has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly
considered, what is your whole Military and Police Establishment,
charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-colored,
iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding
itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy
(_Teufels-schmiede_) of a world? But of all Aprons the most puzzling
to me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the
usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (_Episcopus_) of Souls, I notice,
has tucked in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done: what
does he shadow forth thereby?" &c. &c.

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as
we shall now quote?

"I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian Cooks, as
a new vent, though a slight one, for Typography; therefore as an
encouragement to modern Literature, and deserving of approval: nor is it
without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having
in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in
England."--We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed
have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for
our Literature, exuberant as it is.--Teufelsdrockh continues: "If such
supply of printed Paper should rise so far as to choke up the highways
and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse
to. In a world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a
destroying element, and not as a creating one. However, Heaven is
omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it not
beautiful to see five million quintals of Rags picked annually from the
Laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, printed on,
and sold,--returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths by the way?
Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, the
grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion, from which and to
which the Social Activities (like vitreous and resinous Electricities)
circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy,
storm-tost chaos of Life, which they keep alive!"--Such passages fill
us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling.

Farther down we meet with this: "The Journalists are now the true Kings
and Clergy: henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, must write
not of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of Stamped