“Language is called the Garment of Thought:  however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought.  I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she?  Metaphors are her stuff:  examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such, or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colorless?  If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,—­then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments.  An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for:  is not your very Attention a Stretching-to?  The difference lies here:  some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency.  Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought’s-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (Putz-Mantel), and tawdry woollen rags:  whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,—­and burn them.”

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical?  However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor continues:—­

“Why multiply instances?  It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are:  the Time-vesture of the Eternal.  Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off.  Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been:  the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.”

Towards these dim infinitely expanded regions, close-bordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling.  Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness.  For the last week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand.  By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,—­the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost.  The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again taken up.