Ishmael acquire for
himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help. Nevertheless
a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters.
Teufelsdrockh 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
nightmare, 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, new-born 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 vapor
than of clear flame?

From various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps, it is to
be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, 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 humor, 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 To