t 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, Teufelsdrockh 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 connections, 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 Teufelsdrockh may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness
as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have
sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was
much more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case,
there could not be: already has the young Teufelsdrockh left the other
young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself
is cyg