Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, or has mostly
forgotten what he saw. He speaks out with a strange plainness; calls many
things by their mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no
Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and
overhung: "a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and
ormolu," as he himself expresses it, "cannot hide from me that such
Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where so many
God-created Souls do for the time meet together." To Teufelsdrockh the
highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl
bracelets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little
less and little more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a
Clown's smock; "each is an implement," he says, "in its kind; a tag for
_hooking-together_; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered
on a stithy before smith's fingers." Thus does the Professor look in men's
faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom; like a man
unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the Moon.
Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his whole
system of thought, that all these shortcomings, over-shootings, and
multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second
source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humor
of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his
case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable.

To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly
believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the
Work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true,
as Teufelsdrockh maintains, that "within the most starched cravat there
passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered
waistcoat beats a heart,"--the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt,