arkness and
Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say, that its
correctness of deduction and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore
have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something
like astonishment.

But quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdroeckh hastens from the
Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole
habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental,
Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern
researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in
compressed shape (as the Nuernbergers give an _Orbis Pictus_) an _Orbis
Vestitus_; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries,
in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we
can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an irregular
Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King
Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three
journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum
belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks,
Afghan shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though
breeches, as the name _Gallia Braccata_ indicates, are the more
ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are
brought vividly before us,--even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not
forgotten. For most part, too, we must admit that the Learning,
heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true,
concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out and
thrown aside.

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures
of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first
purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or
decency, but ornament. "Miserable indeed," says he, "was the condition
of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of
hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round
him like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick
natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on
wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in
morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements,
without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole
possession and defense might not be lost, he had attached a long cord
of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with