here is always life for a living one,' we must profess
ourselves unable to explain.

Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing the
mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like
an independent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here
also occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which
perhaps throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or
writer's name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: 'The
(_Inkblot_), tied-down by previous promise, cannot, except by best
wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdroeckh's views on the Assessorship in
question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing,
for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in
opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs
are yet waiting.' The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a
sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and
beneficently worked. We give it in the original: '_Herr Teufelsdroeckh
wird von der Frau Graefinn, auf Donnerstag, zum_ AESTHETISCHEN THEE
_schoenstens eingeladen._'

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most
urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash
of quite fluid _AEsthetic Tea!_ How Teufelsdroeckh, now at actual
handgrips with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these
Musical and Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion
invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in
expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such
case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on
the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Graefinn dates from the
_Zaehdarm House_, she can be no other than the Countess and mistress of
the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and good-will to
Teufelsdroeckh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own
footing, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed,
continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps
feebly enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere express
evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough
for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world,
from which we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded.
'The Zaehdarms,' says he, 'lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of
Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, att