In vain did the sleet beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool.

In vain did the winds howl,--forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the storms heap themselves together into one huge Arctic whirlpool: thou flewest through the middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummed in thy ears, thou too wert as a 'sailor of the air'; the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide.
Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had thy fleet quadruped been ?--Nature is good, but she is not the best: here truly was the victory of Art over Nature.

A thunderbolt indeed might have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy.
Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdroeckh forgotten what he said lately about 'Aboriginal Savages,' and their 'condition miserable indeed'?
Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again to the 'matted cloak,' and go sheeted in a 'thick natural fell'?
Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he is saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong.

If Clothes, in these times, 'so tailorise and demoralise us,' have they no redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs?
The truth is, Teufelsdroeckh, though a Sansculottist, is no Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this degenerate age 'as a Sign,' would nowise wish to do it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness.

The utility of Clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before vouchsafed to any man.