AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 157 



few years the example of the most brilliant 

 intellects, and that stimulus which is given by 

 competition between men equally eminent in 

 different spheres of human knowledge. Un- 

 der such circumstances a man either subsides 

 into the position of a follower in the ranks 

 that gather around a master, or he aspires to 

 be a master himself. 



"The time had come when even the small 

 allowance I received from borrowed capital 

 must cease. I was now twenty-four years of 

 age. I was Doctor of Philosophy and Medi- 

 cine, and author of a quarto volume on the 

 fishes of Brazil. I had traveled on foot all 

 over Southern Germany, visited Vienna, and 

 explored extensive tracts of the Alps. I knew 

 every animal, living and fossil, in the Mu- 

 seums of Munich, Stuttgart, Tubingen, Erlan- 

 gen, Wurzburg, Carlsruhe, and Frankfort ; but 

 my prospects were as dark as ever, and I saw 

 no hope of making my way in the world, ex- 

 cept by the practical pursuit of my profession 

 as physician. So, at the close of 1830, I left 

 the university and went home, with the inten- 

 tion of applying myself to the practice of 

 medicine, confident that my theoretical infor- 

 mation and my training in the art of observ- 

 ing would carry me through the new ordeal 

 I was about to meet.' 



