Towards these dim infinitely expanded regions, close-bordering on the
impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual
difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. Till
lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of
Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of
morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day
or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these so-called Biographical
Documents are in his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant,
whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but
whose honorable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to
him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky
Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs,
and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and
free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken
up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what
unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and
again taken up.

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments,
Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral
trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already: that
however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating
in the Head (_Verstand_) alone, no Life-Philosophy (_Lebensphilosophie_),
such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the
Character (_Gemuth_), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its
significance till the Character itself is known and seen; "till the
Author's View of the World (_Weltansicht_), and how he actively and
passively came by such view, are clear: in short till a Biography of him
has been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico-poetically
read.... Nay," adds he, "were the speculative scientific Truth even known,