l be; as generous illusions of
friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and
suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of
Philosophic Eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the present
Editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in
so full measure! But what then? _Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas_;
Teufelsdroeckh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. In our historical
and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have
feud or favour with no one,--save indeed the Devil, with whom, as with
the Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all times wage internecine
war. This assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have
reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English
Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels
_No cheating here_,--we thought it good to premise.

CHAPTER III

REMINISCENCES

To the Author's private circle the appearance of this singular Work on
Clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the
rest of the world. For ourselves, at least, few things have been more
unexpected. Professor Teufelsdroeckh, at the period of our acquaintance
with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life: a man
devoted to the higher Philosophies, indeed; yet more likely, if he
published at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both
of whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban; than to
descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an
Argument that cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, that we can
remember, the Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between us. If
through the high, silent, meditative Transcendentalism of our Friend
we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at most Political,
and towards a certain prospective, and for the present quite
speculative, Radicalism; as indeed some correspondence, on his part,
with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected; though his special
contribution to the _Isis_ could never be more than surmised at. But,
at all events, nothing Moral, still less anything Didactico-Religious,
was looked for from him.

Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing; which
indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, are to be forever
remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of _Gukguk_,[2] and for a moment
lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full