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ing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under the nightUnbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. 'But through such Purgatory pain,' continues he, ‘it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, ' and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed 'from this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, newborn of Heaven, ' and with new healing under its wings.'

To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid season of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet here so poor in means,-do we not see a strong incipient spirit oppressed and overloaded from without and from within; the fire of genius struggling-up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter vapour than of clear flame?

From various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufelsdröckh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had not altogether escaped notice: certain established men are aware of his existence; and, if stretching-out no helpful hand, have at least their eyes on him. He appears, though in dreary-enough humour, to be addressing himself to the Profession of Law;-whereof, indeed, the world has since seen him a public graduate. But omitting these broken, unsatisfactory thrums of Economical relation, let us present rather the following small thread of Moral relation; and therewith, the reader for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude our dim arras-picture of these University years.

Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality (von Adel), from the interior parts of 'England. He stood connected, by blood and hospitality, with 'the Counts von Zähdarm, in this quarter of Germany; to which ' noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with all friendliness, 'brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably ill-culti'vated; with considerable humour of character: and, bating his 'total ignorance, for he knew nothing except Boxing and a little Grammar, showed less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for most part belongs to Travellers of his nation. 'To him I owe my first practical knowledge of the English and 'their ways; perhaps also something of the partiality with which I have ever since regarded that singular people. Towgood was 'not without an eye, could he have come at any light. Invited

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'doubtless by the presence of the Zähdarm Family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his studies; 'he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, hither to a 'University where so much as the notion of perfection, not to say 'the effort after it, no longer existed! Often we would condole over the hard destiny of the Young in this era: how, after all our 'toil, we were to be turned-out into the world, with beards on our 'chins indeed, but with few other attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we were trained to Act on, nothing that we 'could so much as Believe. "How has our head on the outside a polished Hat," would Towgood exclaim, "and in the inside Vacancy, or a froth of Vocables and Attorney-Logic! At a small 'cost men are educated to make leather into shoes; but at a great cost, what am I educated to make? By Heaven, Brother! what 'I have already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, would endow a considerable Hospital of Incurables."-" Man, indeed," I would ' answer, "has a Digestive Faculty, which must be kept working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for our Miseducation, 'make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. Frisch zu, Bru'der! Here are Books, and we have brains to read them; here is a whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on 'them: Frisch zu!"

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'Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even 'fire. We looked-out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where 'all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quar'tered: motley, not unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it ' like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps my most ge'nial hours. Towards this young warmhearted, strongheaded and wrongheaded Herr Towgood, I was even near experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen that 'I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could have loved • this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its wants. If man's Soul is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of Stomach, what else ' is the true meaning of Spiritual Union but an Eating together? 'Thus we, instead of Friends, are Dinner-guests; and here as ' elsewhere have cast away chimeras.'

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut? He has dived-under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see not where. Does any reader ' in the interior parts of England' know of such a man?

CHAPTER IV.

GETTING UNDER WAY.

'THUS nevertheless,' writes our Autobiographer, apparently as quitting College, 'was there realised Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh: a visible Temporary Figure (Zeitbild), occupying some cubic feet of Space, and containing within it Forces 'both physical and spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole 'wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, belonging to that 'mystery, a Man. Capabilities there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the great Empire of Darkness: does 'not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, extinguish many а thistle and puddle; and so leave a little Order, where he found 'the opposite? Nay your very Daymoth has capabilities in this 'kind; and ever organises something (into its own Body, if no ' otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of mute dead air 'makes living music, though only of the faintest, by humming.

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'How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who 'has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic I name it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days, witness some. Of the 'Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it makes and 'unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but cannot the 'dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he not seen the Scottish Brassmith's IDEA (and this but a mechanical one) travelling on fire-wings round the Cape, and across two Oceans; and stronger than any other Enchanter's Familiar, on 'all hands unweariedly fetching and carrying: at home, not only weaving Cloth; but rapidly enough overturning the whole old 'system of Society; and, for Feudalism and Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, Industrialism ' and the Government of the Wisest? Truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every time 'such a one announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder through the Nether Empire; and new Emissaries are trained, ' with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and 'handcuff him.

'With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Universe, been called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born to ' the amplest Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of Peace and War against the Time-Prince (Zeitfürst), or

'Devil, and all his Dominions, your coronation-ceremony costs 'such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult to get at, or even to get " eye on!'

By which last wiredrawn similitude, does Teufelsdröckh mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we call 'getting under way?' Not what I Have,' continues he, but what I 'Do is my Kingdom. To each is given a certain inward Talent, a 'certain outward Environment of Fortune; to each, by wisest com'bination of these two, a certain maximum of Capability. But the 'hardest problem were ever this first: To find by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what your combined inward ' and outward Capability specially is. For, alas, our young soul is ‘all budding with Capabilities, and we see not yet which is the 'main and true one. Always too the new man is in a new time, ' under new conditions; his course can be the fac-simile of no prior one, but is by its nature original. And then how seldom will the outward Capability fit the inward: though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what 'is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, ' and often clutch the wrong one: in this mad work, must several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and 'from side to side: till at length, as exasperated striplings of three' score-and-ten, they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting 'buried.

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Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. 6 For on this ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, 'must a prompt choice be made: hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures and Apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, the vague universality of a Man shall find ' himself ready-moulded into a specific Craftsman; and so thence'forth work, with much or with little waste of Capability as it may 'be; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. Nay even in mat'ters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is born blind, and does 'not, like certain other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but 'far later, sometimes never,-is it not well that there should be 'what we call Professions, or Bread-studies (Brodzwecke), pre-appointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward and for

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'ward; and realise much: for himself victual; for the world an ad'ditional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Eco'nomic Society. For me too had such a leading-string been pro'vided; only that it proved a neck halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, did 'the world generally become mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, was to open, as I would and could. Almost had I de'ceased (fast wär ich umgekommen), so obstinately did it continue 'shut.'

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We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was to befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this Bag Pisces, and those that follow. A young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, breaks-off his neck-halter,' and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced-in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, and Freedom though waited on by Scarcity is not without sweetness. In a word, Teufelsdröckh having thrown-up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity urges him on; Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him. He too must enact that stern Monodrama, No Object and no Rest; must front its successive destinies, work-through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can.

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Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his neck-halter' sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. If we look at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless capital, as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come- through triumphantly; and can even boast that the Examen Rigorosum need not have frightened him: but though he is hereby an Auscultator of respectability,' what avails it? There is next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a youth without connexions, is the process of Expectation very hope