at it had even operated changes in our way
of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a
new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might henceforth
dig to unknown depths. More specially may it now be declared that
Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience of research,
philosophic and even poetic vigor, are here made indisputably manifest;
and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold
ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is
not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise
specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England
we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as Clothes,
too often the manner of treating it betokens in the Author a rusticity
and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a German, but
fatal to his success with our public.

Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, or has mostly
forgotten what he saw. He speaks out with a strange plainness; calls
many things by their mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no
Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt
and overhung: "a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses,
and ormolu," as he himself expresses it, "cannot hide from me that
such Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where so many
God-created Souls do for the time meet together." To Teufelsdrockh the
highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl
bracelets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little
less and little more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a
Clown's smock; "each is an implement," he says, "in its kind; a tag
for _hooking-together_; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and
hammered on a stithy before smith's fingers." Thus does the Professor
look in men's faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific
freedom; like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped
thither from the Moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity,
running through his whole system of thought, that all these
shortcomings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise:
if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his
Transcendental Philosophies, and humor of looking at all Matter and
Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more
hopeless, the more l