end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest ?

'How I lived?' writes he once: Friend, hast thou considered "the "rugged all-nourishing Earth," as Sophocles well names 'her; how she feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much more 'her darling, man? While thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a 'probability of victual. My breakfast of tea has been cooked by 'a Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, who wiped her earth'en-kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted wild eggs in the sand ' of Sahara; I have awakened in Paris Estrapades and Vienna Malzleins, with no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental 'liquid. That I had my living to seek saved me from Dying,by suicide. In our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting de'mand for Intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, reli'gious, educational, commercial departments? In Pagan coun'tries, cannot one write Fetishes? Living! Little knowest 'thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul; how, as with its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body (of a Phi'losopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other than 'provision; namely, spectres to torment itself withal.'

Poor Teufelsdröckh! Flying with Hunger always parallel to him; and a whole Infernal Chase in his rear; so that the countenance of Hunger is comparatively a friend's! Thus must he, in the temper of ancient Cain, or of the modern Wandering Jew, save only that he feels himself not guilty and but suffering the pains of guilt,-wend to and fro with aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by foot-prints), write his Sorrows of Teufelsdröckh; even as the great Goethe, in passionate words, had to write his Sorrows of Werter, before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a Man. Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape from his own Shadow!' Nevertheless, in these sick days, when the Born of Heaven first descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours, richer than usual in two things, in Truths grown obsolete, and Trades grown obsolete,-what can the fool think but that it is all a Den of Lies, wherein whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle and despair? Whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the publishing of some such Work of Art, in

one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. For what is it properly but an Altercation with the Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him? Your Byron publishes his Sorrows of Lord George, in verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise: your Bonaparte represents his Sorrows of Napoleon Opera, in an all-too stupendous style; with music of cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires of Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities.-Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also survive the writing thereof!

CHAPTER VII.

THE EVERLASTING NO.

UNDER the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our Professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing: for how can the 'Son of Time,' in any case, stand still? We behold him, through those dim years, in a state of crisis, of transition: his mad Pilgrimings, and general solution into aimless Discontinuity, what is all this but a mad Fermentation; wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself?

Such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the Eagle when he moults is sickly; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly dash off the old one upon rocks. What Stoicism soever our Wanderer, in his individual acts and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of anarchy and misery raving within; coruscations of which flash out: as, indeed, how could there be other? Have we not seen him disappointed, bemocked of Destiny, through long years? All that the young heart might desire and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the last worst instance, offered and then snatched away. Ever an 'excellent Passivity;' but of useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the former as Food to Hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an Activity, though useless, unreasonable. Alas! his cup of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first ruddy morning' in the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at the very lip; and then with that poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine business, it runs over, and even hisses over in a deluge of foam.

He himself says once, with more justness than originality: 'Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other 'possession but Hope; this world of his is emphatically the Place

of Hope.' What then was our Professor's possession? We see him, for the present, quite shut out from Hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely all around into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado.

Alas, shut out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet dream of! For as he wanders wearisomely through this world, he has now lost all tidings of another and higher. Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that in those days, he was wholly irreligious : 'Doubt had darkened into Unbelief,' says he; 'shade after shade 'goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tar'tarean black.' To such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in con. tradiction to much Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is not synonymous with Stomach; who understand, therefore, in our Friend's words,' that, for man's well-be'ing, Faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, Mar'tyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the 'cross; and without it, Wordlings puke up their sick existence, 'by suicide in the midst of luxury:' to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of every thing. Unhappy young man! All wounds, the crush of long-continued Destitution, the stab of false Friendship, and of false Love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild way: Is there no God, then; but 'at best an abseentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and seeing it go? Has the 'word Duty no meaning; is what we call Duty no divine Mes'senger and Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, made up of De'sire and Fear, of emanations from the Gallows and from Doc'tor Graham's Celestial-bed? Happiness of an approving Con'science! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom admiring men have 'since named Saint, feel that he was "the chief of sinners ;" and 'Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit (wohlgemuth), spend much of his 'time in fiddling? Foolish Word-monger, and Motive-grinder, 'who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the God'like itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks

' of Pleasure,-I tell thee, Nay! To the unregenerate Prome'theus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of 'his wretchedness that he is conscious of Virtue, that he feels ' himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What 'then? Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some Pas'sion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others 'profit by? I know not only this I know, If what thou namest 'Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. With Stu 'pidity and sound Digestion man may front much. But what, ' in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience 'to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but on Cookery 'let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our fryingpan, เ as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease 'on the fat things he has provided for his Elect!'

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once fair world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. But what boots it (was thuts)?' cries he it is but the common lot in this era. Not having come to spirit'ual majority prior to the Siècle de Louis Quinze, and not being 'born purely a Loghead (Dummkopf), thou hadst no other out 'look. The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their olu 'Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not been rain'proof, crumble down; and men ask now: Where is the God'head; our eyes never saw him!'

เ

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call ou Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more decisively the Servant of Good ness, the Servant of God, than even now when doubting God's existence. One circumstance I note,' says he after all th 'nameless woe that Inquiry, which for me, what it is not always 'was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought me, I nevertheless stil. 'loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my allegiance to her "Truth!" I cried, "though the Heavens crush me for following