"little wisdom" the world is governed; and how, in Germany as elsewhere,
the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most part be but mute train-bearers
to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling
dupes,-- it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be
named a _Rath_, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What
counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in
whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and
fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse
confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal,
he was "the very Spirit of Love embodied:" blue earnest eyes, full of
sadness and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we
shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless
friend Teufelsdrockh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in
these cases, was probably the best: _Er hat Gemuth und Geist, hat
wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst; ist gegenwartig
aber halb-zerruttet, halb-erstarrt_, "He has heart and talent, at least has
had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or favor of Fortune; and so is
now half-cracked, half-congealed."--What the Hofrath shall think of this
when he sees it, readers may wonder; we, safe in the stronghold of
Historical Fidelity, are careless.

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdrockh, which
indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself.
We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of
a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return; for
Teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some
half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of
gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to observe with
what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath,
being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically