“And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis of his Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a man!  Look up, thou much-injured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble better time.  Too long hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some sacred Anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down Heaven’s richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee.  Be of hope!  Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be Day.  Mankind will repay with interest their long-accumulated debt:  the Anchorite that was scoffed at will be worshipped; the Fraction will become not an Integer only, but a Square and Cube.  With astonishment the world will recognize that the Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or even its God.

“As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon these Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich Cloth, which the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself:  How many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy, besides this Arabian Whinstone!

“Still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a lane, in the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a Signpost, whereon stood written that such and such a one was ‘Breeches-Maker to his Majesty;’ and stood painted the Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and between the knees these memorable words, SIC ITUR AD ASTRA.  Was not this the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a better day?  A day of justice, when the worth of Breeches would be revealed to man, and the Scissors become forever venerable.

“Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal been altogether in vain.  It was in this high moment, when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived this Work on Clothes:  the greatest I can ever hope to do; which has already, after long retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a section of my Life; and of which the Primary and simpler Portion may here find its conclusion.”

CHAPTER XII.  FAREWELL.

So have we endeavored, from the enormous, amorphous Plum-pudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow-mortals, to pick out the choicest Plums, and present them separately on a cover of our own.  A laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise; in which, however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands not altogether without satisfaction.  If hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration of our beloved British world, what nobler recompense could the Editor desire?  If it prove otherwise, why should he murmur?  Was not this a Task which Destiny, in any case, had appointed him; which having now done with, he sees his general Day’s-work so much the lighter, so much the shorter?