ese Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; "a
forked Radish with a head fantastically carved"? And why might he not,
did our stern fate so order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, as well as
into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar Radishes,
hold a Bed of Justice? "Solace of those afflicted with the like!"
Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a "physical or psychical
infirmity" before? And now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled
confession (which we, even to the sounder British world, and goaded on
by Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to reimpart) incurably
infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only the
maddest?

"It will remain to be examined," adds the inexorable Teufelsdrockh,
"in how far the SCARECROW, as a Clothed Person, is not also entitled to
benefit of clergy, and English trial by jury: nay perhaps, considering
his high function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, and
Sovereign armed with the _terrors_ of the Law?), to a certain royal
Immunity and Inviolability; which, however, misers and the meaner class
of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant him."

"O my Friends, we are [in Yorick Sterne's words] but as 'turkeys driven,
with a stick and red clout, to the market:' or if some drivers, as
they do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle
thereof terrifies the boldest!"

CHAPTER X. PURE REASON.

It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above hinted, is
a speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge; acknowledging, for
most part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilized Life, which
we make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and
"bladders with dried peas." To linger among such speculations, longer
than mere Science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. For
our purposes the simple fact that such a _Naked World_ is possible,
nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will be sufficient. Much,
therefore, we omit about "Kings wrestling naked on the green with
Carmen," and the Kings being thrown: "dissect them with scalpels," says
Teufelsdrockh; "the same viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and other
life-tackle, are there: examine their spiritual mechanism; the same
great Need, great Greed, and little Faculty; nay ten to one but the
Carman, who understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something
of the laws of unstable and