lies here: some styles are lean,
adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite
pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the
flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own
case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham
Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked),
and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its
false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_Putz-Maentel_), and tawdry
woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole
hampers,--and burn them.'

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a
more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief
grievance; the Professor continues:

'Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth
shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the
Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever
represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of
Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one
pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that
men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe
and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies
in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.'

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 honourable
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,