as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall,--he shall be a delirious Mystic; to
him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp,
and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it?--_Armer
Teufel_! Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender? Thou thyself,
wert thou not born, wilt thou not die? 'Explain' me all this, or do one of
two things: Retire into private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what
were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done,
and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art
a Dilettante and sand-blind Pedant."


CHAPTER XI.
PROSPECTIVE.

The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would
do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloud-capt, almost
chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and
streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and
promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to
ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer,
or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into
beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth?

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an
Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us
to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and
glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a Whole:--

"Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: 'If I take the wings of the morning and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the Universe, God is there.' Thou thyself,