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 these
Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; "a forked