d of
Life, while it was yet time."

Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are at this hour
in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless "Armament of
Mechanizers" and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! "The World,"
says he, "as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and
waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker
combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the
past Forms of Society; replace them with what it may. For the present,
it is contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual Interests are once
_divested_, these innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt;
but the sounder Rags among them be quilted together into one huge Irish
watch-coat for the defence of the Body only!"--This, we think, is but
Job's-news to the humane reader.

"Nevertheless," cries Teufelsdrockh, "who can hinder it; who is there
that can clutch into the wheelspokes of Destiny, and say to the Spirit
of the Time: Turn back, I command thee?--Wiser were it that we yielded
to the Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the best."

Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own inferences from what
stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdrockh, individually had yielded
to this same "Inevitable and Inexorable" heartily enough; and now sat
waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference,
if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was
a "huge Ragfair," and the "rags and tatters of old Symbols" were raining
down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with
those "unhunted Helots" of his; and the uneven _sic vos non vobis_
pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in
existing things; what with the so hateful "empty Masks," full of beetles
and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass eyes, "with a
ghastly affectation of life,"--we feel entitled to conclude him even
willing that much should be thrown to the Devil, so it were but done
gently! Safe himself in that "Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he would
consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, held
back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles,
and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do her
work;--to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples with her broad
hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might be
built! Remar