a form
within his reach. He candidly states, "for some months a conflict of
feelings, principles, &c., which are directly contradictory the one to
the other, has been raging within me; I wished to stifle all
recollection, and become what schoolmasters, preachers, uncles, and
aunts call profligate." There was none in the circles which he
frequented to encourage him in his desire to reach out after better
things, to live himself into "the poetry of life," as Hitzig expresses
it; and hence he fell into the mire of demoralisation, and his fall was
the greater since he set about it with deliberate intent.

He was at length so far carried away by the delirious whirl into which
he had been caught as to engage in a piece of wanton folly that threw
him back upon his career by some years, just as he was about to plant
his foot securely upon the path leading to the summits of his
profession. Beguiled by his striking talent for caricature, he designed
and executed a series of sketches, satirising in an exquisitely witty
and humorous style various situations and characters and well-known
relations of Posen society. The inscriptions appended to the
caricatures were not less skilfully done than were the caricatures
themselves. No rank of society was spared, and hardly any person of
consequence in the town. One of his friends, who afterwards became his
brother-in-law, distributed the leaves at a masked ball in the disguise
of an Italian hawker of pictures, cleverly contriving to place each
individual sketch in the hands of the person to whom it would most
likely be most welcome. Hence for several minutes universal glee at the
excellent jest! But when they came to compare notes, _i.e._, the
presents they had received, the merriment gave way to hot indignation.
The author of the outrage was very speedily guessed at, since there was
only one person in Posen with proved ability enough to wield the pencil
so as to produce such striking likenesses--unfortunate Hoffmann! That
very same night it is said that a man of high rank, General von
Zastrow, deeply incensed at several of the pieces in which he himself
played a ridiculous _role_, sent off an express courier to Berlin with
a report of the whole affair. The consequence of the thoughtless trick
was that Hoffmann's patent as councillor to the government at Posen,
which lay all ready for signing, was exchanged for one appointing him
to the town of Plock (on the R. Vistula). Thither he went ea