the Court. So, by a sort of compromise, it
was arranged that, when I went to Memel, I
was to study the language, spend an hour or
two a-day in Herr Ziegler's office, and attend
certain lectures given by a celebrated
professor in the hospital, which was also the
medical school of all that part of the country.
After my first year, I was definitively to
choose; and, during that probationary period,
was left to follow my own bent. At eighteen,
learning, like reading and writing, comes by
nature. I used to think that the atmosphere
of a place became saturated with its
language, so that you inhaled grammar and
pronunciation with your breath. Attitudes of
body, expressions of countenance also, are
great helps in the acquisition of a foreign
tongue; which, indeed, ceases to be foreign by
the mere fact of its being in the land of its
birth; and, in about six months, by means of
looking at people's faces, and hearing the
Baltic Sea, eating German dishes, and having
all my thoughts cast into a German mould,
I gurgled and spluttered Dutch, and quoted
Göthe, and smoked meerschaums, as if I had
never been a denizen of any other land.

I have not much to say of the society of
the town; for I was too young to judge of it
at the time, and nothing is so deceptive as
attempts at reminiscences of an earlier period;
for you inevitably look at all the past through
the spectacles of the present. I will, therefore,
say nothing of the amiable young ladies,
whom I thought younger sisters of Venus
and the Graces; nor of the gentlemen—now,
most of them, in all human probability,
passed away—from whom I received so much
attention. I will go at once to the incidents
I alluded to at the beginning of this little
history; again assuring the reader, that,
though so many years have intervened, its
circumstances are as fresh in my recollection
as in the moment when they occurred.

In fulfilment of my father's intention, I
spent a portion of every day in the counting-
house of Mr. Ziegler. To please my uncle,
I had also entered my name as a student at
the College Hospital; and, by a great effort
over my natural repugnance, persuaded
myself once or twice a week to walk the
wards. Familiarity had its usual effect, and
as if the effort to attain self-command had
driven me into recklessness and inhumanity,
I gloried in inspecting cases of suffering and
pain, and was to all appearance utterly
hardened against the sanctities and majesty
of death. I say, to all appearance, for the
whole of these excesses was the result of an
inward fear and horror, which I could never
shake off, and which was merely hid behind
the mask of cruelty and disregard. In this
outward behaviour I was not alone. I will
not judge the hearts of my companions. May
they all have had higher views as I have,
and have re-acquired a holy reverence, even
for the empty casket which has held such a
jewel as a human soul!

There must have been from twenty-five to
thirty of these young Æsculapiuses who
attended the lectures of Dr. Wolfgang, and
followed him in his walks through the
hospital. On the days when a difficult
operation was to be performed, our number was
increased by the attendance of two or three
of the surgeons of the town; and the
discussions which arose round the patients' beds
were frequently prolonged over beer and,
perhaps, cold ham and bread, till far into
the night. The curator of the hospital was
a young fellow who had distinguished
himself by amazing skill, not only in the learned
or scientific parts of the profession, but as a
most expert operator. His name was Rupert
Braunfeldt; and, as if to show that talent and
energy in a profession are qualities quite
apart from a man's ordinary character and
habits, I must say that Rupert's manners
were the most dissolute, and his language the
most heartless of all the clique I belonged to.
Yet, see him while he performed his duty; see
with what gentleness he handled the wound,
how softly he bandaged the most painful hurts,
you would have thought he had the
tenderness of the heart of a woman, as he had
certainly the lightness of a woman's hand!

It became the fashion for some half-dozen
of us to adjourn to Rupert's room. This
was at the end of a long gallery in the
hospital, that led to the patients' beds; the
intermediate space being occupied by the
lecture-hall, and a room or two (entering on
another landing), inhabited by the servants
of the establishment. Often, in the smoke
of our pipes, and strong tumblers of spirits
and water, we have set off to settle some
disputed point of a sufferer's illness by
inspecting him in the couch; then, without
a feeling of compunction, we have staggered
back through the long passage, and
resumed our pipes and potations, when the
question was set at rest. I look back on
these things with shame; but I was the
youngest of the party. A different behaviour
would have been thought either cowardice
or affectation. So I bellowed forth my
truculent and unfeeling remarks in the same
bravadoing tone as the others did, and thought
I was in a fair way to supplant Cooper and
Abernethy, when I had outraged every
sentiment of respect for the living or the dead.

The oldest of the party was a man, who,
according to a fantastic custom allowed in
Germany, was generally called Camillus, without
any surname, which indeed (however, it
might be known by the police) was never
suspected or enquired after by any of his
friends. Camillus looked about thirty-four
years of age, with the most sad and doubtful
expression I ever saw; and the mystery
would have been increased by the impossibility
of deciding what countryman he was.
He spoke German with what appeared a
foreign pronunciation to the natives of
Memel; but, as the finest eloquence of