18 CHOICE OF A VOCATION. 



me to join the corps of Engineers, where I should 

 have the opportunity of acquiring the same know- 

 ledge as a student of the Academy of Architecture. 

 When I confided this plan to my father he at once 

 consented, giving an additional important reason in its 

 favour, the truth of which has been clearly demonstrated 

 by recent German history. He said "The present 

 condition of things in Germany cannot possibly last. 

 A time will come when everything will be turned topsy 

 turvy. The only fixed point in Germany is however 

 the state of Frederick the Great and the Prussian 

 Army, and in such times it is always better to be 

 hammer than anvil." Accordingly at Easter 1834, in 

 my seventeenth year, I quitted the grammar-school, 

 and repaired with a very moderate supply of money 

 in my pocket to Berlin, in order to place myself among 

 the hammers of the future. 



When the painful leave-taking of the old home, 

 of the intensely loved but overburdened and ailing 

 mother, and the numerous brothers and sisters affec- 

 tionately clinging to me, had been gone through. 

 my father took me to Schwerin, and from there 

 I entered on my pilgrimage. After I had crossed the 

 Prussian frontier and found myself on a straight dusty 

 road in the midst of a treeless and barren sandy 

 plain, the feeling of a terrible loneliness overcame me, 

 which was intensified by the melancholy contrast of 

 the landscape with the old familiar scenery. Before my 



