owards the right comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits,
favorable to Meditation, might help him rather than hinder. Externally,
again, as he wanders to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart
little substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough in these so
boundless Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School was even
partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge of our Planet, and
its Inhabitants and their Works, that is to say, of all knowable things,
might not Teufelsdrockh acquire!

"I have read in most Public Libraries," says he, "including those of
Constantinople and Samarcand: in most Colleges, except the Chinese
Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen that there was no studying.
Unknown Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural repertory,
the Air, by my organ of Hearing; Statistics, Geographics, Topographics
came, through the Eye, almost of their own accord. The ways of Man, how
he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, in most regions,
are ocularly known to me. Like the great Hadrian, I meted out much of
the terraqueous Globe with a pair of Compasses that belonged to myself
only.

"Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, I lingered reflecting,
and even composing (_dichtete_), by the Pine-chasms of Vaucluse; and in
that clear Lakelet moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees
of Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of
China I have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and
covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.--Great Events,
also, have not I witnessed? Kings sweated down (_ausgemergelt_) into
Berlin-and-Milan Customhouse-Officers; the World well won, and the World
well lost; oftener than once a hundred thousand individuals shot (by
each other) in one day. All kindreds and peoples and nations dashed
together, and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment
there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith
convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, could not
escape me.

"For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection; and can perhaps
boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. Great Men
are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK OF
REVELATIONS, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by
some named HISTORY; to which inspired Texts your numerous talented men,
and your innumerable untale