was as
yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, recognised groundplan, the
truest I had, _was_ beginning to be there, and by additional
experiments might be corrected and indefinitely extended.'

Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the
destitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for
himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help.
Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage
monsters. Teufelsdroeckh gives us long details of his 'fever-paroxysms
of Doubt'; his Inquiries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of
religious Faith; and how 'in the silent night-watches, still darker in
his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the
All-seeing, and with audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for
deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, and
unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into
spell-bound sleep, under the night-mare, Unbelief; 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 Teufelsdroeckh, 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 rela