idual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a
plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?--Society, which
the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth.

"Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials,
Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how
the ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Duke
this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and
innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are
advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my remote
privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,--on a sudden, as by
some enchanter's wand, the--shall I speak it?--the Clothes fly off the
whole dramatic corps; and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed
Presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not
a shirt on them; and I know not whether to laugh or weep. This physical
or psychical infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, I have,
after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace of those
afflicted with the like."

Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret!
Who is there now that can read the five columns of Presentations in his
Morning Newspaper without a shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all men are
to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. With
what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, follows
out the consequences which Teufelsdrockh, with a devilish coolness, goes
on to draw:--

"What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality; should
the buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool evaporate,
in very Deed, as here in Dream? _Ach Gott_! How each skulks into
the nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (_Haupt- und
Staats-Action_) becomes a Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is the
worst kind of Farce; _the tables_ (according to Horace), and with them,
the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, and
Civilized Society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls."

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a
naked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils
on itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the
Ministerial, the Opposition Benches--_infandum! infandum_! And yet why
is the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body, of
th