinitude
on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and
unclean beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle,
would sink to endless depths, or mount to inane lim