en, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged.
We too have walked through Monmouth Street; but with little feeling of
"Devotion:" probably in part because the contemplative process is so
fatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle in
that Church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals.
Whereas Teufelsdrockh, might be in that happy middle state, which leaves
to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be
allowed to linger there without molestation.--Something we would have
given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat and
loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, "pacing and repacing in
austerest thought" that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic
avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life"
rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh,
that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum
hearest the grass grow!

At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag Documents
destined for an English work, there exists nothing like an authentic
diary of this his sojourn in London; and of his Meditations among
the Clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in
conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his
Travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject.

For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find how
early the significance of Clothes had dawned on the now so distinguished
Clothes-Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth
Street, at the bottom of our own English "ink-sea," that this remarkable
Volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his
soul,--as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into a
Universe!

CHAPTER VII. ORGANIC FILAMENTS.

For us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix is burning herself,
and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdrockh calculates, it were a
handsome bargain would she engage to have done "within two centuries,"
there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however,
does the Professor figure it. "In the living subject," says he, "change
is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the
new is already formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning of a
World-Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn out, and lie as a
dead cinereous heap