y frequent enough among
our own Chancery suitors; but rather the gravity as of some silent,
high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano;
into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those eyes, those lights that
sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but perhaps
also glances from the region of Nether Fire.

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature,
this of Teufelsdrockh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once
we saw him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in
his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the
Seven Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single billow in that
vast World-Mahlstrom of Humor, with its heaven-kissing coruscations,
which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! The
large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking
miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privileged to listen;
and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable
"Extra-Harangues;" and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for a _Cast-metal
King_: gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a
beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a
radiant ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like the neighing
of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft,
foot clutched into the air,--loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a
laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head
to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, began
to fear all was not right: however, Teufelsdrockh, composed himself, and
sank into his old stillness; on his inscrutable countenance there was,
if anything, a slight look of shame; and Richter himself could not rouse
him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much
is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and
wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in
Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men
wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold
glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called
laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat
outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if
they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man