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now we

and his eyes twinkled as he turned to his colleagues and observed, shall come at the truth." Then he said, "How is that, my good lad?— there must be some reason for your hating him."

"Ah! a pretty sight!" replied the urchin. "Doesn't he give me nasty long lessons, and keep me in after school time if I don't learn 'em, when I want to go out to play?"

"Humph!" said the chairman, evidently somewhat disappointed; "he gives tasks that are too hard for you?" “Yes,” replied the boy.

"No such thing!" exclaimed his mother. "All the other children learn 'em well enough, and don't grumble; but he's idle, your worship, and always playing truant. I'm sure I don't know what'll be the end of him. He can learn well enough, too, if he's a mind, drat him!"

"You should not attempt to prejudice us against your own son, observed the chairman sternly. "I have no doubt that the master is unnecessarily severe: we have heard something of the kind before. Pray, my good lad, what was the last task that he kept you in doors for not learning? Don't be afraid, speak up! we are none of us his friends here."

"It was because I could not say my catechism," replied the lad.

"Monstrous !" exclaimed the chairman. "Deprive a youth of the pure air of heaven, which is the common property of all, and confine him in the heated atmosphere of a close room, polluted by the breath of a crowded school! cut him off from all innocent enjoyment! endanger bis health!—and he an invalid, too! one whose infirmities, one would have thought, must have called forth all the kindest feelings of the human heart! And for what is all this iniquity done? why is this tyranny exercised? wherefore is this incarceration and suffering inflicted? Simply because he cannot remember what nobody can understand. Oh, Mrs. Hoskins! I know not what to say to you, when, knowing all this, you suffer your child to continue at such a school!"

"A pack of nonsense!" exclaimed the mother. "Don't tell me of your 'carceration and hot tamospheres! the school's a pretty sight better room than we lives in at home, worse luck! What else am I to do with him to keep him

out of mischief, I should like to know? If boys won't learn of their own accord, they must be made to learn: that's plain enough; leastways, it was so when I was a girl."

"Ah!" said the chairman, "that is the general error of all that are behind the present age. When you were a girl, indeed! But I pity you. I suppose you scarcely would know what I meant, if I talked of the march of intellect and liberal ideas?"

"Yes, but I should!" replied the poor woman, suddenly much affected; "I heard too much about 'em in my poor husband's time. Till he got such nonsense into his head, never was a more pains-taking, hard-working man; but after that he was always at the public-house, with a set of fellows that were for putting all the world to rights and neglecting their own families. If be had but minded his business and stuck to his work, I need not have been obliged to go out a charing; and then our poor boy would never have met with his accident. It was one morning when"

"Well, well, my good woman!" exclaimed the chairman, interrupting her, "we cannot waste our time in listening to your family affairs. You told us the other day, that you shouldn't have sent your boy to school if the parson had not persuaded you; and now you see what has come of attending to what he said. So long as he can have the school brought to church to increase his congregation, that's all he cares about them. They might be flogged within an inch of their lives, I'll be bound to say, before he would interfere."

"No such thing!" cried the widow; "he's as good a man as ever lived, and I wish there was more like him. Directly as he heard that the schoolmaster had been beating Jack, and that there was an uproar about it, he went directly to inquire all about it; and put the matter all to rights in no time. And then he sent the schoolmaster down to me to tell me how it happened, and how Jack had poked his crutch in between the legs of the form, and twisted it round till he broke one of 'em, and so threw down Sally Box and Patty Biggs; and they were both very much hurt. And then the master said, he must confess that he was in such a passion he couldn't help giving that young scapegrace a good

box on the ear. And serve him right too, I say. I hope it will be a warning to him. But be that how it will, as long as I'm his mother to school he shall march, in spite of the march of intellect and all such nonsense. I promised the parson that, and I'll be as good as my word."

"It is useless for us to attempt to do any thing for those who are wilfully blind," observed the chairman, somewhat crest-fallen; and in a sarcastic tone he continued, "You are, no doubt, afraid of losing the parson's washing; and I dare say you find the rectory kitchen very convenient now and then, when you've short commons at home."

At this insinuation the widow waxed wroth, and said that she worked hard, and came honestly by what she got, and didn't pretend to be any thing but what she was; while some people did all they could to make mischief, and set the parish together by the ears. So she was dismissed, with little ceremony, forthwith; and retired, dragging her hopeful son after her: for the boy had listened with greedy ear to what had been said against his taskmaster, and wished to remain, to hear more of doctrines so congenial to his own feelings.

