f 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, Teufelsdroeckh 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.

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 hopeful in itself; nor for one of his
disposition much cheered from without. 'My fellow Auscultators,' he
says, 'were Auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked
articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. Small
speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither
for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save
only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment.' In which words,
indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdroeckh, may
there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity?
Doubtless