partment to spend the evening as I pleased.

The next morning I delivered my letters of introduction and paid a
visit to some of the principal professors. Chance--or rather the evil
influence, the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway
over me from the moment I turned my reluctant steps from my father's
door--led me first to M. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy. He
was an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science. He
asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different
branches of science appertaining to natural philosophy. I replied
carelessly, and partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my
alchemists as the principal authors I had studied. The professor
stared. "Have you," he said, "really spent your time in studying such
nonsense?"

I replied in the affirmative. "Every minute," continued M. Krempe with
warmth, "every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly
and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems
and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived,
where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you
have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they
are ancient? I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific
age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear
sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew."

So saying, he stepped aside and wrote down a list of several books
treating of natural philosophy which he desired me to procure, and
dismissed me after mentioning that in the beginning of the following
week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural
philosophy in its general relations, and that M. Waldman, a fellow
professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that he
omitted.

I returned home not disappointed, for I have said that I had long
considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but I
returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any
shape. M. Krempe was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a
repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in
favour of his pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a
strain, perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come
to concerning them in my early years. As a child I had not been
content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural
science.