agems, and spoils; but his
whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdroeckh has one scarcely
pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of
arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to
the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a
certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and
sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and
subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; a
Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative: but falls,
unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic
combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite
through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric or even
quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the Book not only loses in
accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet,
wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and
solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were
hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited
to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be
part of our endeavour.

CHAPTER V

THE WORLD IN CLOTHES

'As Montesquieu wrote a _Spirit of Laws_,' observes our Professor, 'so
could I write a _Spirit of Clothes_; thus, with an _Esprit des Lois_,
properly an _Esprit de Coutumes_, we should have an _Esprit de
Costumes_. For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man
proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious
operations of the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory endeavours,
an Architectural Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth
are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice,
of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded
mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid
peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram
stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate
sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,--will
depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian,
Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or
Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Colour! From the soberest
drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold
themselves in choice of Co