When she had withdrawn, the chairman addressed his fellows to the fol

lowing effect:- "My friends! if we have not succeeded in bringing home the charge of cruelty, to its full extent, against this petty tyrant of the rising generation, enough has transpired to exhibit the baseness and corruptness of the system by which he has so long been upheld in his unjustifiable authority. These things cannot last long, that is one comfort: the irresistible march of intellect, and the rapid spread of liberal ideas, will sweep them from the face of the earth, and number them with things which have been; the memory whereof will be a wonder and a marvel to think how they were submitted to. In the meanwhile, observe the manner in which they attempt to prop up the rotten system, and support each other. When the parson hears that we have commenced an inquiry (not before, you will recollect), he runs to the schoolmaster, and they lay their heads together to trump up a story; and having settled that, away goes the parson to the boy's mother, and threatens her that he will take away his washing if she dare to complain; and, no doubt, gives her hints about cold

meat, and soup, and so on, besides. Well, then, off he goes, rubbing his hands, and triumphing in his iniquity; and before the poor weak woman has time to recollect herself, in steps the schoolmaster, as previously arranged, and, smirking and bowing, pretends to be shocked at having been for once betrayed into a passion; and goes on to tell her a rigmarole story about having only boxed her son's ears. So the poor creature, terrified at the idea of being shut out from the loaves and fishes at the rectory, is obliged to submit. And her mind being contaminated, as we have seen, by antiquated prejudices and illiberal ideas, she basely, corruptly, and most unnaturally forgives the foul attack made upon her own flesh and blood, and pretends to believe that he only boxed her son's ears. Pretends, I say; because it is impossible for any human being to credit so ridiculous an assertion. Not, be it observed, that a box on the ear is not as grievous an act of tyranny as a blow with a cane, though, may be, a trifle less painful: but, recollect, it has been proved in evidence that the delinquent carries a cane, even to church. Can it, then, for a moment be imagined -can any but the most besotted, degraded tools and victims of corruption and oppression suppose that he, the daily, hourly tyrant, going perpetually armed with such a weapon, should coolly lay it aside, in a moment of irritation, to make use of his bare palm ? Faugh! The offence is rank! makes my blood boil to see our efforts for the public good thus fiustrated: my honest indignation is excited at the idea, that this fellow is still likely to hold a place which I hoped to obtain for my brother-in-law!"

It

"A very proper person for the office," observed one of his colleagues.

"None more so," said the chairman; "he was drill-sergeant in a marching regiment, and therefore must know how to manage boys. I shall not give it up yet, though; but in the meanwhile, since we cannot do what we would, we must endeavour to be satisfied with what we can get. So let us go to dinner."

Thus terminated the third and last meeting, holden at the parish expense, to inquire into the beating of Jack Hoskins; but our new parish-officers have such an itch for meddling with all within their reach, that we expect

daily to hear of their stumbling upon another job. Report speaks of a commission to ascertain what became of the old apple-tree, that was cut down in the school-house garden last year; which, our wiseacres say, ought to have been cut up to make new forms. Such proceedings appear, certainly, very trivial and insignificant in themselves; and, in spite of the dinners and other expenses they cost the parish, might be treated with contempt, if they had no worse effects. But, unfortunately, they become the topics of conversation and dispute among our labourers and work-people, to their own injury and loss of time and temper, and the benefit of public-house and beer-shop keepers. Thus nothing is more common now than quarrels in our streets; and the more decent and better sort of parishioners are, every now and then, insulted if they will not join in abusing the parson and the late churchwardens.

All this is bad enough; but what we view with the greatest fear and suspicion is the intimacy of our new men in office with those of the neighbouring parish, by which we have se

veral times lately been nearly involved in expensive law-suits. Indeed, proceedings had commenced at one time about a paltry foot of ground, where an old landmark had been destroyed by some mischievous fellows; but the parish to which it really belonged was obliged to give up the point, for want of funds sufficient to carry the question into court. This paltry success seems to have turned the heads of our new men, and they have positively gone so far as to recommend a sort of compact with our litigious neighbours, by which we are to bind ourselves to become a party with them in any future law-suits in which they may be involved. All our old parishioners, who know them well, and recollect how they have annoyed us for years, feel convinced that they will soon quarrel with somebody. Indeed they already brag of being sure of our assistance, and snap their fingers in defiance when they meet any of the churchwardens or leading men of the adjoining parishes, with whom we have hitherto always been on friendly terms. So, unless we can manage to get rid of our new parish-officers, nobody can guess how things will end.

SARTOR RESARTUS.

CHAP. VI.

Old Clothes.

IN THREE BOOKS.

