things, downwards through all
strata and breadths, how many fully awakened Realities have we
fallen in with:--alas, on the contrary, what troops and
populations of Phantasms, not God-Veracities but Devil-Falsities,
down to the very lowest stratum,--which now, by such
superincumbent weight of Unveracities, lies enchanted in St.
Ives' Workhouses, broad enough, helpless enough! You will walk
in no public thoroughfare or remotest byway of English Existence
but you will meet a man, an interest of men, that has given up
hope in the Everlasting, True, and placed its hope in the
Temporary, half or wholly False. The Honourable Member complains
unmusically that there is 'devil's-dust' in Yorkshire cloth.
Yorkshire cloth,--why, the very Paper I now write on is made, it
seems, partly of plaster-lime well-smoothed, and obstructs my
writing! You are lucky if you can find now any good Paper,--any
work really _done;_ search where you will, from highest Phantasm
apex to lowest Enchanted basis!

Consider, for example, that great Hat seven-feet high, which now
perambulates London Streets; which my Friend Sauerteig regarded
justly as one of our English notabilities; "the topmost point as
yet," said he, "would it were your culminating and returning
point, to which English Puffery has been observed to reach!"--The
Hatter in the Strand of London, instead of making better felt-
hats than another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster Hat, seven-feet
high, upon wheels; sends a man to drive it through the streets;
hoping to be saved _thereby._ He has not attempted to _make_
better hats, as he was appointed by the Universe to do, and as
with this ingenuity of his he could very probably have done; but
his whole industry is turned to persuade us that he has made
such! He too knows that the Quack has become God. Laugh not at
him, O reader; or do not laugh only. He has ceased to be comic;
he is fast becoming tragic. To me this all-deafening blast of
Puffery, of poor Falsehood grown necessitous, of poor Heart-
Atheism fallen now into Enchanted Workhouses, sounds too surely
like a Doom's-blast! I have to say to myself in old dialect:
"God's blessing is not written on all this, His curse is written
on all this!" Unless perhaps the Universe be a chimera;--some
old totally deranged eightday clock, dead as brass; which
the Maker, if there ever was any Maker, has long ceased to
meddle with?--To my Friend Sauerteig this poor seven-feet
Hat-manu