As mentioned above, Teufelsdröckh, though a Sansculottist, is in practice probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life are penetrated and informed with the spirit of Politeness; a noble natural Courtesy shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sunlight, making a rosy-fingered, rainbowdyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds; nay, brightening London smoke itself into gold vapour, as from the crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he expresses himself on this head:

"Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? In Goodbreeding, which differs, if at all, from High-breeding, only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights, I discern no special connexion with wealth or birth: but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due from all men towards all men. Of a

truth, were your Schoolmaster at his post, and worth any thing when there, this, with so much else, would be reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbour's schoolmaster; till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered Peasant, could no more be met with than a Peasant unacquainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt not that the clod he broke was created in Heaven.

"For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge hammer, art thou not ALIVE; is not this thy brother ALIVE? There is but one Temple in the world,' says Novalis, and that Temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high Form. Bending before

men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a human Body.'

"On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most do; and whereas the English Johnson only bowed to every Clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, I would bow to

every Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat whatever. Is he not a Temple, then; the visible Manifestation and Impersonation of the Divinity? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a Divinity; and too often the bow is but pocketed by the former. It would go to the pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the Devil, in these times); therefore must we withhold it.

"The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to those Shells and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devilish passion any longer lodges, but only the pure emblem and effigies of Man I mean, to Empty, or even to Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men do reverence; to the fine frogged broad-cloth, nowise to the straddling animal with bandy legs' which it holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Who ever saw any Lord my-lorded in tattered blanket, fastened with wooden skewer? Nevertheless, I say, there is in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often does the Body appropriate what was meant for the Cloth only! Whoso would avoid Falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see good to take a different course. That reverence which cannot act without obstruction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may have free course when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda is not less sacred than the God; so do I too worship the hollow cloth Garment with equal fervour, as when it contained the Man: nay, with more, for I now fear no deception, of myself or of others.

"Did not King Toomtabard, or, in other words, John Balliol, reign long over Scotland; the man John Balliol being quite gone, and only the Toom Tabard' (Empty Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells in a suit of Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its honours! No haughty looks, no scornful gesture; silent and serene, it fronts the world; neither demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still carries the physiognomy of its Head but the vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. The Coatarm is stretched out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the Waistcoat hides no

evil passion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of Sense, from the carking Cares and foul Vices of the World; and rides there, on its Clothes-horse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified Apparition, visiting our low Earth.

"Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous Tuberosity of Civilised Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapour, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan broth; and was one lone Soul amid those grinding millions; - often have I turned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in their silence: the past witnesses and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in 'the Prison called Life.' Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch too, with reverence, that bearded Jewish Highpriest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom, summons them from the four winds! On his head, like the Pope, he has three Hats,-- a real triple tiara; on either hand, are the similitude of Wings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: 'Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment!' Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in his Purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall reappear. Oh! let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street, and say whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there cast out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness, and the Devil, then is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and

jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, farcetragedy, beast-godhood, the Bedlam of Creation!"

To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged. We too have walked through Monmouth Street; but with little feeling of "Devotion:" probably in part because the contemplative process is so fatally broken in upon by the brood of moneychangers, who nestle in that Church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. Whereas Teufelsdrockh might be in that happy middle-state, which leaves to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be allowed to linger there without molestation.— Something we would have given to see the little philosophical Figure, with its steeple-hat and loose-flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, "pacing and repacing in austerest thought" that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life" rounded strange secrets in his ear. Othou philosophic Teufelsdröckh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest the grass grow!

At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paperbag Documents, destined for an English Work, there exists nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in London; and of his Meditations among the Clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his Travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject.

For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find how early the significance of Clothes had dawned on the now so distinguished Clothes- Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth Street, at the bottom of our own English "ink-sea," that this remarkable Volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his soul,— as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into a Universe!

CHAP. VII.

Organic Filaments.

For us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix is burning herself,

and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdröckh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to have done "within two centuries," there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however, does the Professor figure it. "In the living subject," says he, "change is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning of a World-Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn out, and lie as a dead cinereous heap; and therefrom the young one start up by miracle, and fly heavenward. Far otherwise! In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and Destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the Old are blown about, do organic filaments of the New mysteriously spin themselves; and amid the rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind-Element, come tones of a melodious Deathsong, which end not but in tones of a more melodious Birthsong. Nay, look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see." Let us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the spectacle. First, therefore, this of Mankind in general:

"In vain thou deniest it," says the Professor; "thou art my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish Lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour: what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I a Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell Lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well.

"Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of Necessity, as we like to choose it. More than once, have I said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts: Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered up with even the largest imaginable Glassbell,-what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but must drop unread: neither from within comes there question or response into any Postbag; thy Thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy