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LIVES

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BROTHERS HUMBOLDT,

ALEXANDER AND WILLIAM.

TRANSLATED AND ARRANGED FROM THE GERMAN

OF

KLENCKE & SCHLESIER,

By JULIETTE BAUER.

mitf) iPovtraitJJ.

LONDON:
INGRAM, COOKE, & CO., 327, STRAND.

MDCCCLII.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

% §iffgra,p|kal Ultmunmit.

By professor KLENCKE.

^ranslatcU from ti^^ ^j^rman,

By JULIETTE BAUER

LONDON:
INGRAM, COOKE, & CO., 227, STRAND.

MDCCCLII.

CONTENTS,

LIFE OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

CHAPTER I.

PA6K

Ancestry — Birth — Youth — First Education — University ... 1

CHAPTER 11.

Practical Apprenticeship — Circumstances— Early Works — Plans
of Travel, and Hindrances 16

CHAPTER III.

The Open Sea — The First Step on a Foreign Soil — Teneriife —
Cumana — Earthquakes — Departure 36

CHAPTER IV.

Caracas — Ascension of the Silla Mountain — Excursions into
the Plains to San Fernando de Apure — The Cow Tree — Sail
on the Orinocco — Rio Negro — Return on the Cassiquiare into
the Orinocco — Angostura 65

CHAPTER V.

Journey to Havannah — Change of Plans in consequence of a
false newspaper report concerning Baudin's Expedition —
Carthagena — Sail on the Magdalen Stream — Laborious Journey
to Quito — Chimborazo — The River Amazon — Humboldt's
Current (Peruvian Coast Current) — Mexico — Return to Europe 72

CHAPTER VI.

Return and New Activity at Home — Ascent of Mount Vesuvius
in 1805 — Berlin — Views of Nature -- Tlie Great Literary

IV CONTENTS.

PAGE

"Work on his Travels in America — Declining of a Prussian
Official Post — New Plans — Destruction of Caracas — Bonpland's
Fate— Humboldt's Studies in Paris 85

CHAPTER Vn.

Journey to Italy with the King of Prussia — Ascent of Mount
Vesuvius — Visit to Berlin and Tegel — Removal from Paris
to Berlin — Humboldt's Public Lectures in Berlin — First Sketch
of "Kosmos" — Offer of the Emperor Nicholas — The Society
of Naturalists in Berlin — Family Afflictions — Appointment to
the Cabinet — Departure 106

CHAPTER Vni.

Journey to Russia with G. Rose and Ehrenberg, in 1829 — Kasan
and the Ruins of Bulgaria — Explorings in the vicinity of
Jekatharinenburg — The fearful Borabinski Steppes — Arrival
in the Centre of Asia — Way to the Southern Ural Districts —
From Orenberg to Astrachan — Researches and Journey on the
Caspian Sea — Return — Results of the Asiatic Journey . . .119

CHAPTER IX.

Alternate Residence in Berlin and Paris — Diplomatic Embassy —
Death of William von Humboldt — Literary Activity — Hum-
boldt's Relation to King Frederick William IV. — Distinctions
— Retrospect 139

CHAPTER X.

Kosmos, as the Epitome of Humboldt's Scientific Life . . .155

CHAPTER XI.

The Sense for the Enjoyment of Nature in Opposition to
Objective Observation — Nature as a Means of Improvement
for the Mind and Heart — History of a Physical View of the
World 195

CHAPTER XII.

Gleanings of Humboldt's Life — Illustrations of Travel and of
Nature — Ascent of the Peak of Tenerifie — The Llanos —
Ascent of the Silla of Caracas — The Combat with Electric
Eels — Tropic Storms — ^ Voyage on the A pure — Scenes from
the Orinocco Voyage — Ascent of the Chimborazo — Vegetable
Life — Tropical Sketch — The Sea — Earthquakes — Aurora
Borealis 206

CONTENTS.

LIFE OF WILLIAM YON HUMBOLDT.

CHAPTER I.

Birth — Education — Friendships — Studies at the University of
Gottingen — Travels in Germany and Switzerland .... 249

CHAPTER II.

Residence in Erfurt and Weimar — Caroline von Dacheroden —
Acquaintance with Schiller — First Publications — Marriage . 268

CHAPTER III.

Birth of his First Child— Works Published by Humboldt, 1791
to 1794 — Removal to Jena — Acquaintance with Goethe
— Contributions to Der Horen — Residence in Tegel . . . 277

CHAPTER IV.

Death ofhis Mother— Visit to Paris 300

CHAPTER V.

State of Prussia in 1797 — Second Visit to Paris — Journey to
Spain — Appointed Prussian Minister at Rome 306

CHAPTER VI.

Residence in Italy — Elegy on Rome — Death of his Eldest Son —
State of the Papacy — Humboldt's Patronage of Artists — De-
pai-ture from Rome 320

CHAPTER VII.

Position of Prussia in 1806 — Appointment of Humboldt as
Minister of Public Instruction — His Reforms in Popular Educa-
tion—System of Pestalozzi — Appointed to Organize the
University of Berlin — Arrangements made by him — His
Resignation — Appointed Ambassador to Vienna .... 344

VI CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

Residence in Vienna — Political Affairs of the Time — Congress
of Vienna — Part iaken in it by Humboldt — Fights a Duel —
Honours conferred on him — State of Affairs in Prussia — Ap-
pointed Ambassador to London — Resignation of that Office —
Appointed Minister of the Interior — Resigns 365

CHAPTER IX.

Essays — Residence in Berlin — Marriage of Humboldt's Daugh-
ter— Visit from |his Brother Alexander — Visit to Paris and
London — Death of Madame von Humboldt 402

CHAPTER X.

Appointed President of the Commission to found a Museum in
Berlin — Illness — Death of Goethe — Death of Humboldt — His
Funeral — His Character 422

POBTEAIT OF AlEXANDEE VoN HuMBOLDT 1

PORTKAIT OF WiLLIAM VON HUMBOLDT 249

LIFE

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

LIFE

OF

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

CHAPTER I.

ANCESTEY — BIETH — YOUTH — FIRST EDUCATION — UNIVERSITY.

The ancient noble family of Yon Humboldt had its
origin in Pomerania, where it formerly possessed
estates, situated in the principality of Cam in, and in
the district of New Stettin. But at the time when
Prussia obtained possession of these parts, descendants
of this old family served the margraves of Branden-
burg on diplomatic and military expeditions ; and the
family removed from Pomerania to near Magdeburg,
where it became possessed of additional estates.

During the life of Frederic William the First, a
captain Hans Paul von Humboldt served in his army,
and married the daughter of the Prussian major and
general adjutant. Yon Schweder. He had three sons
by her, one of whom, Alexander George, is of par-
ticular interest, as he was the father of the celebrated
Alexander.

The baron Alexander George von Humboldt, born
in 1720, served for a long time in a dragoon regiment,
was then made major, and, during the seven years'
war, adjutant to duke Frederic of Brunswick, who
frequently sent him with verbal embassies to Frederic
the Great. Major von Humboldt was inheritor of
Hadersleben and Ringesleben, and subsequently took

B

2 LIFE OF

the castle of Tegel, between Berlin and Spandau, three
leagues north-west of Berlin, in fee farm of the royal
Woods and Forests. Tegel had originally been a
hunting seat of the great Elector, and a royal hunt-
ing establishment was kept there under Frederic the
Great. This castle has latterly become important to
the family, and the major made it a place of retire-
ment for his age after his restless life, but was unfor-
tunately called away by an untimely death. When
the seven years' war was over, Frederic the Great
made Major von Humboldt one of his chamberlains,
in 1765, and at the same time he was attendant
chamberlain on Elizabeth, the newly-married princess
of Prussia, and had on that account to live in Pots-
dam. But when this unhappy marriage of the prince
of Prussia was dissolved, and the princess had been
taken to Stettin, the Major von Humboldt, his service
being over, exchanged Potsdam for Berlin, and lived
partly in the capital, and partly in his neighbouring
castle of Tegel. He had, however, by no means lost
the favour of the prince, (subsequently Frederic Wil-
liam 11.,) for he visited him once annually in Tegel ;
and it may with certainty be surmised, that had the
major survived the prince's accession to the throne, he
would have advanced him to an important position in
the state, or perhaps even have entrusted the forma-
tion of a ministry to him.

Major von Humboldt was married to the widow of
a Baron von Holwede, whose maiden name was Von
Colomb, cousin of the princess Bliicher, and niece of
the venerable president Von Colomb in Aurich. She
had a son by her first marriage, who served as officer
in the regiment of Gens d'armes. The family of
Colomb comes from Burgundy, where it was cele-
brated for having erected immense glass works ; it
was obliged to emigrate, in consequence of the repeal
of the edict of Nantes, and settled in Germany.

Two sons were born from the marriage of the Major
von Humboldt with the widowed Baroness von Hol-
wede. The eldest, William, was born in Potsdam, on

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. t

the 22nd of June, 1767, when the father was still
chamberlain to the princess Elizabeth of Prussia ; the
younger son, Frederic Henry Alexander, the subject
of our memoir, first saw the light of the world two
years later, in Berlin, on the 14th September, 1769.

The castle of Tegel made the first impressions of
home on the two boys; for here they spent the greater
part of their youth together. To this castle is
attached a mysterious legend, which Goethe alluded
to in " Faust,'' to show his dislike for the enlightener
Nicolai. The present Tegel is not the old one, but
rather a new creation of its possessor, William, brother
of Alexander, who commenced and ended his life
here ; and who built a house here, which, to preserve
one old turret, rises in turrets from the four corners ;
and which, as it was once his tusculum, is now his
grave. The old castle in which the two boys passed
their youth was grey and antiquated. The contempo-
rary of Humboldt, a Prussian commissioner of woods
and forests, named von Burgsdorf, whose official resi-
dence it was, had beautified it by the lajring out of
nurseries and plantations, which were universally ad-
mired at the time, and the new owner had taken
possession of the castle and outworks during this time.
Tegel is separated from Berlin by a dark pine grove,
and is situated in a beautiful neighbourhood north-
east of an arm of the Havel, called the Tegel lake.
On the southern shore are seen projecting the town and
fortress of Spandau, and the declivities which bound
the north-western shore of the lake are richly covered
with trees and verdure, while promenades and gardens
afford the most varied and charming views.

This castle had always been, while the old major
lived in it, known for its extended hospitality ; and
the ripening boys not alone saw their father enjoy the
honours of princely visits, but many an officer, states-
man, or scholar, was hospitably invited and received.
Thus, in May, 1778, Goethe, who had accompanied his
duke to Berlin to a grand review, also visited Teo-el;
he walked one morning from Berlin over Schon-
B 2

4 LIFE OF

hausen to Tegel, dined there, and returned to Pots-
dam over Charlottenburg. At that time he perceived
there two merry boys of ten and eight years of age,
but did not foresee in what an intimate relation in
mind and heart he should one day stand to them,
especially to the elder.

The education and first training of these boys took
place at a time when the science of education was,
with the sciences of antiquity and languages, one of
the great questions of the day. The new methods of
education which Rousseau especially advocated had
quickly found adherents in Prussia. The 23rebendary
Yon Rochow set a cheering example of a practical
reform in education ; the well-known Gedike worked
for it in Berlin, and Joachim Heinrich Campe, by
birth a Brunswickian, at that time field chaplain to
the regiment of the prince of Prussia in Potsdam,
joined the movement of reform in education. Base-
dow and the Philanthropin, an institution in Dessau,
taught tutors and professors after the new method of
Rousseau, and it became a point of honour and of
fashion, in the educational zeal of the age, for the
higher nobility to take tutors who could unite the
practical and the useful with the revival of the ancient
languages, especially of the Greek. The plan had
been originated by Heyne in Gottingen, and Major
von Humboldt also obeyed these influences. He
recognised in the then field chaplain of the prince of
Prussia's regiment in Potsdam, in Campe, a man
much more qualified for educational than for theo-
logical duties, and, after he had been preacher to the
regiment since 1773, he took him into his house in.
1775, and confided to him the preparatory education
of his two sons, William and Alexander. It raay be
imagined that Alexander, being then only six years
old, could have less felt the influence of such a man
as Campe than William, who was two years older;
but his influence over both must be acknowledged,
as the ideas of Campe were developed in gigantic
proportions in both his pupils. Campe, in later

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 5

times, enjoyed the reputation of being the greatest
philologist and critic of German style next to Klop-
stock, and he probably, in Major von Humboldt's
house, devoted his attention chiefly to the study
of languages, and it is not more than probable that
this same Campe should have laid the first foundation
in these boys, and aroused the spirit of research
which never afterwards quitted them. But we must
notice here another influence of the teacher on the
life of his pupils, especially on the younger one.
Campe had plainly seen that the mode of education
and tuition till then adopted in families and institu-
tions, only tended to develop the memory, not the
mind, of the student ; he opposed, from the first, the
mechanical training of youth, and endeavoured to
develop the susceptibility of the youthful mind and
spirit by a perception of the world, of foreign natures,
men and manners. Could not, then, this man, who
edited Eobinson Crusoe, and enriched the juvenile
library with imaginative delineations of bold voyages,
could he not, as Humboldt's first teacher, have
influenced the imagination and the reason of his
pupils, and laid the foundation in Alexander for his
love for exploratory voyages in distant regions ?

Campe did not remain for a long period in the
intimate relation of tutor ander the paternal roof of
the Humboldts. His influence over his pupils, how-
ever, continued during his life, and the friendship
between them remained a lasting one, and became
more intimate again in later years. It is a well-
known fact that Campe accompanied the elder of the
brothers on a journey from Gottingen to Paris in the
summer of the year 1789 ; but we could not ascertain
with certainty whether Campe had made a journey
through Germany and Switzerland with the two boys
while he was yet their tutor, as has been asserted by
Schiller's circle at Jena.

Campe gave up his appointment as tutor to the
two boys in 1776, as his reputation for teaching was
such, that, after the retirement of the celebrated

6 LIFE OF

Basedow, lie was appointed director of the Philan-
thropin at Dessau, and received the title of an Anhalt-
Dessaii commissioner of education. This appoint-
ment he fulfilled for one year, and left it to found his
subsequently so celebrated private educational esta-
blishment at Hamburg.

Major von Humboldt had now to look out for an-
other tutor, and in the beginning of the year 1777 his
choice fell upon a youth of twenty years of age, who,
without enjoying the reputation of his predecessor,
excited great expectations in the major, which he
faithfully fulfilled. His name was Christian Kunth ;
he was poor, and had to discontinue his academical
studies from want of the necessary pecuniary means.
But he possessed an extraordinary knowledge of
German, Latin, and French literature, of philosophy
and history, and a high order of intellect, joined to
the habit of moving in aristocratic circles, which his
position of teacher opened to him. By this means
Major von Humboldt made his acquaintance, and
took him into his house as tutor to his sons, which
was at the time a mark of great confidence, and an
envied distinction. The young man found his pupils
of the respective ages of eight and ten years, and he
succeeded in further developing and perfecting the
talents roused in the mind and heart of his young
charges by his predecessor Campe. He entered into
a more intimate relation to them than that of teacher
towards pupils ; he bestowed more care upon them
than that by which a teacher faithfully imparts his
own knowledge to the mind of a talented or quick
child. Kunth endeavoured to make everything within
his reach in Berhn available and useful for the deve-
lopment of his charges. The success of his endea-
vours not only confirmed the confidence of the parents,
but awoke in the youths a pure, unchangeable love for
their teacher, and an affection and confidence which
continued throughout his life to his 'death in an equal
degree. Whenever Alexander was, in later times,
absent on his voyages of discovery, or if the elder

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 7

brother tarried among the ruins of classical antiquity,
it was always the faithful former teacher and later
friend, Kunth, who administered their property with
paternal conscientiousness.

Kunth conduced to satisfy and develope in his
pupils the inborn love for universality of knowledge,
but endeavoured always to unite it with profundity;
and if Campe had awakened a wish for philology
and cosmology in them, Knnth made it available by
fundamental researches and universality. Both bro-
thers, in obedience to their different natures, followed
different branches of their acquirements, but both
were rooted in the same foundation. The elder brother
made humanity — ^its intellectual world, and its especial
element, language — the task of his life. The younger,
Alexander, took the outward part of nature and
humanity in all its varieties. While the elder brother
educated himself for classic antiquity, art, philosophy,
and language, Alexander from the same origin directed
his attention to natural sciences. Both frequently
met and assisted each other in the points they origi-
nally had in common.

Kunth thus acted upon his pupils, but this intimacy
could not fail to exercise a strong improving influence
on him the teacher. The house of the chamberlain
and Major von Humboldt united in itself rank, intel-
ligence, cultivated acquaintance, and influence. Kunth,
possessing the confidence of the family in the highest
degree, was considered as one of its members, was
entrusted with commissions in the execution of the
practical affairs of the family and its public interests,
and thus gained an experience in practical business
which, at a future period, qualified him for an official
position, as we shall see.

But a great blow afflicted the family in which
Kunth had been tutor since 1777. In the January
of 1779 the Major died, and the boys were without a
father. The maternal voice now exercised a greater
influence, and beside the noble confidence which the
widowed lady showed Kunth, by giving him all but

8 LIFE OF

paternal rights over the boys, it was the highminded-
ness of the lady which beneficially ruled the whole
household, and inspired an enthusiastic love for her
into the hearts of her children, whose education was
her chief care.

Another intellectual influence was now brought to
bear on the two youths. Since 1776 a physician had
lived in Spandau, who soon after became district
physician of the Havel district, and had an extensive
practice. This man was Doctor Ernst Ludwig Heim,
since become so famous as doctor and professor of the
University of Berlin. Probably the major's illness
may have been the origin of his acquaintance with
the family ; we know only that as doctor to the family
of Humboldt and of the headranger, Von Burgsdorf,
who, as a royal official, had to live in Tegel, he fre-
quently came from Spandau to visit the neighbouring
castle and village. He also communicated many of
his experiences of foreign trees and the nursing of
foreign plants to the ranger, and made himself useful
in the laying out of the nurseries and plantations
there. His frequent visits to the Humboldt family
commenced in 1780, when he entered into a nearer,
more intimate friendship with Kunth, the tutor of the
household. These visits, which Heim made on horse-
back, and which generally brought him to the dinner-
table of the major's widow, became of importance to
us in the following year, when Heim instructed the
two boys, William and Alexander, in botany after
dinner, and explained to them the twenty-four classes
of the Linnean system. An expression Heim used at
the time is remarkable, namely, that the elder boy
easily comprehended these lessons, and retained the
botanical names, while Alexander, then eleven years
of age, was of a less intelligent nature, a phenomenon
which was confirmed by the anxiety which mother
and tutor at one time felt that Alexander was not at
all fitted for study.

The brothers made short excursions in the neigh-
bourhood with the physician Heim ; and we know

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 9

that, in 1783, on the 19th May, when Frederic the
Great annually reviewed his troops in Spandau, and
the entire population was on foot, Heim with the Te-
gel friends — Kunth and his two pupils — ^were present
at the review. Heim resided in Berlin in 1783, and
must therefore have brought his friends from Tegel, or
have met them in Berlin.

About this time the brothers were sent to Berlin
with their tutor, in order to continue their education
with the better opportunities of the capital. William,
the elder, occupied himself principally with languages,
and as neither he nor his brother visited any of the
schools, teachers were engaged and selected by Kunth
to complete the special instruction he had commenced.
Alexander generally participated in William's lessons,
but was less strictly urged to study, because he was
physically weaker than his brother, and learning was
more difficult for him. Not till an advanced period
of his bopsh life did a light suddenly shine in his
mind, and then he had to make greater exertions
than his brother to keep pace with him in their com-
mon studies. Alexander was indeed delicate and
nearly always ill, even in his university years, and it
was therefore natural that Kunth should be less strict
in inciting him to study, especially as he still doubted
his abilities when he compared them with the rapid
acquirements of William. Alexander, at a subsequent
period of life, ascribed his weakness to an excess of
unhealthy secretions which accumulated in his frame,
but his friends, among others Forster, assure us that
Alexander's bodily ailments only arose in consequence
of the premature activity of his mind, and that this
excessive activity was caused by his desire to equal
his brother in knowledge and acquirements.

They received instruction in the Greek language
from Loffler, at that time field chaplain to the Berlin
Gensd'armes regiment, who had already published a
rationalist work on the fathers of the church and on
new Platonism. He was succeeded by a certain
Fischer of the grey cloister, in Berlin, who was known

10 LIFE OF

chiefly as a mathematician, but who possessed a con-
siderable knowledge of Greek. The philological talent
which already showed itself in the elder brother, in-
duced them to learn modern as well as classical lan-
guages, while in consequence of the love for natural
sciences which Alexander felt, young Wildenow was
engaged to instruct him in botany. Kunth endea-
voured to prepare his pupils, who had now grown up
to young men, for their future academic life in a
worthy manner, by private lectures on scientific sub-
jects. He engaged such men as Engel, Klein, Dohn
and others, who gave the brothers complete courses
of lectures on philosophy, law and political economy ;
and particularly Dohn, who was in the department of
foreign affairs, gained a considerable influence over
them. The minister Schulenberg had requested him
to give a course of political economical lectures to a
young count Arnim, and, in obedience to the wish of
their mother, the Humboldts also joined this course,
which lasted from the autumn of 1785, to the June
of the following year, and which resembled the uni-
versity classes. These lectures of Dohn, which were
carefully composed on a special plan, brought him
into a more intimate relation with the Humboldts, and
this friendship continued unchanged when they had
arrived at a more matured age.

But now the individual peculiarities in the character
of the brothers began to show themselves. The im-
pression made on the sentimentahty of the nation by
the formerly published " Werther ' of Goethe received
new nourishment from the highflying enthusiasm of
Schiller's Don Carlos. The whole educated world
revelled in feelings and ideals, and sentimentality be-
longed to the tone of the educated class, especially to
the younger portion of it. The young William par-
ticularly was influenced by this tendency, which was
increased by his associations, for, by his companions in
his dancing lessons he was brought into nearer relation
with ladies, who, by their subsequent intellectual
standing, show what a sentimentalising impression

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 11

they must have made on a susceptible youthful nature.
Among them were Fraulein von Briest (married first
to Yon Kochon then to Von Fouque), then the well
known Rahel, and Henriette Herz as beautiful as she
was intellectual, to whom William stood in almost
fraternal relation. This sentimentality of the elder
brother, which characterised him at the university, and
which slightly tinged his future life, a sentimentality
which, united to intellect, showed itself especially in
the Jewish circles of Berlin as an echo of the age of
Mendelssohn, found less susceptibility in the physically
delicate Alexander. Although this sentimentality of
the feelings even infected his tutor Kunth, his mind
developed its natural observing faculties, and he
already studied the ways of nature, for whose phe-
nomena he evinced an anxiously inquiring mind.
While William was pursuing the sesthetical studies of
the age, especially those of Schiller and Goethe, Alex-
ander followed the researches into natural history of
Goethe, and endeavoured to make his knowledge
applicable to the better understanding of natural
phenomena.

Thus the two brothers passed an exciting, happy
time of their early education as youths, partly in the
capital so rich in the means for education, partly
under the domestic influence and protection of their
beloved mother, on their family estate of Tegel ; and
their descent from one of the noblest families, as well
as their own reputation, easily opened the richest
sources of knowledge for them. Herein the two
brothers are favoured children of fortune, for they
never suffered from temporal cares, from that fainting
of the spirit, thirsting for knowledge, and that striving
for opportunities to apply the acquired knowledge
which oppresses, and sometimes quite destroys, a
poor youth of talent coming from an obscure family.
Another feeling which remained strong in the bro-
thers during their whole life, and which probably
took its origin at this period, is their Prussian patriot-
ism. Before their childish imagination, the person of

12 LIFE OF

Frederic the Great stood a glorious picture of their
native land, and in him the reformation and glory of
Prussia were personified. The king died when the
brothers were on the point of leaving Berlin to attend
a university, and they therefore were not witnesses
of the weakness, the political and moral dissolution
which came hand in hand with the stupid rage for a
reason reformation which the successors of Nicolai
spread over Berlin.

The brothers entered on their academical life to-
gether as they had made the preliminary studies to-
gether. The university of Frankfurt on the Oder,
which at that time enjoyed a great and wide-spread
reputation, was chosen for their further education, and
the commencement of their special studies. In the
year of the great king's death, in 1786, they departed
with their tutor and friend Kunth, with the inten-
tion of remaining there nearly two years, till the
Easter of 1788. William devoted himself to the study
of law; but Alexander, in obedience to the natural
tendencies which were developing themselves with in-
creasing force, chose the study of political economy, as
it seemed to him most nearly allied to his scientific
inclinations. Their former teacher in Berlin, Lofiler,
who had since become professor in Frankfurt, took
the brothers, with Kunth, into his house ; and, while
they each followed their special studies, they
pursued their philosophical, philological, and natural
historical studies in common, for William took spe-
cial interest in the latter.

The choice of the university of Frankfurt was pro-
bably the mother's, who wished to keep her sons near
her, and not lose sight of them so quickly ; therefore
Kant, the celebrated philosopher of the age, who
lectured in Konigsberg, did not influence the choice
of the university with the widow of Major von Hum-
boldt. The mother's real intention was to send her
sons to Frankfurt as a preparation for their future pub-
lic life, but to let them attend Gottingen, the most
celebrated university of that time, for their final edu-

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 13

cation. Leipzig and Halle had already lost some of
their fame, and Jena only reached the zenith of its
glory at a later period.

In Frankfurt, Count Dohua, who studied here from
1786-88, became an intimate friend of the brothers
Humboldt ; but he attached himself more to the elder
brother, in consequence of his studies being princi-
pally classic; and William, as well as Rhediger, exer-
cised a lasting influence over him here, and met him
again at a later period in Gottingen.

For Alexander nothing could have been, more agree-
able than the removal to Gottingen, which took place
in 1788 ; for at Gottingen lived that great man in the
branch of science for which he felt more and more an
innate tendency; here lived and taught Blumenbach^
the celebrated natural historian, who, with his strong
mind, arranged and comprehended all the features
of natural history according to form and existence ;
here lived Heyne, the teacher and reviver of archseo-
logic science ; and here lived EiCHHOKN, the his-
torian.

Archaeology and history were the domains of
learning on which the two brothers worked in com-
mon ; the classical antiquity, with its philologic and
artistic studies, attracted both; history in its philo-
sophic view, interested William, and served Alexander
to collect materials for cosmography and ethnology.
While William made himself more intimate with
classic literature, and the writings of the philosopher
Kant, Alexander gave himself up to the instructive
and personal influences of Blumenbach, but both
brothers found a common point of union in the con-
genial intercourse with Professor Heyne, who soon
esteemed the young men highly, and exercised a
great influence on their future studies.

Alexander here formed a new and lasting incite-
ment in the acquaintance and quickly-cemented
friendship with Geoege FoESTER, Heyne's son-in-law.
This man had formerly accompanied Cook in his
journey round the world in the capacity of natural

14 LIFE OF

historian, it was therefore natural that he should be
an attraction for Alexander, whose phantasy was
filled with images of a transatlantic strange world,
which Campe, the editor of " Kobinson/' had
awakened in him, and the longing for the personal
knowledge of fabulous districts, for bold sea journeys
and new discoveries was excited in him, when
Forster told of his journey round the world. Thus
Forster was the first portentous individuality, sur-
rounded by the mysterious halo of a transatlantic
journey, who became more closely allied to Alex-
ander VON Humboldt. He was a man of boldness
and fertility of mind, full of a holy striving for
liberty, whose inborn love of freedom had been in-
creased by his early journeys to a new world, and
could ill-domesticate itself in the narrow German
boundaries, and who was at the same time a determined
opponent of the enlightening rage then prevalent in
Berlin. The brothers Humboldt had, from their
childhood, remained far from any contact with the
littlenesses of Prussian officials, but cherished a true
patriotism from their liberal ideas, developed in the
vicinity of an intelligent monarch; the free ideas
of Forster, his bold spirit, and his racy unprejudiced
manner of thinking, had therefore a lasting influence
on the young friends, and founded and developed,
especially in Alexander's character, that feature of
citizenship which is one of his noblest characteristics.
During the summer of 1788, Forster lived with his
wife at the house of his father-in-law, Heyne, in
Gottingen, and in the autumn of that year he went
to fill his new appointment at Mayence, where he was
councillor and librarian of the university then existing
there. That he made an impression also on the elder
brother William would be alone proved by the fact
that soon after Forster's removal from Gottingen he
stayed with him four days on the occasion of a Rhine
journey.

Both brothers sought and valued Forster's acquaint-
ance, and entered into an intimate friendship with

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 15

his wife, a being as intellectual and cultivated as slie
was amiable. The intercourse with Johann Stiegiitz,
whom they knew, from Berlin, where he had belonged
to the Jewish circle of the Mendelssohns, Herz, &c.,
and where he had pursued his philosophical studies,
was less attractive to Alexander than William. It is
strange that Stiegiitz should have entered into the
sentimentality of those circles, as his biographer truly
states that he was only a man of reason, that he
overcame and concealed all emotions for the purpose
of acute calculation and observation, and that he
never "forgot'' himself. It is probable that his
intimate friendship for William had its more natural
origin in the fact, that Stiegiitz had in Gottingen
saved him from drowning in the Leine while bathing
there.

After a lapse of two years the time arrived when
the brothers were to leave the university. Alexander
had in the meantime uninterruptedly devoted himself
to natural history, archseologic, and philologic studies,
under the personal superintendence of celebrated
professors; William had made many journeys during
the time ; among others to Hanover, where he met
Fried, Jacobi, Rehberg, Frau von Wangenheim,
Brandes, and Zimmermann. Kunth was no longer
with them; he had entered into official service, but
lived in the house of Madame Von Humboldt for
nine years, until her death, when her unqualified con-
fidence entrusted him with the further direction of
her family affairs.

But the brothers were now so far advanced m man-
hood that their peculiar mental qualifications were in-
dividually characterised. Alexander had a tendency
for great universal studies with his comprehensive
understanding, while William liked to tarry longer on
a narrower limit, and in a more profound study of
that limit he settled himself on the circumscribed spot
for the time to make similar profound researches on
another field afterwards.

16 LIFE OF

CHAPTEE II.

PKACTICAL APPKENTICESHIP — CIECUMSTANCES — EAELY WOEKS — PLANS
OP TEAVEL, AND HINDEANCES.

In the second half of the year 1789 terminated the
university hfe of Alexander as well as of his brother,
in so far as it related to a higher comprehensive pre-
paration for their future offices. But neither of the
two brothers returned home ; they obeyed a specific
impulse of their individual nature, and entered at
once into their life and intellectual pursuits, which
were henceforward to diverge, even if in their ten-
dency they were sjoiritually allied.

The breaking out of the French revolution affected
the elder, William, educated for political life, more
forcibly than Alexander, who calmly observed nature
in its immutable laws. When, therefore, their first
tutor, Joachim Heinrich Campe, who for some years
had been canon and councillor in Brunswick, deter-
mined in July 1789 to run over to Paris, in order, as
he expressed it, to be present at the funeral of French
despotism (a wish in which he was bitterly deceived),
he found, in addition to another young man, a com-
panion in William von Humboldt, and arrived in
Paris with him on the Srd August. During that period
Alexander lived for natural sciences, and his mind
was directed to the extension of his knowledge of the
earth, which made travelling his dearest wish, and
this was fostered by his constant correspondence with
Forster. It was particularly the formation of the
earth which interested Alexander; he felt himself
confirmed in his tendency by the reputation of Werner,

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 17

the celebrated geologist, and had made this field of
natural science the favourite object of his studies. We,
therefore, in the spring, 1790, with FoRSTER and a
certain YON Geuns, find him making his first scien-
tific journey to the Rhine, through Holland, and to
England ; and this first experience became the subject
of his first literary production. It appeared in the
same year under the title " Mineralogical Observations
on some Basaltic Formations of the Rhine,'' and was
intended to furnish the proof that this mineral was of
neptunic origin, and that its formation, therefore, dated
from the great water phenomena of the earthball.
Forster collected materials on this journey for his
splendid work, " The Views of the Lower Rhine.''

It may with certainty be presumed that Alexander
von Humboldt prepared himself for this journey with
Forster from the Avinter of 1789 to the spring of 1790.
We deduce this from his earnest striving after know-
ledge, and from the fact that this was a journey under-
taken for scientific researches ; he, therefore, spent a
much more intellectual wiuter than his brother Wil-
liam, who enriched himself in a more genial manner.
And here the difference between the two brothers be-
comes very evident, for while William, the elder,
sought the life of society, and susceptible to all the im-
pulses of higher feelings, early entered into ties of im-
portance for his whole life, Alexander had neither found
food for these phases of his soul, nor sought the oppor-
tunity, but had steadfastly kept to the one great pla,n
— to found a future position by faithful researches
into the spirit of natural life. William, urged by the
enthusiastic feature in his character, enjoyed already
the advantages of an aesthetic, select circle, but Alex-
ander studied in his quiet intercourse with that world
whose eternal laws were to become intelligible to him.
While he devoted himself to the geologic and mine-
ralogic preparatory studies for his first journey, and
to a correspondence with Forster, prompted by the
noblest friendship, William lived partly in Erfurt, in
the society of the Baron Dalberg, especially in the

C

18 LIFE OF

family of the president Von Dacheroden, with whose
beautiful and intelligent daughter he betrothed him-
self, and partly in Weimar, where he made the
acquaintance of Schiller through that family, and in
consequence of his betrothal soon became his friend.

It is possible that Alexander's preference for a quiet
spiritual intercourse with nature, whose secrets at-
tracted him, may have been partly caused by physical
reasons, which made him less qualified for the circles
of society, which his brother frequented. He was still
delicate, and had suffered much during the last five
years, and the fear of being hindered by physical
weakness from pursuing the great plans of his mind,
induced him to satisfy all the physical demands of his
nature, and thus prepare himself slowly for his great
travelling plans which had inspired the imagination
of the boy, and which had been matured, through
Forster's influence, to his favourite idea and the pur-
pose of his life.

But the practical course which he had chosen as his
special department, had to be followed as consistently
as his elder brother followed his. The latter was ap-
pointed councillor of legation and assessor to the court
of Berlin, to make a trial of his capability, after which
he intended to marry. Alexander, who had chosen the
department of finances, wished now to prepare himself
for a speedy entrance upon official life. The mineral-
ogical studies, which had delighted him more and
more, and which had become more attractive since his
journey with Forster, excited in him the wish to make
the mining department the special business of his life
and of usefulness to the state. He therefore, in the
same year, went to Hamburg to the commercial
academy, under the direction of Ebeling and Busch,
where he studied the practical part of bookkeeping,
but occupied himself with mineralogy and botany
besides. It is related, that in the winter of 1790-91,
he often went out to seek mosses, which only
grow in winter. His frame of mind here was a sign
of the return of his physical strength, and conse-

ALEXANDEE VON HUIVIBOLDT. 19

quently of his more realizable hopes for the great
travelling plans ever present to his mind's eye. He
was, at this time, as industrious as he was cheerful,
and Forster himself calls the letters written to him at
this time, witty, full of humour, goodness and sensi-
bility. Among his associates we must mention espe-
cially Christian Stollberg.

But Alexander did not stay long in Hamburg. His
love for natural sciences, especially for geognosy (the
science of the composition of the earth's surface) and
the reputation of Werner, director of the mining
academy of Freiburg, who had introduced a new
theory of geology on scientific principles, and who
was at the same time the greatest geognost of the age,
excited the wish in Alexander von Humboldt to go
there likewise, and study the metallurgical sciences.
In addition to this great inducement, it happened
that a young man named Leopold von Buch, of Ber-
lin, who, though younger, had formerly been intimate
with Humboldt, in consequence of his interest in
botany, was also studying mining, and was already in
Freiburg. Humboldt therefore removed to Freiburg
in the spring of 1791, and became a student at the
mining academy at the same time that his brother
William had determined to give up his official ac-
tivity for a time, to retire from public life, and to de-
vote himself to higher studies beside Caroline, whom
he was soon to call his wife. When Alexander left
Hamburg, he hastened to Berlin to enjoy the society
of his mother, his brother who was remaining here
until the summer, and his friend Kunth. He re-
mained here till July for the recreation of his health,
and for the preparations for his plans, and then went
to Freiburg to his mining studies, where he devoted
himself until March in the following year, with es-
pecial zeal to the sciences of mining and metallurgy.

With the spring of 1792, he entered upon his civic
and literary sphere. He was about this time ap-
pointed assessor to the mining and smelting depart-
ments of Berlin, but was in the same year removed to
c 2

20 LIFE OF

Bajrreutli as superintendent of mines in the newly ac-
quired Franconian districts, with the official commis-
sion, entirely to remodel the mining operations there.

The Baron von Hardenberg, who subsequently
played such a prominent part in the Prussian ad-
ministration, and with whom William von Humboldt
entered into such a peculiar connexion and opposition,
was, at the time when Humboldt came to Bayreuth,
a young provincial minister of the Franconian prin-
cipalities, and soon became an intimate friend of the
young superintendent, by whom he was introduced to
William von Humboldt in the following year.

As superintendent, Humboldt was at the same
time general director of the mines in the principalities
of Bayreuth and Anspach ; and his indefatigable in-
dustry was directed, beside his scientific labours, to
the erection of public institutions in these districts.
He filled this position till 1795, when he voluntarily
resigned it ; his soul, during the whole period, v^^orked
secretly at the plan of a great voyage of discovery, but
his immediate neighbourhood and the opportunities
of his position called forth a multitude of learned
works and practical observations, which spread his
reputation as a clever naturalist. He employed him-
self much with various experiments on the physical
and chemical laws of metallurgy, and took a consider-
able share in the dissemination of the theory of his
teacher, Werner, who was an eminent supporter of
the so-called Neptunismus in the formation of the
world, and consequently ascribed all the formations of
the solid earth crust to the influence of the waters.
Alexander von Humboldt's treatises on these subjects
may be found in the " Mining Journal " of VON MoLL,
in Kohler and Hoffman's Journal, in Crell's Chemical
Annals, as well as in the chemical and physical journals
which Gren, Scherer, Gehler, Gilbert, and Poggendorf
edited at that time ; he also worked industriously for
the French periodicals, " Journal de Physique,'' and
" Annales de Chimie." In these treatises he laid down
the foundation of his subsequent riper observations

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. '21

and more fertile experiences ; for as he never treated
cursorily, or isolated any material for general know-
ledge, he afterwards incorporated these youthful pro-
ductions in a larger sphere, and we find them nearly
all corrected and enlarged in his large works of travel,
written at a matured age. A more considerable work,
written in the year 1793, appeared under the title,
" Florse Freiburgensis Specimen,'' or " Flora of Crypto-
gamic Plants of the neighbourhood of Freiburg,'' in
which he publishes the result of his observations of
the mines of the district, made during his residence
there, especially of the fungi growing in the shafts of
the mines. These were appended to his Aphorisms
from the chemical physiology of plants, which contain
his experiments on the susceptibility of plants, their
mode of nourishment, their colour, &c., and give a
number of observations and opinions, which are still,
after the immense progress the science has made in
the last fifteen years, very valuable, and reveal the
clear, penetrating power of observation of their author.

In 1794 he accompanied the provincial minister,
Von Hardenburg, to the Rhine, whither a political
mission had called him. This journey revived his
longing for the realization of the favourite plan of his
life, and he endeavoured therefore to realize his larger
journeys by smaller ones. He accordingly prepared
for his projected journeys by tours through the Alp
districts and Silesia; and his love of travel was par-
tially gratified by an order he received from the
government to make a trip into the province of
Prussia and Poland, in his official capacity.

Although Humboldt's position was a favourable one
for the cultivation of his favourite science, it did not
suffice for his active mind, thirsting for an unknown
world. From his youth upwards it had ever been his
plan to make Transatlantic voyages of discovery, and
on this plan he concentrated all his vigour.*

* Humboldt says of himself : ** I had from my earliest youth felt a
burning desire to travel in distant lands unexplored by Europeans.
This desire characterizes a period in our existence in which life ap-

22 LIFE OF

In the year 1795, he resigned his office of master
of the mines, and went to Vienna, where he associated
with the famed geognost Freiesleben, employed himself
with botany, especially with the study of an excellent
collection of exotic plants which he found here, and
planned a journey into Switzerland with Freiesleben.
His purpose was now to see Italy, especially the vol-
canic districts of Naples and Sicily. He went there
with a Herr von Haften, but had to limit his plans to
Upper Italy, without being able to reach the volcanoes,
on account of the war. It was at this time that the
great discovery of Galvani — the discovery of that
natural force which in our times has afforded such
important practical results, and which was called gal-
vanism, after its discoverer — ^was studied with great
interest by Humboldt, and was variously experimented
upon by him.

But his scientific industry received many sad
checks about this time. His beloved mother had
suffered from increasing delicacy for some months ; his
brother William, who, after an agreeable stay in Jena
in 1794, had, with his young wife, entered into inti-
mate social and intellectual relations with Schiller
and Goethe, the philosopher Fichte, the historian
Woltmann, the philologian councillor Schlitz, the pro-
fessor and antiquary Ilger, the theologian Paulus, the
doctors Stark and Hufeland, &c., wrote to him in
1795, to Bayreuth, that he had in the month of June
found his mother ill in Tegel, and had therefore post-
poned his intended return to Jena that winter. Now

pears to us as an unbounded horizon, where nothing has greater
attractions for us than strong emotions of the soul and physical
dangers. Brought up in a country which has no immediate con-
nexion with the Indian colonies, and subsequently an inhabitant of
mountain districts, which, far from the sea shore, are famed for their
mines, I felt a violent passion for the sea and for long maritime
voyages develop itself in my soul. All objects which we know only
by the descriptions of travellers have an especial charm : our phan-
tasy is pleased with whatever appears infinite and unlimited. The
enjoyments we have to renounce seem to us to have greater charms
than those which fall to our sbare in the narrow circle of our quiet
life."

ALEXANDEE VON HUMBOLDT. 2S

in the beginning of December, Alexander received
the sad news from his brother, who had since the
end of April 1796 returned to Jena, that their mother
had died on the 20th of November.

This news, and the family affairs consequent
thereon, called him away from his scientific and
travelling plans for a short time, and in the be-
ginning of the year 1797, he came to his brother to
Jena, where he found William's wife ill in con-
sequence of the birth of her second son.

He remained here until the spring, but the great
plan of a West Indian journey had been so far
matured, that he employed the time of his stay at
Jena entirely with preparations for this important
scientific undertaking. He found Freiesleben here,
and entered into more intimate relations with Goethe,
who had arrived there on a visit, and his practically-
continued anatomical studies excited his brother
Wniiam's and even Goethe's interest for them to
such a degree, that the former heard private lectures
on anatomy from Professor Loder with him, and
Goethe often and with pleasure conversed with him
on zoological preparations. Besides this, he continued
the experiments on galvanism he had commenced at
Vienna, and turned his attention chiefly to the laws
of muscular irritation, and the disposition under gal-
vanism of living nerves in living animals. He saw
here a phenomenon analogous in many points to
galvanism, and composed another work which gave
new explanations on the efficacy of galvanic chains of
animal substances on the susceptible muscular and
nervous fibre. The interest in the development of
this force in living animals continued, and we shall
see how he makes observations during his travels on
the peculiar development of electricity in the so-called
electrical fish. A work on a similar subject which he
had prepared in Jena, he could not publish himself,
as his anxiety to commence his journey made him
impatient of the necessary delays; he sent his
manuscript to Blumenbach in Gottingen, who pub-

24 LIFE OF

lished it with his own notes. In spring he left Jena,
full of the plans for his "West Indian journey. His
friends there parted with him unwillingly, for even
Goethe, who had been there only a short time on a
visit, and had returned to Weimar in April, had
experienced the instructive influence of Alexander's
presence, and wrote to Schiller : " I have spent the
time with Humboldt agreeably and usefully; my
natural historic studies have been roused from their
winter sleep by his presence.''

Alexander's fondness for travel found a willing
sympathizer in his brother William ; they spoke only
of travels, and dreamed of distant countries, and
Schiller wrote at this time (14th April, 1797) to
Goethe: "Although the whole family of Humboldt,
down to the servant, lie ill with ague, they still speak
only of great journeys." For the brothers had made
the plan to travel together to Italy, after a short stay
in Berlin for the regulation of the mother's in-
heritance, and from there Alexander was to go to
Spain, and thence to America.

At the end of April, Alexander and his brother
William with his family left Jena. To accommodate
the latter, who wished to have some verbal com-
munications mth Wolff concerning an intended
translation of " Agamemnon," he remained for some
days in Halle, and then hastened to Berlin, to
arrange the affairs of the inheritance, with the
assistance of the faithful Kunth, in such a manner,
that he was prepared at once for a long absence from
Europe. The estate of Ringenwalde, in Neumark,
had fallen to his share, while the elder brother took
possession of Tegel, but he wished to sell it, that he
might with the proceeds realize as soon as possible
the project of his West Indian journey, which he had
cherished for seven years, and which was an expensive
private undertaking. The members of the Hum-
boldt family therefore met in June in Dresden, where
they regulated their affairs with the advice and
assistance of Kunth, who had likewise joined them.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 25

Alexander sold his estate to the poet Franz von
Kleist, and confided the care of his property to Kunth,
who also became manager of William's estates.

And now the long talked of plan of a journey to
Italy together was to be realized. But a new delay
took place ; the intended stay of a few days grew to
weeks — a relapse of fever of William's wife detained
them all in Dresden. These premature delays in the
long considered great plans induced Schiller to write
to Goethe on the 23rd July: " That will be a fine
journey! They must now already stay aboVe their
time in Dresden V But their long stay was agreeably
passed in the society of Korner, of the Prussian am-
bassador, Count Gessler, and the great philologian
Adelung.

But greater and more unpleasant delays were to
detain them.

Alexander went with his brother and family to
Vienna, but here already their intended stay of a few
days was involuntarily lengthened, because they had
to await the issue of the impending warlike demon-
strations between Austria and Bonaparte, and these
were still delayed. Here they made the acquaintance
of a Westphalian family, Von Haften, and Alexander
found in Hen- von Haften a former friend, who, like
him, interested himself for geology. Besides, they
found the young naturalist Fischer, afterwards Rus-
sian councillor, and while Alexander bore the suspense
consequent on the warlike events more cheerfully in
scientific studies of nature, his brother William passed
the time in the imperial library with the young philo-
logian Bast.

But public affairs had now taken such a turn that
a journey to Italy was no longer possible. For
although the French had been almost driven out of
the south of Germany in the former year by the vic-
tories of the Archduke Charles, yet Bonaparte's bold
and victorious tactics had now gained other and more
important advantages, for by his domination of the
Adriatic provinces, and by other victories in Italy, he

26 LIFE OF

forced Austria to negotiations wMcli were considerably-
protracted, but which allowed no doubt of Italy's
fate.

Under these circumstances the brothers were forced
to give up their plan of travelling to Italy, especially
when they heard that Goethe, who also wished to go
there, could only for the same reasons proceed as far
as Switzerland.

This news that Goethe was in Switzerland deter-
mined Alexander to realize his plan of a Swiss journey.
As the family of Humboldt had determined to visit
Paris, Alexander made up his mind also to accompany
his brother thither. But then the events of the 18th
Fructidor took place, by which the peace party was
overthrown, and by which Austria was forced to acce-
lerate the war negotiations by greater compliance.
Schiller, who believed these French events would in-
duce the Humboldts to give up their journey to Paris,
was as much deceived as Goethe, who, being still in
Switzerland, towards the end of September expressed
his belief to Schiller that the Humboldts, after their
journey to the Alps, would pass the winter very sociably
at Jena. It was, on the contrary, the plan of the
brothers Humboldt to draw nearer the French boun-
dary at the foot of the Alps, and to await the hoped
for conclusion of peace between Austria and the
French republic here. Alexander intended in the
meantime to give his scientific attention to the Swiss
soil, so fertile and interesting for his geognostic
studies.

The family, therefore, left Vienna in the beginning
of October 1797, and Alexander accompanied them
to Salzburg, where he met his friend and Freiburg
fellow-student, Leopold von Buch, and soon renewed
his scientific intercourse with him. As William, in
certain anticipation of an impending peace, wished at
once to continue his journey westward, and as Alex-
ander was attracted by Leopold von Buch and the
mountains, the brothers separated, and William tra-
velled with his family to Munich, Basel, and, as the

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 27

peace of Campo Formio was concluded on the 17th
October, to Paris, while Alexander wandered with
Leopold von Buch for scientific purposes in the Alps
of Salzburg and Styria, tarried some time in the
mountains, and remained in Salzburg with his friend
during the winter of 1797-98. They had to give up
the idea of a trip into Upper Italy, in which Herr von
Haften was to have joined them.

In the spring of 1798, Alexander left Salzburg and
went to Paris, where his brother was still staying,
whose house was the "point de ralliement for all the
educated Germans. But Alexander von Humboldt's
arrival in Paris had higher plans ; he wished to meet
with opportunities for his great journey. In Salzburg
already he had determined on joining an expedition
to Upper Egypt, but the political events forced him to
abstain. He had met with a man who was passion-
ately devoted to the fine arts, and whose soul was
longing for a journey to Egypt. This man, who had
before been on the coasts of Hlyria and Greece, had
made the proposal to him to examine the old monu-
ments along the Nile as far as Assuan for a period of
about eight months. Humboldt made the condition
that he should continue the journey over Palestine
and Syria on their return from Alexandria. The pro-
moter was very anxious for Humboldt's company, as
his accurate knowledge of the classic nations of anti-
quity, which he had acquired about this time for this
journey would be of infinite service to him. The
political aspect of Europe destroyed this plan also.
But his ardent spirit was not discouraged by these
disappointments — his projects remained unaltered.
He still had the plan of visiting the American conti-
nent ; it was the purpose of his life, and he had, since
his eighteenth year, prepared himself for it by shorter
travels in Europe, in order to be able to compare his
geological experiences in the formation of America,
and to gain the necessary practical knowledge of the
instruments calculated to assist such researches as he
anticipated making. Thus intellectually prepared he

28 LIFE OF

was, at the same time, in possession of the pecuniary
means requisite for such gigantic plans ; his striving
soul, placed by a favouring fate in the happiest circum-
stances of life, knew not the wants and privations
which often retard the most distinguished men in the
execution of their plans, and delay their development
and usefulness. He experienced some disappoint-
ments which could not destroy his hopes, but only
delayed their fulfilment for a short time.

When the Egyptian journey was given up, Alex-
ander von Humboldt heard that the national museum
in France was preparing an expedition which, under
command of Captain Baudin, was to make a voyage
of discovery to the southern hemisphere. His anxiety
to examine unknown countries drove him quickly to
Paris to join the expedition, if necessary, at his own
expense. With this intention, he came to his elder
brother in Paris. Two naturalists, Messrs. Michaax
and Bonpland, were appointed for this expedition, to
direct the scientific researches ; and Humboldt's first
care was to make their acquaintance. He became
more especially intimate with Aime Bonpland. This
young man was one of the most distinguished students
of the military college, and of the botanical gardens
of Paris, and found a congenial friend in Humboldt.
Humboldt's participation in the expedition was wel-
come, and the scientific preparations for the great
undertaking were zealously made by him. He learned
Arabic, which called his brother's attention to the
study of American languages ; he became acquainted
with the most eminent naturalists and mathemati-
cians of Paris. His "Reseaeches on the Com-
position OF THE Atmospheee,'' which he had com-
menced alone, he continued partly with the assistance
of the celebrated natural philosopher Gay-Lussac,
with whom he undertook eudiometric investigations
of the chemical analysis of the atmosphere, repeating
them at all seasons, and in all temperatures, and by
which he rendered important services to a juster
knowledge of this subject. These learned studies

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 29

were founded on others whicli he had no doubt com-
menced before, during his official and scientific rela-
tion with the mines, namely " on subterranean gases/'
which he must have finished here in Paris, beside his
other chemical labours, as the work was published at
the commencement of the following year, when he had
left the country.

But at the commencement already of his great
journey under Capt. Baudin, he experienced a painful
disappointment. The threatened resumption of a war
with Italy and Germany destroyed the intended ex-
pedition to the southern hemisphere, as the French
government needed the funds appointed for the pur-
pose. Humboldt's determination to accompany an
expedition of French learned men to Egypt, could
also not be executed, because, after the battle of
Aboukir, which the French lost to the English under
Nelson, the communication with Alexandria ceased.

But Alexander von Humboldt had made the journey
to another quarter of the world such a firm purpose
of his life, that repeated disappointments could not
disturb him in his preparations for the undertaking ;
he therefore continued to collect the necessary mate-
rials and knowledge for the journey, although he had
to wait again for another opportunity. In Bonpland
he found a congenial spirit, for he also was determined,
at all hazards, to explore unknown regions.

In the autimm of the same year, Humboldt made
the acquaintance of the Swedish consul Scioldebrand,
who passed through Paris with the intention of going
to Marseilles, where he was to embark on a Swedish
frigate, which was expected there in October, and go
to Algiers on a special mission. Humboldt thought
he had at last found a suitable opportunity for com-
mencing a scientific journey through Egypt and
Africa, and Bonpland offered to accompany him.
They proposed subsepuently to join the caravan to
Mecca, and to go to East India across the Persian
sea. As the Swedish ambassador promised them the
sea passage, they soon made a plan for thek journey;

so LIFE OF

they intended to examine tlie high mountain ridges of
Morocco, and possibly to join the learned men who
had accompanied the French army to Egypt.

Towards the end of October, 1798, Humboldt left
Paris, and went to Marseilles, to await the Swedish
frigate. He was quite prepared, and accompanied by
his friend and fellow-traveller Bonpland. The leave-
taking between the brothers was a sad one, for both
had been accustomed to live in intellectual intercourse
with each other, and to be each the complement of
the other. Alexander von Humboldt speaks thus of
this separation : " I left my brother, who, by advice
and by example, had exercised a great influence over
the direction of my ideas. He approved of the rea-
sons which induced me to leave Europe ; an inward
voice told us we should meet again. This hope al-
leviated the pain of a long separation."

But his cup of disappointments was not yet full ; it
seemed as if fate had determined to detain him on
the European shores, or to let him seek another, bet-
ter course. For two months he waited at Marseilles
with his friend Bonpland, but the Swedish frigate,
which was to take the consul to Algiers, did not come,
and at last the news arrived that she had been injured
in a storm on the coast of Portugal, and would arrive
at Marseilles in spring.

Humboldt thought of a return or of a relinquish-
ment of his plans as little as his friend Bonpland ;
they determined to spend the winter in Spain, to
occupy themselves there scientifically, and to seek
some other ship's opportunity in the spring, especially
as a journey to Morocco for scientific purposes seemed
scarcely advisable, disturbances having occurred in
Tunis.

With the commencement of the year 1799, the two
travellers started for Madrid, but the pilgrimage
thither was at the same time a scientific excursion.
Humboldt being furnished with excellent instruments
for an exploring journey, determined the altitude and
astronomic position of many important points, ascended

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 8 J

the peaks of the Montserat and ascertained the real
altitude of the central plain of Castille ; while Bon-
pland explored the vegetable kingdom, and culled rich
fruits therefrom. Humboldt found the climate of
Castille much colder than that of Toulon or Genoa ;
he found the heart of Spain covered with sandstone,
gypsum, rock salt, and Jura limestone ; the mountains
in many parts overgrown with dates, bananas, sugar
cane, and other plants indigenous to northern Africa,
which yet did not suffer from the here prevaihng
winter cold.

In Madrid then* travelling genius, which had hitherto
frowned on them, suddenly turned in their favour.
Humboldt found here the Saxon ambassador. Baron
von Forell, who took great interest in his projects,
recommended him and his companion to the liberal-
minded Spanish minister, Don Mariano Luis DE
Urquijo ; and by his intercession, Humboldt was in-
troduced to the court in Aranjuez, in March. Here
he found the opportunity of explaining to the king
his scientific plans, and their probable advantages and
•practical utility, and was fortunate enough to incline
the king most graciously in favour of his plans. He
received the unusual royal permission to visit and
examine all the Spanish possessions in America, with-
out any limitation or inconvenient condition, and the
minister promised him his mediation for protection
and promotion of his plans. It is strange that the
geographical discoverer of America, Columbus, and
the scientific explorer, Humboldt, should both have
been assisted in their journey by Spain. The joy
which Humboldt and Bonpland felt at this sudden
favourable turn of their circumstances so increased
their ardour, that they determined to make use of the
royal permission as speedily as possible. They there-
fore lost no more time in preparation, but left Madrid
in the middle of May, to go to some harbour, and to
explore Spain on the way. With this intention, they
passed through a portion of old Castile, the provinces
of Leon and Gallicia, till they came to the port of
Corunna.

32 LIFE OF

With overflowing joy Alexander communicated the
near fulfilment of his long- cherished plans and wishes
to his elder brother at Paris, and his descriptions of
Spain, which were painted in the most glowing colours
by the animated pleasure he felt, persuaded William
von Humboldt to a journey there. Alexander must
have described the beautiful Spain to his brother so
attractively already in February, when he was still on
his way to Madrid, for Frau von Humboldt wrote
home at that time that her husband intended to go
alone to Madrid, perhaps even to Lisbon, at the end
of March, while she would remain in the P3rrenees
with the children. The subsequent descriptions of
Alexander, on his way from Madrid to Corunna, could
not have been less attractive and less inducive to
William's determination, for his journey took him
past the beautiful mountain ridges and rocks of Gal-
licia, and the granite peaks of Corunna, where he
made their formation a subject of interesting inqui-
ries, and planned a pleasing picture of the breaches
made by the sea, which must have violently separated
these mountains which, millenniums ago, were united
ridges and precipitous rocks. These descriptions,
written in the charming style of an Alexander von
Humboldt, were probably the cause that the modest
plan mentioned by Madame von Humboldt in her
letter was extended by her husband, and that the
whole family commenced their pilgrimage to Spain in
July.*

Alexander arrived in Corunna with his companion;
but here another hindrance threatened to prevent
their departure. The English had blockaded the

' * "William von Humboldt also wrote " Notes" on this trip, which
clearly show the intellectual intimacy existing between the brothers.
As Alexander everywhere, on his scientific journeys, turns his ob-
servation comprehensively to ethnographical, philological, historical,
and philosophic subjects, which were properly William's sphere ; so
William, whose subjects were more the ideal and mental develop-
ments of life, has also given splendid descriptions of inanimate
nature and of the world of reality. Both brothers show, in these
conceptions, their common intellectual origin and education.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 33

port, in order to cut off the communication between
Spain and its colonies. The two travellers had re-
commendations from the Spanish minister and from
the chief secretary of state to Don Raphael Clavigo,
who had for some time been superintendent of the
ports, but he could do nothing more than, in obe-
dience to the commands of the minister, to make their
stay as agreeable as possible, for they were obliged to
wait until the blockading En'giish fleet should permit
their departure. A ship, the corvette Pizarro, was
lying in the port and was intended to sail to Mexico
and Havannah, but had been detained by the blockade.
Clavigo advised Humboldt to go on board that ship,
and wait for a favourable opportunity of putting out
to sea. The travellers followed this advice, and as
they were anxious for their valuable instruments, and
expressed the wish also to visit the island of Tene-
riffe, Clavigo commanded the captain of the Pizarro
not only to provide a safe place for Humboldt's scien-
tific instruments, but also to stay at the above-named
island as long a time as the travellers would require
to visit the port of Oratava, and to ascend the peak
of Teneriffe.

The fev/ days which elapsed before their effects
could be shipped were spent, partly in a classified
arrangement of the plants collected in Spain, partly
in correspondence, partly in short trips to the little
town of Ferrol, situated at the other point of the bay,
where they made experiments on the temperature of
the sea and the decrease of heat in the superincum-
bent layers of water. By these experiments they
found the result, so important to navigators, that the
neighbourhood of a sand-bank is revealed before the
lead can be made use of, by the quick decrease in the
temperature of the water, and that the seaman can
therefore perceive the approach of danger much
sooner by the thermometer than by the lead. At the
moment of departure Humboldt wrote a letter to
Captain Baudin, in which he reminded him of the
promise he had given, that if the delayed expedition
D

34 LIFE OF

should still be realized, and he should steer round the
Cape of Good Hope, Humboldt would join him either
at Monte Yideo, Chili, or Lima, or at whichever of the
Spanish colonies he might be. This letter had im-
portant consequences. Through false newspaper re-
ports he learnt in that distant country that Baudin
had really commenced his journey, and Humboldt,
mindful of his promise, travelled with Bonpland to
Portobello over the isthmus of Panama to the coasts
of the South Sea, although he was at the time in
Cuba, and thus made a journey of more than eight
hundred (German) miles in a country which he had
not intended to visit. We shall have occasion to re-
vert to this.

A violent storm, which commenced with a high
tide and a flood from the north-west, obliged Hum-
boldt and Bonpland to interrupt their experiments,
but became extremely favourable to them for their
travels. The two English frigates and the liner
which had blockaded the harbour were forced by
the violent storm to quit the Spanish coast and
make for the open sea ; Clavigo's advice was to
seize the opportunity hastily to embark their instru-
ments and their luggage, and not to let the temporary
absence of the English men-of-war pass without an
attempt to leave. Humboldt and Bonpland imme-
diately set sail, but were obliged, on account of the
increasing west wind, to tack about for several days.
At last, on the afternoon of the 5th of June, after
having succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the
English cruisers, they steered for the open sea, passed
the Hercules tower, then the light-house of Corunna
half-an-hour later, and in the evening, favoured by
the fresh breeze, they reached the open agitated sea.

Humboldt's heart must have beaten joyfully when
he at last saw his hope and his longing, cherished for
nine years, and so frequently disappointed, on the eve
of fulfilment ; what must have been his feelings when,
at nine o'clock in the evening, he saw the light of a
fishing-hut of Sisarga as the last object on the

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. S5

EuropeaQ coast, and which, in the increasing distance,
was scarcely distinguishable from the stars which
rose on the horizon 1 His looks and Bonpland's were
involuntarily fixed on it. " Oh,'" he exclaimed, years
afterwards, "these impressions will never be erased
from my memory ! How many recollections does not
one bright spot shining unsteadily over the agitated
waves in the darkness of night, and pointing out
the shores of our native earth, recall to the imagina-
tion!"

D 2

36 LIFE OF

CHAPTER III.

THE OPEN SEA — THE FIRST STEP ON A FOREIGN SOIL — TENERIFFE —
CUMANA — EARTHQUAKES — DEPARTURE.

They sailed quickly; the sea current, propelled by
the gulf-current which flows from the Azores towards^
the Straits of Gibraltar and the Canary Isles, and
which drives round the waters of the Atlantic Ocean,
in a continual circular course of 3800 miles, occupied
the attention of the travel-glad naturalists. An English
cruising fleet seen in the distance, determined the
captain to diverge from the originally-intended course
during the night, still, however, steering towards the
thirtieth degree south. Sea swallows and dolphins
accompanied Humboldt so far. On the 11th of June
he for the first time enjoyed the surprising appearance
of the sea covered by an innumerable quantity of
Medusae, which passed the vessel with great velocity,
and which, by their metallic lustre, formed an agreeable
contrast to the azure-coloured ocean.

A first marine voyage fills such a mind as that of
Humboldt's with new events, new views and expe-
riences, every hour. During the night he saw Medusse
emit electric sparks at the moment when the act of
catching them communicated to them a slight shock.
Between Madeira and the African coast he perceived
a perfect rain of shooting stars, which became more
vivid the further south the ship sailed. This pheno-
menon, which is seen sometimes in the South Sea, in
the neighbourhood of volcanoes, and in many parts
of Europe, has been made the subject of especial

ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 37

study by Humboldt, and has led to a new explanation
of this periodically-recurring rain of shooting stars.

Humboldt and his companions found another
greeting from their native land. A martin alighted
on a sail, so exhausted, that it could be caught with
the hand ; it was the last, and, for the season, unusual
messenger from the land, whom longing had urged
across the sea.

New scenes of brilliant natural phenomena increased
in the vicinity of the islands now rising on the horizon,
when the sea was calm and the sky clear. Humboldt
and his friend often spent a part of the night on deck ;
there they watched the volcanic points of the Canary
island Lancerote, illuminated by the moonlight, with
the beautiful sign of the scorpion twinkling above
them, as the moon was gradually obscured by the
midnight clouds rising from behind the volcano.
Here they saw on the indistinct fading shore, fires
moving to and fro, which fishermen, preparing for
their work, probably carried about on the coast, and
Humboldt was reminded of the traditional moving
lights which the old Spaniards, the companions of
Columbus, had perceived on the island of Guanahani
the night which preceded the discovery of America.
And this time the twinkling flame was a good omen
for Humboldt, the scientific Columbus of modern
days.

The travellers sailed past the small islands of the
Canary group, whose appearance, with their shores,
their blunt conical rocks and volcanic elevations, pleased
them much, and whose sea frurnished them interesting
marine plants ; a blunder of the captain, who mis-
took a basaltic rock for a fortress, and sent an officer
to it, gave them the opportunity of landing on the
small island La Graciosa. It was the first non-
European soil which Humboldt trod on, and he has
expressed his feelings on the occasion in these words :
" Nothing can express the feeling of a naturalist when,
for the first time, he stands on a soil which is not
European. His attention falls on so many objects,

88 LIFE OF

that he finds it difficult to classify the impressions he
receives. With every step he thinks to find a new
specimen, and in this frame of mind he often fails to
recoo-nise those which are most common in our bo-
tanic gardens, and our historic collections/'

The celebrated peak Teyde on Teneriffe, from whose
appearance Humboldt had antici23ated great pleasure,
was concealed by the mist of the atmosphere. As
this rock is not covered by eternal snow, it is indeed
rarely visible at a great distance, even though its
sugarloaf point reflects the white colour of the pumice
stone which covers it, as blocks of black lava and a
fertile vegetation surround it. When Humboldt and
his companion had arrived at Santa Cruz, on Tene-
riffe, and had received firom the governor, in conse-
quence of their recommendations from the court of
Madrid, permission to make excursions in the island,
they made use of it the same day, after having been
welcomed and entertained in the most friendly man-
ner in the house of Major Armiago, commander of a
regiment of infantry. In the garden of their kind
host, Humboldt for the first time saw the banana tree,
hitherto onl}^ known from conservatories, the papaya
(melon tree) and other tropical plants, growing in the
open air. As, on account of the English blockade,
the ship on which Humboldt travelled could only be
permitted to remain four or five days, Humboldt and
Bonpland hastened to reach the port of Orotava, and
thence to take a guide to the peak. On the way, they
met a quantity of white camels, which are here used
as beasts of burden. But it was the ascension of the
peak of Teneriffe on which Humboldt had fixed his
greatest expectations. A beautiful road led from
Laguna, a town situated 1620 feet above the sea, to
the port of Orotava, and then a landscape of incom-
parable sweetness surrounded him. Date and cocoa
nut trees cover the coast, higher up the mountains
flourish dragon trees, vines cluster round the preci-
pices, and the occasional chapels peep out between
orange trees, myrtles and cypresses ; all the walls are

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 39

overgrown mtli mosses and ferns, and while above,
the volcano is covered with snow and ice, an eternal
spring reigns in the valleys. Thus surrounded by a
perfect paradise, Humboldt and his companion came
to Orotava, and from here they wended their way to-
wards the volcano, a stony path lying through a
beautiful chesnut grove.

Teneriffe was indeed calculated, as the first tropical
country whicli Humboldt saw, to heighten his love for
travelling, and to cheer and encourage the mind.
The naturalist Anderson, who accompanied Cook on
his third voyage round the world, advised all the doc-
tors of the world to send their patients to Teneriffe,
where the beauty of nature, and the evergreen picture
of the most fertile vegetation, would give peace and
speedy recovery to the oppressed mind. And he has
not said too much, for Humboldt also describes the
island as an enchanting garden, and he felt the in-
fluence of this glorious natural picture with an inherent
sense of beauty, although, to the eyes of geologists,
the island appears only as an accumulation of inte-
resting volcanic formations of different ages.

Humboldt ascended the peak with Bonpland, and
made most interesting observations on its formation,
its geological history, and the consequential circles of
the vegetation surrounding it. But he made here one
very important general observation, namely, that the
inorganic forms of nature, such as mountains and
rocks, resemble each other in the most distant dis-
tricts of the world, but that organic forms, such as
plants and animals, vary from each other. As Hum-
boldt sailed past the coasts of this group of islands
he seemed to recognise known formations of moun-
tain, to be transported even to the Rhine shores near
Bonn, while the forms of the animal and vegetable
world change with the climate, and vary according to
the depth or altitude of their position. The rocks,
older perhaps than climatory influences, are the same
in both hemispheres. But this diversity in plants and
animals, depending on the climate, and the height of

40 LIFE OF

the soil above the sea, aroused in Humboldt that
great interest in the geographical diffusion of plants
and animals, which, by his continued researches in Ame-
rica, made him entitled to rank as the first scientific
founder of this study. How important the influence
of altitude is on this propagation of plants he had
perceived already during his ascension of the cele-
brated peak of Tenerifie. There he passed first
through the regions of tree-like heaths, then he came
higher up to a belt of ferns, higher still a wood of
juniper and fir trees ; over that was a plain two hours
and a half journey in breadth, covered with Spanish
broom, after which he came to the pumice-stone soil
of the volcanic crater, where he was welcomed by the
beautiful retama, with its sweet-smelling buds, and
the wild indigenous peak goat.

It might have been expected that Humboldt would
continue his geological studies here on the crater of a
volcano, and he did so most successfully, for he col-
lected new materials for his subsequent observations
on, and explanations of, the volcanic influence in the
formation of the earth, and the phenomena of earth-
quakes.

A glance at the sea and the coast showed Hum-
boldt and Bonpland that their ship Pizarro was under
sail, and this alarmed them much, as they feared it
might prepare for departure without them. They
left the rock as speedily as possible, and rejoined their
ship, which had already waited for them to take its
departure.

But Humboldt had gained important matter for
his future discoveries during this short excursion.
The group of Canary Islands had become an instruc-
tive book of infinitely rich contents, whose diversity
in a small space necessarily led a mind like Hum-
boldt's to further universal study. He felt the true
mission of a naturalist, and. the importance of special
research. The soil on which we move in joy and sor-
row is the most mutable, most active in destruction
and reconstruction — a power rulei in it which ar-

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 41

ranges and forms the shapeless, which chains the
planets to the sun, which gives the living breath of
warmth to the cold mass, which forcibly destroys the
seemingly-complete, which a human being in his nar-
row sphere considers as a gigantic whole, and replaces
it by new forms. What is this power? How
DOES IT CREATE, HOW DESTROY? These were the
next great questions which forced themselves on
Humboldt's mind, and to whose scientific solution he
determined to devote his life. " What is a day of
creation ?" he exclaimed. " Did one revolution of
the world round its axis suffice for it, or is it the
result of a course of millennium ? or did the conti-
nent rise out of the water, or did the water sink into
the depressions of the earth ? Was it the force of
fire or of water which raised the mountains, levelled
the plains, and placed boundaries to land and sea ?
What are volcanoes ? How did they originate, and
how do they act V

Teneriffe gave him the first answer. He perceived
the truth of what he had already made the principle
of inquiry, — to look upon all specialities only as the
parts of an intimately connected chain of universal
causes and effects, running through all the laborato-
ries of nature, to find herein the cue in the apparent
labyrinth of infinite variety, and therefore not to over-
look the seemingly insignificant with carelessness, but
rather to see the great in the little, the whole in the
part. Seen in this spirit, the volcano of Teneriffe
was for Humboldt a key to many great mysteries of
universal life ; he perceived the various means which
nature applies to form and destroy, and he thus made
the history of the single one the rule for the history
of the universal. The fire of the volcano which he
ascended on Teneriffe was long since extinguished,
but its traces seemed to Humboldt as the gigantic
letters in explanation of the tremendous element
which once pervaded our earth, which broke through
the earth's crust, which buried men, animals, plants,
and towns, and which still propagates its veins in the

42 LIFE OF

depth, to shake the earth here and there, or to explode
with flame and glowing lava through its safety-valves,
the volcanic craters. And Humboldt taught us to
understand all this !

We will now follow the vessel on which Humboldt
and his friend were travelling over the sea, on their
course to central America.

On the way the travellers occupied themselves
principally with the sea winds, which became more
equable the nearer they approached the African coast.
The mildness of the climate and the calmness of the
scenery here, increased the charm of the journey ; and
when Humboldt had reached the northern regions of
the Cape Verd Islands, the great swimming seaweeds
attracted his attention : they form banks of marine
plants, and are probably rooted in the bottom of the
sea, as branches eight hundred feet long have been
found. But the human mind has also its claims on
such a long voyage ; wherever the eye turns it sees
waves, clouds, or sky ; it longs for the sight of familiar
objects. The ship's crew seeks a strange person, — it
would like to hear a voice from a strange mouth —
from another country. It is therefore always a joyful
occurrence if another vessel passes ; all rush to the
deck; they call, ask the name and destination, sign to
each other, and mutually vanish from each other's
horizon. The scientific labours of Humboldt and his
companion, spite of the rich matter of new and un-
usual things which every day brought them, could
not repress the emotions of his mind. Humboldt also
rejoiced to see a sail appear on the distant horizon,
but he felt the first pain of the mariner when gradu-
ally the mast and the remains of a shipwrecked ship
covered with seaweed hove in sight ; the wreck floated
on like a grass-covered grave : where might be the
remains of those who expired in the destroying storm,
with a last struggle for their life ! These feelings
involuntarily obtruded themselves on the travellers.

But a beautiful, inspiring sight awaited Humboldt. ■
In the night of the 4-5 July, under the sixteenth

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 4S

degree of longitude, he saw the brilliant constellation
of the southern cross; and when he gazed for the
first time on this sign of a new world, he felt with
deep emotion that the dreams of his childhood were
realized. What he felt at this hour of his life, he be-
trays in his own words : " When one begins to cast a
look on geographical charts, and to read the narratives
of travellers, one feels a kind of preference for certain
countries and climates, of which preference we can
give no satisfactory account in riper age. These im-
pressions exercise a sensible influence on our plans,
and we endeavour, almost instinctively, to approach-
nearer to those objects which have long had a secret
charm for us. When I first studied the stars, I was
agitated by a secret fear, unknown to those who lead
a sedentary life ; it grieved me to resign the hope of
seeing the beautiful constellations which are situated
near the south pole. Impatient to explore the equa-
torial regions, I could never raise my eyes to the
starred vault of heaven without thinking of the cross
of the south pole, and without recalling to mind the
beautiful passage in Dante's ' Inferno,' in which he
refers to it.'' The whole ship's company, especially
those who had already inhabited the American colonies,
shared the satisfaction which Humboldt felt at the
sight of this constellation. In the solitude of the
ocean, a star is greeted as a friend from whom one
has been long separated ; and above this, a religious
feeling endears this constellation to the Spaniards and
Portuguese, for it was the same constellation which
welcomed the first mariners of the 15th century, when
the stars of their native north vanished from before
them.

But Humboldt was also to experience the terrible
scourge of illness on board a ship, during the last days
of his journey. A malignant fever broke out, which
grew more serious the nearer the ship approached the
Antilles. A young Asturian of nineteen years of
age, the youngest of the passengers, died, and his
death made a deep impression on Humboldt, partly

44 LIFE OF

from tlie circumstances connected with his journey, —
for he had undertaken it to seek his fortunes and
provide for a beloved mother who had put her trust
in him. Humboldt was sitting on the deck with
Bonpland, and filled with sad reflection ; the fever in
the cabins grew more and more malignant ; his eye
rested on a desert, mountainous coast which the moon
now and then gleamed on through tlie dark clouds.
The slightly agitated sea glowed with a weak phos-
phoric light ; nothing was heard but the monotonous
cry of some sea birds seeking the coast ; a deep silence
reigned, and Humboldt's soul was filled with painful
thoughts. All at once — it was about eight o'clock in
the evening — the death bell tolled mournfully ; the
sailors knelt down to say a short prayer by the corpse
of the youth, who the day before had been well and
merry ; it received the catholic blessing in the night,
and was committed to the waves at sunrise.

With these mournful feelings Humboldt approached
the shores of the land which had smiled on him in
his boyish dreams, and to visit which, as the aim of
his life, and as the bright image of tropical nature, he
had so cheerfully set sail. But fate, which had
hitherto only sent disappointments and obstacles in
Humboldt's path, to induce him to wait for better
and more fortunate opportunities, fate made the malady
with which the ship was afflicted serve to produce an
important diversion in his plans. The non-affected
passengers, alarmed by the malignancy of the fever,
had determined to land at the first port, and reach
their original destination, Cuba or Mexico, by another
opportunity. They induced the captain to run into
Cumana, a port situated on the north-eastern coast of
Venezuela, and there to land the passengers. This
determined Humboldt also to change his route, to visit
first the scarcely known coasts of Venezuela and Paria,
and to proceed to New Spain afterwards. Here he
could find the beautiful plants which he had once
admired in the conservatories of Vienna and Schon-
brunn, growing luxuriously and naturally on their

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 45

native soil, and there lay for him an irresistible charm
in exploring the heart of this land, which was still a
great mystery in the natural sciences. Humboldt and
Bonpland landed at Cumana, let the ship which had
hitherto carried them sail on, and thus the accidental
epidemic on the shijD was the cause of Humboldt's
great discoveries in these regions — from the Orinocco
to the boundaries of the Portuguese possessions on the
Rio Grande. This circumstance may also have been
the accidental cause of the health and the unendan-
gered life which they enjoyed in these equinoctial
regions, for a dreadful epidemic raged at Havannah,
whither they would have gone but for their prema-
ture departure from the ship, and this epidemic car-
ried off many of their travelling companions.

The voyage from Corunna to Cumana, which had
lasted forty-one days, had been very fertile in physical
observations for Humboldt and his companion. With
the assistance of the materials already prepared by
science he had made important observations on the
temperature of the atmosphere. The material differ-
ence between the atmospheric temperature on the sea
or on land, independent of the change of season and
the locality, seemed remarkable to him ; he invariably
found that the ocean was warmer than the atmosphere,
and that the readjustment of the balance between the
two elements was prevented by the winds, which hin-
dered the absorption of caloric during evaporation,
during which, as is well known, caloric is always dis-
charged.

Humboldt made other interesting researches on the
blueness of the sky. Not only was his eye gladdened
by the splendid change of colour from the pale green
to the brilliant yellow and red of the ocean sky, he did
not, like an ordinary admirer of nature, only let the
momentary impression at the sight of the azure tint
of the high vault remain on his mind, but he thought
seriously on the effect and cause of the phenomenon,
and thus he was the first naturalist who has made
scientific observations on the colours of the sky over

46 LIFE OF

the seas of tlie equinoctial regions of the earth, where
days and nights are equal. After Deluc had called
attention to the blue colour of the sky in 1765, and
had asked for its cause and conditions, Saussure in-
vented an instrument in 1791, which he called a
cyanometer-measurer of the blueness of the sky, by
which the degree of the colour is shown on the tables,
arranged on an ascending scale from the palest to the
darkest blue. Humboldt made great use of this in-
strument on this voyage, and ascertained, by the
colour, the degree of blueness, the accumulation and
the nature of the non-transparent exhalations of the
air.

For this purpose he watched the colour and form
of the rising and setting sun, and ascertained by it the
duration of fine weather, the strength or gentleness of
the wind, and discovered a paleness or unusual diver-
sion of the setting sun to be the infallible sign of an
approaching storm. He used the instrument also to
measure the colour of the sea, which is generally green,
and here he also found changes which often turned
the sea during fine weather from the deepest indigo
blue to the darkest green, or slate grey, without any
atmospheric change being perceptible. He proved
also that the expression " the ocean reflects the sky,'"
was a purely poetical, but not a scientifically correct
one, as the sea is often blue when the sky is almost
totally covered vfith light white clouds. Beside these
observations Humboldt collected many new facts on
the moisture of the atmosphere, and on the electricity
and attraction of the magnetic needle.

Arrived at Cumana, a port in which the traces
of an earthquake which had taken place eighteen
months before were yet to be seen, Humboldt was
introduced to the governor of the province by the
captain, and received with great civility, while the
fever-stricken passengers who were brought on shore
found a touching sympathy and ready assistance from
the inhabitants. When Humboldt had seen the
shore, the town, the fortress^ and the landscape in

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 47

general, in which the living ramparts of impenetrably-
intertwined prickly cactus, and the crocodiles which
live in the moats of the fortress and guard it, were a
new and peculiar feature ; after he had made himself
acquainted with the customs of the inhabitants, which
had many peculiarities, and might almost be called
amphibious, as children and adults spend a few hours
daily on the river Manzanares, where they put chairs
in the water on moonlight nights, and smoke their
cigars on the river, and even invited Humboldt to
join in this pleasure ; he directed his attention to the
volcanic soil on which he was living, for Cumana was
often visited by earthquakes. He studied the history
of these earthquakes in order to find new views, and
to be able to regulate the direction and extent of
tho^e shocks under a yet-to-be-discovered law. On
the 9th August, 1799, he made his first excursion
with Bonpland to the island of Araya, which in former
times was famed for its slave-trade and its pearl-
fisheries, and where, after wandering through a wood
of torch-thistles, he came to a hut inhabited by an
Indian family, where he was hospitably received and
accommodated for the night, and then remained two
days in the neighbourhood. He soon afterwards made
a second excursion to the missions of the Chaymas
Indians, a district filled with a wonderful animal
and vegetable world, and a people living almost in
the rudest state of nature. Here he wandered on
a soil rich in springs, beneath trees of gigantic size
covered with lianas (tremendous parasitical plants),
down the valleys to the huts of the Indians, sur-
rounded by sugar-cane, melon -trees, pisang, and
maize. Describing his stay here, he says : " If a
traveller enters for the first time the woods of
Southern America, nature reveals herself to him in a
surprising form. What he sees is little calculated to
remind him of the descriptions which celebrated tra-
vellers have made of the shores of the Mississippi, of
Florida, and other moderate regions of the New
World. But here (in Central America) the traveller

48 LIFE OF

feels at every step that he is not on the boundary, but
in the centre, of the torrid zone. He does not know
what charms him or excites his attention the most ;
whether it is the calm repose of solitude, or the
beauty of separate varying forms, or that force and
freshness of the vegetable life which distinguish the
climate of the tropics. It seems as if the soil, covered
with vegetation, had not room enough for its deve-
lopment. Even the trunks of trees are overgrown
with a close green covering. If one would carefully
transplant the orchides, the pepper or pothos-p]ants,
which grow on a single locust-tree or on an American
fig-tree, one might cover a large tract of land. The
same creeping plants which grow on the earth, ascend
also the summits of the trees, and extend their
branches, a hundred feet from the ground, from one
tree to the other.''

How engrossingly and how variously must not these
sights have impressed Humboldt's mind in this great
vault of vegetation, and how they must have enriched
his mind with new unknown forms of nature ! Here
for the first time he admired the bottle-shaped, artis-
tically-formed nest of the Oriola, the thrush-like bird,
whose somewhat hoarse cry is so penetrating that it
is heard above the sound of gushing waterfalls. On
this excursion he saw the monastic life of the here
existing mission, whose old prior smiled superciliously
at Humboldt's researches, experiments, instruments,
and dry plants, and maintained that of all the plea-
sures of life, not excepting sleep, none could be
compared with the relish of a good piece of roast
beef

Humboldt wandered with his friend Bonpland fur-
ther to the Cuchivano ravine on a path rendered
unsafe by jaguars (American tigers). Flames are
emitted from this ravine, and this led Humboldt to
interesting observations on volcanic phenomena and
on earthquakes. The inhabitants of the district also
made curious communications and prophecies on the
increase of earthquakes in this region and in the pro-

ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 49

vince of New Andalusia, which were only too soon
realized. On the 12th August, the wanderers, after
much climbing, reached the chief station of the
Chaymas mission, the cloister Caripe, where Hum-
boldt passed some especially calm and beautiful nights,
which he did not forget in later years. " Nothing,'"'
he says, "can be compared to the solemn repose which
the contemplation of the starry heaven in this desert
affords.'' When at the fall of night his eye rested on
the meadow-plains bounding the horizon, he seemed
to see the starry vault of heaven supported by the
surface of the sea. The tree beneath whose shade he
was resting, the luminous insects floating in the air,
the bright southern constellations, all this forcibly
reminded him of the distance from his home ; and
when, in the midst of this foreign nature, the cowbells
or the bull's bellow was suddenly heard from the
valley, then the memory of the fatherland rose
brightly before him. Humboldt celebrated here a
solemn reminiscence of home ; these sounds seemed
to him as distant voices from beyond the sea which
transported him to the other hemisphere, and the
inexhaustible spring of joy and of sorrow gushed forth
in his imagination.

On beautiful mountain paths alternating with
marshy, heavy roads, Humboldt and his companion
visited the other stations of this mission, especially
San Antonio, and Guanaguana ; and he also visited
the Guacharo cave, situated in the Caripe vale. This
cave is the dwelling-place of a night-bird, frequently
found here, which cannot bear the light of day, is
three and a half feet in breadth across the wings ; which
utters an unpleasant scream, echoing along the vaulted
cave ; and which, strange to say, lives exclusively on
grain. Humboldt was the first who brought intelligence
of this cave to Europe, in which, according to the belief
of the aborigines, the spirits of the departed dwell; and
which, therefore, no one enters, from religious dread.
When Humboldt and Bonpland had, with great per-
severance, completed their drawings, and had packed

E

50 LIFE OF

up the collected specimens, they commenced their
retreat on the 22nd of September, over dangerous
precipices, and through thick forests and ferns : on the
way, they for the first time became acquainted with
the monkeys inhabiting this region, who utter a
melancholy and. discordant cry. Humboldt remarked
here, that the monkeys seem the more depressed and
melancholy the nearer they resemble men ; that with
the increase of their apparent reasoning faculties, their
impetuous sprightliness diminishes in equal propor-
tions.

The travellers next arrived at the town of Cariaco,
where the unhealthy local influences had produced a
malignant fever ; they therefore embarked speedily, to
reach Cumana, a distance of twelve miles by sea ; and
during the voyage, Humboldt continued his studies of
the tribes of the Indians he had hitherto met, and of
their language. His second residence at Cumana was
more eventful than the former one; for he narrowly
escaped falling a victim to an attempt at assassination.
The attack was made on the two naturalists by a
Zambo — i.e., a cross between a negro and an Indian,
as they were, according to their wont, walking along
the shores of the gulf, on the evening of the 27th of
October, 1799. The Zambo did not hit Humboldt,
who avoided the blow, with his heavy stick, but a
second blow, which hit Bonpland on the temples,
felled him to the ground. With Humboldt's assist-
ance, he was, however, enabled to rise ; and the two
i^narmed friends were preparing to meet the attack,
which the Zambo continued with a large knife, when,
fortunately, some Biscayan merchants came to their
assistance, and the fugitive adversary was caught, and
lodged in prison. Bonpland was the whole night in a
feverish state, and his condition at first excited great
anxiety, but the unfavourable symptoms gradually
disappeared, and he recovered after several days.

But this accident did not deter Humboldt from the
observation of the eclipse of the sun, which took place
at this time, and his attention was soon directed to

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 51

new, highly important phenomena, whose advent had
been predicted by the Indians at the volcanic Cuchi-
vano ravine, from the superstitiously observed unusual
natural appearances.

From the 10th October, his attention was directed
to a reddish mist, which covered the sky for some
minutes every evening; other remarkable air pheno-
mena soon followed ; the mist grew denser, the hot
night air became un-odorous, the sea breezes failed
to come, the sky was coloured like fire, and the earth's
surface was bursting everywhere. Thus the 4th No-
vember arrived, and was an important day for Hum-
boldt, because he was, for the first time, witness of an
earthquake, and participator in its dangers. How new
and how overpowering it was for him, and how soon
he felt familiar with its dangers, is shown in these, his
own words: "From our childhood upwards we repre-
sent to ourselves the water as a mutable, the earth as
an immovable solid mass, — it is the result of daily ex-
perience. The appearance of a shock of earthquake,
an agitation of the earth, of which we believed that it
rested firmly on its old foundations, destroy the long-
cherished illusion in a moment. It is a kind of
awaking, but an unpleasant one; we feel that we
have been deceived by the apparent repose of nature ;
henceforward we listen attentively to the least noise,
and, for the first time, we distrust the soil on
which we have so long confidingly wandered. But,
when the shocks are repeated, — when they recur fre-
quently for several days, then the uncertainty has
vanished, we take new confidence, and become as
familiar with the waving earth as the steersman with
the wave-tossed ship.'' Not long since, when Hum-
boldt was dwelling on these events of fifty years ago,
he said that an earthquake has something universal,
v/hich one cannot evade; even the lizards living
quietly at the bottom of the rivers, ran howling into
the woods, and everywhere one stands on dangerous
ground.

The inhabitants of Cumana were in great terror
E 2

O'l LIFE OF

when in the evening, at nine o'clock, a third shock
was felt, accompanied by subterranean noises. Many
persons hastened to Humboldt and Bonpland, to ask
them if their instruments did not foretel fresh earth-
quakes. This afternoon must have been a grand one
for Humboldt, if we think of the picture which he,
with his talent for such natural scenes, has drawn of
it. At an incalculable height it thunders uninter-
ruptedly overhead, while the earth shakes ; the people
rush from their houses into the streets, uttering cries
of terror. And this scene of the destructive powers
of the labouring earth is followed by a splendid sun-
set on an indigo-blue sky, traversed by gold-fringed
clouds and prismatic rays, while deep in the earth
a threatening noise accompanies a new, violent shock.

Some nights afterwards Humboldt again had an
opportunity of observing a considerable fall of shoot-
ing stars, similar to that on his journey from Europe.
At that time already he presumed a regular recurrence
of this phenomena, and we shall, in a later portion of
this biography, show how, in consequence of Hum-
boldt's communications, these meteoric appearances
have been scientifically explained.

On the 18th November, Humboldt and his compa-
nion left Cumana on a coasting trip to Guayra, and
with the intention of staying at Caracas until the ter-
mination of the rainy season. Their plan was then
to explore the extensive plains of the Orinocco stream,
to navigate the immense river south of the cataracts,
up the Rio Negro to the boundaries of Brazil, and
then to return to Cumana over Guyana, whose capital
is called Angostura, or narrow pass. This was a jour-
ney of more than five hundred (German) miles, of
which two-thirds would require to be made in boats.
The country was, moreover, an unknown district,
and no intercourse existed with the missions located
there. Courage and perseverance, aroused by zeal for
science, were their guides. Humboldt did not let the
alarming descriptions of the colonists, who painted
the threatening dangers and obstacles they would

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 53

meet from soil, aDimals, and savages, deter liim from
his plans.

Humboldt and Bonpland sailed quickly down the
serpentine Manzanares, with its shores studded with
cocoa-nat trees. They had embarked at Cumana on
a small merchant vessel, and taken leave of that town
as of a new-beloved home. Was it not the first land
which Humboldt had trod, in a region on which his
heart had been fixed from his earliest youth, and he
says himself that the impi^ssion an Indian landscape
produces is so great and powerful that after a resi-
dence of some months one seems to have lived there
for years. This impression can in no way be com-
pared to what a European northlander might perhaps
feel after a short sojourn on the gulf of Naples, for
the oaks and pines which grow on the Swedish moun-
tains have a family resemblance to those of Italy and
Greece — but here, between the tropics, where Hum-
boldt wandered, nature appears quite new and magi-
cal, and in the open field, as well as in the close-
grown wood, every reminiscence of Europe fades
away.

The potency of these impressions makes up for
their duration : this explains why Humboldt yet, at
his advanced age, feels a kind of restless desire to see
those spots, especially Cumana, again. There the sun
does not only shed light on a landscape, as with us,
— it gives a colouring to the different objects; it en-
folds them, without destroying their transparency,
with a light which makes the colouring more harmo-
nious, and spreads a repose over nature whose reflex
still exists in a high degree in Humboldt's mind.
This explains Humboldt's grief at quitting Cumana,
whose shores he had first trodden five months before
as a newly discovered land, where he had, at first,
approached every bush, every damp or shady spot,
with a certain mistrust, and where he had now be-
come so intimately acquainted with plants, rock, soil,
and inhabitants. He did not conceal this parting
pain, when in the evening he could no longer reco-

54 LIFE OF

gnise tlie coast but by tbe occasional lights in tbe
fishing huts.

Humboldt with his companion anchored in the
harbour of New Barcelona, at the mouth of the cro-
codile-filled river, Rio Reveri, and he measured the
altitude of the sea from a hill, in order to decide the
geographical longitude of the place. The next day-
he set sail again, although his fellow travellers had
determined to Avend their way to Caracas over land,
through a wild, marshy re^on, from fear of the un-
steadiness of their little vessel on a stormy sea. Bon-
plan d also went this way, to make a collection of new
plants. Humboldt, however, with a pilot, boldly pro-
secuted the sea journey to Guajn^a, whose harbour is
filled with sharks, and whose appearance is more that
of a desert rocky island than of a continent. Hum-
boldt only tarried here a few hours, especially as the
yellow fever was raging, and reached Caracas on the
evening of the 21st November, while the land tra-
vellers only arrived four days later, after having
suffered much inconvenience and many hardships.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 55

CHAPTER lY.

CAEACAS — ASCENSION OF THE SILLA MOUNTAIN — EXCUESIONS INTO
THE PLAINS TO SAN FEENANDO DE APUEE — THE COW TEEE — SAIL
ON THE OEINOCCO — EIO NEGEO — EETUEN ON THE CASSIQUIAEE INTO
THE OEINOCCO — ANGOSTUEA.

Humboldt remained two months in Caracas. This
seat of the supreme court, under whose jurisdiction
more than 30,000 people lived, seemed to him, at
first, a solemn dismal town. He trod the soil as if
he were haunted by a foreboding of the terrible visi-
tation which awaited this town in 1812, when an
earthquake buried J 2,000 inhabitants under the ruins
of their dwellings. The waning fogs descended from
the mountains into the valleys, and, at first sight,
Humboldt thought himself transported to the larch
and pine covered Harz mountains. But he calls the
vale of Caracas a paradise, a valley of eternal spring,
where the temperature never, not even in the night,
falls below 18 degrees ; and where Pisang, citron,
coffee-bushes, apple-trees, and figs, grow beside each
other in rich profusion. The first melancholy im-
pression of Caracas soon faded from his mind, when
he perceived the beauty of the valleys, and especially
when he experienced the agreeable impression which
the inhabitants made upon his soul ; for, however
fertile nature may be, man is always its most impor-
tant and most interesting feature. Here Humboldt
found, instead of a noisy, varied life, a refreshing
domestic life, which engenders frankness, cheerfulness,
and refined manners. The inhabitants might, how

56 LIFE OF

ever, be divided into classes ; the firm conservators of
the past, and the reform-loving renovators, inviting
foreign influence to remodel the present, and build
the future.

The most important scientific undertaking which
Humboldt now had, was to ascend the Silla, a high
mountain, whose summit none of the dwellers around
had ever reached, wherefore, it was difiicult to find
guides. With the assistance of the governor, Hum-
boldt obtained some negroes as guides. The excur-
sion, which was joined, for the sake of the novelty, by
about sixteen persons beside Humboldt and Bonpland,
started on the 22nd January, 1800, on a day when,
on account of the low clouds, they could calculate on
pure clear air. The road, which the guides expected
to make in about six hours, was a difiicult one, but
the trouble was richly rewarded by the surprising^
beauties of the scenery. It required as much courage
as perseverance ; several of the company lost courage
on the way, and a young capucin friar, who was also
professor of mathematics, and had shown much bold-
ness at first, remained behind, on a plantation, half-
way up, and watched the ascent of Humboldt and
his more persevering companions, through a telescope.
They found, at a height of 6,000 feet, Saranas (pas-
ture grounds) covered with brambles and little yellow
lily-like fiowers ; they hoped in vain to find a wild
rose, not one of whose varied species Humboldt has
found in South America, except the Montezuma rose^
which grows on the mountains of Mexico in the 19th
degree of latitude.

Arrived at the summit, Humboldt and his friend had
a similar treat to that enjoyed seven months before
on the peak of Teneriffe. The material pleasure of a
surprisingly beautiful prospect into a new country,
was joined to a mental activity of scientific research,
and a better comprehension of the relation of the
single part to the whole. From the summit of the
mountain he gazed on a landscape where nature
alone ruled without being influenced by men, or

ALEXANDEE VON HUMBOLDT. 57

their civilization. But he was already accustomed
to find regions as large, perhaps, as France, being
only an extended beautiful desert, and to see a
world which belonged only to plants and animals, and
where a human voice has never sounded in joy or
in sorrow. Thus Humboldt stood at the brink of a
precipice 8000 feet deep, which the evening mist was
gradually veiling, and could not tear himself away
from this spot, till prudence urged him to return.
When their scientific investigations were completed,
he descended with his companions, and reached a
ravine at 10 o'clock that evening, where a dangerous
path awaited them, more dangerous because the
guides had secretly gone away to find a sleeping place
in the rocks, and Humboldt and Bonpland were
therefore obliged to carr}^ their instruments them-
selves, oppressed as they were with thirst and fatigue.
We have detailed this excursion to show the courageous
perseverance of Humboldt's character, which does not
swerve before dangers and difficulties, but is alone
urged on by the love of science.

It was, therefore, only the peculiarities of an inter-
esting region, and the anxiety to become acquainted
with its form and natural products, which made him
unmindful of the unusual distance, when he left
Caracas in order to explore the large plains (llanos) of
the Orinocco and Amazon streams, so rarely trodden by
men. He did not select the shortest route thither,
for he wished not to lose the impressions of the beau-
tiful vales of Apogna ; besides that his scientific zeal
m-ged him to find the level of the more remarkable
portions of the coast mountains by means of the baro-
meter, and to navigate the Rio Apure, which flows
through the immense plains to its junction with the
Orinocco. The same motive led him to the mountains
of Los Taquos, to the warm springs of Mariara, to the
fertile shores of the sea of Valencia, and through the
large prairies of Calabozo, in the eastern part of the
province Yarinas, to San Fernando de Apure on
the similarly-named river, Rio Apm-e.

58 LIFE OF

Humboldt's investigating mind found rich food for
its inquiries on this excursion. What a common tra-
veller would only have enjoyed with the senses, or
overlooked as a solitary object, or admired en passant
as a strange phenomenon, or collected it as a curiosity,
that was for Humboldt the connected pa.rt of a great
whole which his mental eye comprehended. The un-
common things he found here he was frequently able
to explain from his European experiences ; what in
Europe had been unintelligible, he explained here in
the tropical world from the similarity of common laws
and causes. His geological studies found a rich ma-
terial in the neiofhbourhood of the village of Antimano ;
his perseverance under privations was again proved,
by his having to spend the night in a sugar plantation
on a skin on the ground, among noisy negroes, and
yet he climbed the mountains again at sunrise. When
he descended from the high mountain ridge westward
into the valley of the little village San Pedro, and
heard the Europeans, placed here for the superintend-
ence of the cultivation of tobacco, utter complaints
and imprecations on the accursed land in which they
were forced to live, when he was quite inspired by the
wild beauty of the place, its mild climate and fertile
soil, he must have felt vividly that nature only reveals
her charms to him who understands and appreciates
her.

In the month of February, 1800, his path lay
through the valleys of the Tuy, where he directed his
attention to the sugar plantations of Manterola, to the
gold vein, to the corn-fields (on which a twentyfold
harvest is considered a moderate return), to the cele-
brated zamang-trees, with their gigantic branches, to
the colonies in Hacienda de Cura, where he entered
for several days into the mode of life of a wealthy in-
habitant, taking two baths, three meals, and three
sleeps in twenty-four hours; finally, to the cotton
plantations near Cura, and to farming in general.
Then he arrived at the sea of Valencia, where, among
the productions of a foreign nature, he was reminded

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 59

of the sea-shores of tlie Canton of Vaud ; for although
nature in every zone, and under any circumstances,
always bears a peculiar character, the mind willingly
and fondly feels the similarity in the effect, without
entering into analytical comparisons which are purely
matter of science. Humboldt instituted interesting
investigations into the causes of the decrease of water
in this sea, which he found explained by the destruc-
tion of the forests, the cultivation of the soil in the
plains, and the cultivation of indigo, as well as by the
dryness of the atmosphere and the exhalations of the
soil, and which induced him to institute further in-
quiries into the quantity of exhalation, which in turn
became of importance to farming interests.

In the neighbourhood of Mariara, Humboldt found
the tall Volador, whose winged fruit he and Bonpland
collected and sent to Europe, and which grew in the
gardens of Berlin, Paris, and Malmaison ; he declares
that the numerous specimens of the Volador growing
in European conservatories all spring from the single
tree of this kind which was found by him in the
neighbourhood of Mariara.

The heat of the days obliged Humboldt to continue
his excursion to New Valencia, commenced on the
21st February, by night only. After six days' journey
on a beautiful road, endangered by jaguars, but rich
in varied natural beauties, he reached this town, visited
the neighbouring warm springs of Trinchera, and
arrived at Porto Gabello, which he quitted again on
the 1st March, and directed his steps to the first sta-
tion on this journey, San Fernando de Apure, whence
he went over Calabozo and the immense solitary
plains of Caracas.

On his return from Porto-Cabello to the beautiful
valleys of Araguay, Humboldt came to the farm of
Barbula, where he saw the celebrated cow-tree, of
whose remarkable qualities, as report had spread
them, he had hitherto doubted. He found it to be
a tree which, on incision, exudes a perfectly mild-
tasting milk, which has an aromatic flavour, and is a

60 LIFE OF

source of healthy nourishment to the negroes. We
enumerate this tree, especially, in a biography of
Humboldt, as he himself states that few of the nume-
rous and remarkable objects he met ivith on his jour-
ney have made such a vivid impression on his mind,
as this cow-tree, which resembles the star-tree in form.
This impression is partly induced by our early asso-
ciations ; for everything relating to milk and corn ex-
cites a natural interest in man, which is not only
based on a thirst for a knowledge of natural facts, but
which arises from the idea and feeling that without
milk, from the mother's breast upwards, and without
flour, we could not have existed. To this may be
ascribed the religious veneration for corn, and for
milk-giving animals, with ancient and modern nations.
As milk is generally considered only as an animal
product, the idea of a milk-producing tree is the more
startling, as one has always doubted its existence ; and
therefore Humboldt, whose soul was so susceptible to
new general impressions, without therefore prejudicing
his scientific analyzing powers, gazed with astonishment
at the wonderful tree. He thus gives way to his im-
pressions in its description: "Here are no splendid
shadowy trees, no majestic streams, and no eternally
snow-covered mountains, which mightily move us. A
few drops of a vegetable sap remind us of the almighti-
ness and fruitfulness of nature. On the sterile decli-
vity of a rock there grows a tree whose leaves are dry
and tough, whose thick, woody roots can hardly pene-
trate the stony soil ; for several months of the year no
refreshing rain moistens its foliage, the branches seem
dead and shrivelled; but make an incision in the
stem, and a sweet, nourishing milk flows from it. At
sunrise, this vegetable spring is the richest; then the
negroes and the natives come from all sides, provided
with large vessels to collect the milk, which turns
yellow, and thickens on the surface. Some empty
their vessels, at once, under the tree, others take the
milk to their children. One seems to see the estab-
lishment of a shepherd \dio distributes the milk of
his herds.""

ALEXANDER VON" HUMBOLDT. 61

Science, which searches after the cause of every
phenomenon in its effects, certainly deprives it of its
marvellous character, and perhaps also of a part of its
charm, in the eyes of those who are only able to gaze,
and not to examine. But in Humboldt, the first
emotion of nature, and the penetrating, inquiring mind
for the natural reasons and laws of every appearance,
are united in a higher, harmonious character, and the
first impression on his feelings is always succeeded by
the clear insight of the naturalist.

Humboldt relinquished his formerly cherished in-
tention of visiting the Eastern branches of the Cor-
dilleras in New Granada, as he would no longer delay
his journey to the Orinocco, for his chief purpose now
was to explore the junction of that river with the
Eio Negro and the Amazon. On the 6th March he
left the valleys of Araguay, with his companion, to
continue his wanderings in the steppes, whose pecu-
liarity, in contradistinction to the African steppes, he
has especially treated. He crossed the prairies, plains
overgrown with gigantic grasses, in which many a
jaguar lies concealed, and which no shade refreshes, as
the palm tree growing here is parched, and almost
leafless. Humboldt inquired here into the breeding
of horses and horned cattle, of which large herds live
on these desert spots, and whose export is an impor-
tant trade for the seaports on the coast. Over Cala-
bozo their way lay through the deserts of the llanos
of Caracas, where Humboldt found a new subject for
inquiry in the gymnotes, — the electric fish. The
waters near Calabozo, which flow into the Orinocco,
and the marshes, were filled with these electric eels,
and Humboldt saw, at the same time, the peculiar
manner of catching them by means of horses, some
of whom were drowned. The eels attached themselves
to the horse's belly, and stunned them by their elec
trie shocks ; so that a real fight on horseback had to
be waged with these animals until they were exhausted,
and had to collect new galvanic power, and those
stunned horses, which had escaped drowning, had been
restored.

62 LIFE OF

On tlie 27tli March, 1800, the travellers arrived in
San Fernando de Apure, after having two days
before, without any track, crossed the large plain of
the Caracas steppes, where the eye sees no object
even five inches high within the horizon, and where
he unexpectedly found a small capucin establishment
in the desert. The three days they spent at San
Fernando were employed in cultivating a better ac-
quaintance with this district, which is subject to fre-
quent inundations, and therefore reminds one of Lower
Egypt, and where the Orinocco and Amazon find
their natural level by a peculiar aquatic system. The
rainy season with its numerous storms, in whose train
the inundations generally follow, was commencing, and
although the atmospheric phenomena of this season
were an interesting, absorbing subject of his inquiries,
still the rain induced him to continue his journey on
the river Apure itself, on a piroge or broad boat, as
the Indians build it, and which was manned by a
steersman and four Indians. Provided with provi-
sions for a month, and with objects for barter with
the Indians on the Orinocco, they embarked and
sailed down the stream, which abounds in fishes, sea-
cows, and tortoises, and on whose shores the birds
often served them for food. Everything noteworthy
which occurred to the observing Humboldt on this
river journey he drew at once, and it was his wont
always to note down whatever interested him on the
spot, for what is written in sight of the objects one
would describe bears the impress of truth, and this
feature lends a charm even to the most insignificant
things which Humboldt wrote. The greater and the
more imposing nature reveals itself, the more simply
true are his delineations, which is the most preferable
feature of plans made on the spot,

It was Humboldt's intention to sail down the
Apure and up the Orinocco, into which the former
river flows, and then to continue his journey on the
Kio Negro. The brother-in-law of the commander of
Yarinas, Don Nicolas Latto, accompanied him on his

ALEXANDER YON HUMBOLDT. 6S

joLirney, and his amiability and cheerfulness often
made the travellers forget the hardships and danger
of their position. And, indeed, for less courageous
persons it would have been no agreeable journey, for
tigers, tapirs, and pecaris, did not in the least avoid the
passing boat ; almost as in the original paradisaical
state, panthers, hoccos (a black feathered animal),
and crocodiles from 18 to 22 feet long, gazed at the
travellers, and when they rode at night the tigers
went into the woods for prey, the wild animals howled
in the forests, the boat drove against trees which
floated on the water, while sometimes the cry of the
parrot was intermingled with more savage cries, and
was merrily responded to by the little monkeys on
the shore.

In this manner the ship's company rowed from the
Apure into the wide expanse of the Orinocco, which,
with its high, foamy waves, stretched before them like
a sea. The beauty of this wild nature pleased Hum-
boldt as much as the tradition of the Indians about
this water. Humboldt had nearly sunk once with the
ship during a high wind, in consequence of the steers-
man's carelessness, and the water already covered his
papers and specimens ; a mere accident saved him
and his companions, and when they at nightfall
bivouacked on a sterile island in the stream, eating
their evening meal in the moonlight, seated on tor-
toise-shells, the form of danger again arose before
Humboldt's soul. He had only been on the Orinocco
three days, and a ship's journey of three months, con-
nected with far greater dangers, was yet before him.
Thinking of this hour, he writes : — " There are
moments in life in which, without absolutely despair-
ing, the future seems very uncertain ; one is more
apt then to indulge in solemn reflection when having
escaped a danger, one has need of a great emotion."

And while he thought thus and lay on skins on the
ground, the jaguars swam through the stream, and
played round his resting-place.

The Orinocco here, although 194 miles from its

64 LIFE OF

month, had already a breadth of four leagues, and when
they were near the shores of Pararuma the steersman
would not venture farther. Humboldt hired another
ship from a missionary, and set sail on the morning of
the 10th April. The reader may form an idea of the
hardships to be endured, by a description of the
Indian vessel Avhich the travellers had now taken
possession of On the back part a kind of arbour had
been made for four persons, but it was so low, on
account of the wind, that they had to lie stretched on
hard tree trunks, and to stretch the feet out beyond
the roof, or to sit in a bent attitude to gain sufficient
room. In front sat, two and two, the naked Indians,
who accompanied the monotonous sound of the oars
by equally monotonous and melancholy songs.
Besides this, the ship was filled with the collected
monkeys and birds, who, wuth the instruments, formed
the centre around which the hammocks were slung,
while around all this, fires had to be kept up to drive
away the jaguars. The instruments had to share the
couch of the travellers at night, and whenever they
were required the travellers had to land and unpack.
Add to this the oppressive heat, and the troublesome
mosquitos, which the one tried to send away by a sus-
pended handkerchief, and the other by smoke. Hum-
boldt says, when he speaks of these days, that these
hardships could only be made endurable by inborn
cheerfulness, mutual good-will, and a lively sense for
the splendours of nature.

A remarkable rising of the stream gave him the op-
portunity of investigating the levels of water. During
the journey up the river the ship passed the mouth
of several tributaries of the Orinocco, especially
the Meta, which resembles the Danube in length,
breadth, and bulk; it passed the town of Apures,
where Humboldt visited the missions and the water-
falls, which made a deep and lasting impression on him.
In his description of these regions he vividly reflects
their physical nature ; he describes a nature which per-
fectly harmonises with the requirements of his feelings,

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 6S

for the character of a landscape stands always in a
mysterious relation to the soul of man. Such an
impression the great waterfalls of Atures and May-
pures also made on him ; he tarried among them five
days, and then continued the journey to San Fer-
nando de Atabapo, on the Cassiquiare, which unites
the Orinocco and the Rio Negro in a peculiar man-
ner. A new plan had to be made in the little town
of Atabapo, in consequence of the advice of the prior
of the mission stationed there. At his recommenda-
tion it was determined first to sail up the Atabapo,
and then to follow the rivers Temi and Tuanimi.
Humboldt here found himself suddenly in quite a
new country, and on the shores of a river whose name
he had never heard pronounced. He sailed straight
into deserts where human beings scarcely left a trace
of their existence. Indians who went out man-hunt-
ing lived in these deserts, and annoyed the missions
situated near them. In this wild tract of America,
Humboldt seemed to himself to be transported to
those times when the earth was being gradually
peopled, and to be witness of the first formation of
human societies. The men he saw here had no other
worship than that of the Spirit of Nature.

On the 6th May, Humboldt reached the Eio Negro,
little river, famed for its various windings, after having
been imprisoned for thirty-six days in the narrow
fragile boat, where the getting up of one of the tra-
vellers from his seat would have been the cause of the
overturn of the boat, if he had not given notice of his
intention first to the rowers, that they might prevent
the danger of overturning and drowning by balancing
the other side of the boat. Although he had suffered
much from insect bites, Humboldt had not been
affected by the unhealthy climate, the dampness and
surge ; therefore, when he had arrived on the isthmus
between the Orinocco and the Amazon, he looked back
with pleasure on the dangers passed, feeling convinced
that he had fulfilled his most important purpose,
which was, astronomically to determine the course of

F

66 LIFE OF

that arm of the Orinocco whicli flows into the Rio
Negro, and thereby to verify its existence, which for
half a century had been sometimes behoved and some-
times doubted. The existing charts were so faulty,
that Humboldt's presence in these regions became of
the greatest scientific importance, in the accurate
determination of localities, and the correction of errors
in the charts.

What Humboldt felt at the sight of this equatorial
region will be most faithfully given in his own words.
"In these interior districts of America,'' he says, "one
almost accustoms oneself to consider man as some-
thing unimportant in the order of nature. The earth
is covered with plants, whose free growth is checked
by no obstacle. An immeasurable layer of black
earth testifies the uninterrupted action of organic
forces. Crocodiles and boas are the lords of the
streams ; jaguars, pekaris, tapirs, and monkeys, fear-
lessly cross the woods in which they are settled as on
an ancient inheritance. Such a scene of animated
nature, in which man is as nothing, has something
strange and depressing in it. It is difficult to accus-
tom oneself to it on the ocean and in the sandy deserts
of Africa, although there, where nothing exists which
can remind us of our fields, woods, and rivers, the
immense desert we traverse seems less strange. But
here, in a fertile, evergreen, beautiful country, we seek
in vain for traces of human existence, and seem to be
transported into a totally different world. And these
impressions are stronger the longer they endure."

Humboldt visited the Catholic missions which are
dispersed over the country here, among them Maroa
and the more southern Fort St. Carlos, the most
southern Spanish military boundary guard, scarcely
two degrees distant from the equator. Here Hum-
boldt stood on neutral ground, from which he could
have as quickly proceeded down the Amazon to the
Brazilian coast, as he could attain the north coast of
Carabas on the river Cassiquiare, down the Orinocco.
He chose the latter as more suitable to his plans.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 67

The ride on tlie river Cassiquiare was mucli incom-
moded by mosquitoes, whose numbers increased with
the distance from the black water (R,io Negro); he
only found miserable Christian settlements on the
eastern and almost uninhabited western shore, and
the natives he met consumed the indigenous ants
with the same pleasure as the New Zealanders their
spiders. But a still more dreadful immorality he
found in the custom prevalent here of eating human
beings; a few years before Humboldt's arrival, a native
alkalde had eaten one of his wives, after he had first
fattened her with the greatest care. The reproaches
of the Europeans to these Indians on their abominable
customs were entirely fruitless, and Humboldt says
that it is with them, just as with us in civilized Eu-
rope, if a Brahmin from the Ganges were to reproach
us for eating animal food. Indeed, Humboldt tra-
velled here among Indian tribes who considered each
other as totally different beings, and who beheved
themselves as justified in killing each other as the
wild jaguars in the woods. Although Humboldt was
already accustomed to the sight of a luxurious tropical
nature, he nevertheless felt surprised as he sailed
further on this broad, impetuous, incommodious river
Cassiquiare, and made various vain attempts to land,
because the shores were impenetrably overgrown with
foliage and creeping plants. Though the travellers'
hands were thickly swollen with insect bites, they had
to take an axe to make the way to a resting-place,
because the rain did not permit them to remain in
the boat at night; and while on the sea one often
complains of want of drinking water, here the tra-
vellers suffered from a want of firewood in the midst
of the forests, as the sappy wood would not take fire.

Humboldt calls the passage of the Cassiquiare the
most oppressive of the whole American journey.

At last, after many privations, which the scientific

zeal to behold the celebrated bifurcation of the Ori-

nocco easily overcame, Humboldt and his companions

again reached the bed of the Orinocco stream on the

F 2

68 LIFE OF

21st May, 1800, three miles below the station Esme-
ralda. This bifurcation of the mighty waters he calls
magnificent, and his travelling hardships were no
more thought of in front of the granite rocks, 7800
feet high, where the two rivers separate. Such an
imposing sight rewarded their perseverance, and espe-
cially enriched science ; for here Humboldt collected
the great materials and instructive explanations of a
comparative hydrography, and the history of his dis-
coveries in general enriched the history of geography
with many important contributions. Here in this
district he explained the physical relations of the soil,
collected the similar phenomena of the old, and this
centre American soil, and gave science an important
insight into the analogy of natural formations, and
the ruling laws of the globe in reference to its veins
of water.

In the missionary station of Esmeralda, Humboldt
became acquainted with the notorious poison called
'- curare/' which is prepared here, and used in war, on
the chast;, and, strangely enough, as an internal re-
medy for abdominal complaints, and which, with the
Ticunas poison of the Amazon stream, and the Upas
poison of Java, is the most deadly of known poisons.
The Indians prepare this poison from the fruit of the
similarly-named plant, which they collect with certain
solemn festivities, as the vine harvest with us, and
from which one man, called the " poison-man,'' pre-
pares the murderous matter. This matter was a
new interesting subject for experiments for Humboldt,
from which it resulted that the poison directly mixed
with the blood by means of a wound, kills, while, taken
inwardly, it is an excellent tonic. The preparer of the
poison incautiously and unknowingly rubbed a little
of the stuff in Humboldt's presence with his wounded
finger, and fell stunned to the ground ; but his life
was saved by rubbing him with muriate of soda.
Humboldt had also nearly fallen a victim to this
poison, as it had run into his linen out of. a badly-
secured bottle, and he fortunately perceived some of

ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 69

the poison in a stocking as he was putting it on,
which, as his toes were sorely bitten by insects, would
infallibly hav^e killed him.

When Bonpland had prepared some arrows with
this poison for the purpose of shooting birds, and had
been with Humboldt witness of the very remarkable
Curare feast, which is accompanied by dancing and
drunkenness, the two naturalists continued their
journey. Humboldt had proved the connexion of the
Orinocco with the Amazon, and, with this scientific
trophy, gained partly by his journey to the cataracts,
partly by inquiries made of the soldiers of San Carlos
who had made an expedition in search of the sources
of the Orinocco, he bid adieu to a district which had
been unknown before his time, and which had only
been a land of fables for former writers of travels.
The discovery^of the sources of this great river was left
to a future naturalist, the traveller Schomburgk, who
visited these districts in the interest of the Geogra-
phical Society of London.

From the missionary establishment of Esmeralda,
Humboldt and Bonpland travelled further on the
23rd May, 1800, sailing down the Orinocco, and, with-
out being properly ill, they were nevertheless, in con-
sequence of the hardships they had gone through, of
bad food and insect torments, in a thoroughly exhausted
and weak condition. They found little to cheer them
along the river, as they met no living beings, only in-
terminable plains, and sometimes high mountains ;
they experienced a feeling of abandonment the more
deeply as inscriptions on the rocks and rude sculptures
in granite showed traces of a former existence of
civilized beings, and were evident monuments of the
decayed civilization of a nation formerly existing
here, but now annihilated. Although exhausted and
depressed, they neglected not a single interesting natu-
ral specimen, and thus they reached the passage over
the great waterfalls of Maj^ura, which occupied them
two days. On the 31st May, they landed on the eastern
shore of the stream near Puerto de la Expedicion, to

70 LIFE OF

see the cave of Ataruipe, the probable cemetery of an
entirely obsolete nation, and where in a short time
they counted 600 well preserved human skeletons,
regularly ranged in baskets of palm leaf branches.
Humboldt examined the graves and their peculiarities,
and took several skeletons and skulls away, which
the corpse-fearing natives transported with great
repugnance. In a quiet starlight night he left this
spot of a passed-away nation — of an extinct Indian,
tribe.

Unfortunately these skeletons did not reach Europe,
for, as we shall show in a subsequent portion of the
volume, the first consignment of collections, about a
third of the entire American trophies, was lost by ship-
wreck.

For the second time Humboldt and his friend
ventured to navigate the w^aterfalls of Atures in his
light boat, the varied scenery which the long succes-
sion of waterfalls afforded made the trip as beautiful
as dangerous. Their falling in with the Otomaks
living at Uruana showed Humboldt a new phase of
human existence, as it is remarkable that men should
find a pleasure in eating lime, or dirty clay soil, while
they live in the most beautiful and fertile districts,
and that they produce intoxication and madness by
means of the niopo powder, prepared from the husks
of a mimosa plant, when they ought not to be visited
by the degeneracy of civilized snuff-taking human
beings.

After a passage of seventy-five days, during which
the travellers had sailed 375 geographic miles on the
five great rivers — Apure, Orinocco, Atabapo, Rio Negro
and Cassiquiare — in a small boat under a burning sun,
exposed to constant dangers and insect torments, they
arrived at Angostura, the chief town of the province
of Gugana, in the middle of June, 1800. The hard-
ships they had undergone were soon obliterated from
their memory when they were welcomed by a kind
reception from the governor of the province, but their
over-taxed physical strength was now too much ex-

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 71

hausted to resist a nervous fever attack. For more than
a month Hmnboldt was detained at Angostura by his
illness, and Bonpland's condition was so serious that
he only retained strength sufficient to treat his c"\vg.
malady, and gradually to bring about his recovery

But now new plans roused Humboldt and his friend
to fresh travelling expeditions.

72 LIFE OF

CHAPTER y.

JOURNEY TO HAVANN AH— CHANGE OP PLANS IN CONSEQUENCE OF A
EALSE NEWSPAPER REPORT CONCERNING BAUDIN'S EXPEDITION —
CARTHAGENA — SAIL ON THE MAGDALEN STREAM — LABORIOUS JOUR-
NET TO QUITO — CHIMBORAZO — THE RIVER AMAZON — HUMBOLDT'S
CURRENT (PERUVIAN COAST CURRENT) — MEXICO — RETURN TO
EUROPE.

The travellers had determined in Angostura to re-
turn to Cumana or New Barcelona, and from one of
these ports to go by sea to the island of Cuba and
thence to Mexico, there to devote a year to a physi-
cal scientific investigation of New Spain. After that
it was intended to visit the scarcely-known Philip-
pine islands, and to return to Europe by way of Bas-
sora and Aleppo. The way from Angostura to the
northern coast, through the immense steppes, was a
most arduous one, and the botanical and zoological
specimens, which they could not venture to leave be-
hind, detained them so long that thirteen days were
spent in packing them up. When at last they were
ready to start, it took them a considerable time to
pass through the Karaibes, whom they met with at
Cari, a missionary establishment in the plain, and
who particularly excited Humboldt's interest. They
arrived safely at New Barcelona on the 2.3rd July,
though exhausted by the sand winds of the plain. They
lived with the same good-natured man who had so
hospitably received them seven months before, when
they first came to Barcelona. A typhus fever threat-

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 73

ened Humboldt here as it had done in Angostura,
but Bonpland regained full strength and activity
during the four weeks Humboldt was ill.

Their first care now was to forward the treasures
they had collected to Europe, so that they might, un-
encumbered, prosecute their search for more trophies.
A young missionary who, seven months before, had
at his first acquaintance with Humboldt shown a
lively interest in his expedition, volunteered to ac-
company the travellers to Cuba, and there to set sail
with the rich collection, and a boy, who was confided
to his care for education in Spain.

Humboldt accepted the welcome proposal, as he
thought he could not send his collections and a por-
tion of his manuscripts home by a safer opportunity.
How painfully it must have moved him on his sub-
sequent return to Europe to hear that the whole con-
signment of his collections, as well as the young mis-
sionary and the boy, had been entirely lost at sea.

Humboldt waited in vain for a packet-boat, such
as usually sail between Corunna, Havannah, and
Mexico. As none had arrived for three months, it
was feared that English cruisers must have seized
them, and Humboldt and his companions wished to
reach Cumana as quickly as possible. They there-
fore embarked on an open vessel laden with cocoa,
whose owner thought that as he served the smuggling
trade with Trinidad he need not fear the English
vessels. But it was soon brought up by a privateer.
Humboldt and his companions had to go on board,
and while they were yet treating in the interest of
their own captain, an English war-sloop came up and
liberated the boat. The captain of the sloop received
Humboldt in a very friendly manner, and he felt
agreeably excited, after a long sojourn among savages,
to see and speak with Europeans again. In Cumana,
also, Humboldt and Bonpland were the more affec-
tionately welcomed by their friends, as the report
had been spread here that the bold travellers had
been killed some months before, on the Orinocco. But

74 LIFE OF

the severe English blockade detained them two
months and a half in Cmnana, dming which time
Humboldt was occupied with botanical, astronomical,
and meteorological inquiries, and with geological in-
vestigation of the peninsula of Araya. At last, on
the 16th of November, 1800, he left Cumana for
New Barcelona, to start from there with an Ameri-
can vessel ; and he says himself that he could not
gaze for the last time on the tops of the cocoa palms
on the shores of the Manzanares, faintly illuminated
by the moon, without deep emotion.

The ship raised anchor on the 24th of November,
and, spite of the late season, reached Havannah on the
19th of December. Humboldt shortened the long,
unpleasant voyage by observations of the sea and
sky. Their collections had been sent to Europe, and
Humboldt and Bonpland did not imagine that they
would never see a portion of them again. Their stay
in Cuba lasted several months, during which Hum-
boldt was principally occupied with examining the
extent, soil, climate, culture, and population of this
queen of the Antilles, as well as with the condition
of the slaves, historically and morally considered, and
with agriculture.

On the point of going to Yera Cruz to complete
their above named gigantic expedition over Mexico,
Acapulco, the Philippine Islands, and thence home
over Bombay, Bassora, Aleppo, and Constantinople,
Humboldt perceived from newspaper accounts that
Captain Baudin, whom he had promised by letter
before his departure from Corunna that he would join
him from any place he might be if he heard that his
delayed expedition was realised, had really left France
for Buenos Ayres, with the intention of rounding the
Cape, and then coasting along Chili and Peru. As
Humboldt had declared his purpose of joining the
captain publicly, before the Museum in Paris, the
desire to search for him became urgent, especially as
he anticipated more important and more extensive
results from his journey if he could prosecute his in-
quiries in conjunction with the French savans who

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 7^.

he knew would have followed Baudin. Although
many intelligent persons in Cuba opposed this plan,
and referred particularly to the uncertainty and de-
ception of newspaper accounts, they had no influence
over Humboldt, who, impressed with the idea of his
promise, and inspired by the hope of exploring the
physically so remarkable and rich Spanish possessions,
for fifty years inaccessible to every stranger, remained
faithful to his purpose. He had, from the first, made
it the chief aim of his voyage to complete the most
important hitherto neglected investigations of the
earth and its nature, and to bring about a really
scientific natural philosophy of our globe.

With this truly inquiring mind for science, he hired
a bark on the quay of Batabano, with which he pro-
posed to go to Porto Cabello, or Carthagena, with a
favourable wind. With this hope he went with Bon-
pland to Batabano on the 6th March, 1801, arrived
on the 8th March, at what was at that time only a
miserable marshy village, and steered thence south
along the island of Cuba, but at the same time exa-
mined several points of the coast and the neighbouring
islands, and determined astronomically their geogra-
phic position. He had calculated that this voyage
would only occupy abotit a fortnight, but it lasted
nearly four weeks, as contrary winds detained them,
and the ship, driven too far west by the storm, had ta
land at the Rio Sinu, on the continent of South
America. Here no botanist had ever examined the
vegetable kingdom, and Humboldt and Bonpland
found an acceptable task until the 27th March, when
the ship started again. Its owner, however, did not
accede to Humboldt's request to land in Columbia, on
account of the wild region in which they were. The
savage state had been shown on their first landing ;
for when Humboldt and Bonpland rowed to the river
shore with the intention of botanising in the moon-
light, they would have fallen into an ambuscade of
naked men, armed and laden with chains, being pro-
bably criminals broken loose, if they had not retreated
in time and with caution to the ship.

76 LIFE OF

The next morning brought Humboldt to the port
of Carthagena, where for six days he was employed
in astronomically determining localities, and where he
witnessed the popular Easter festivities, which were
accompanied by strange exhibitions. At the same
time his plans met with their first check here, for he
heard, to his infinite regret, that the season was much
too far advanced now to undertake a voyage on the
South Sea from Panama to Guayaquil, and he was
therefore compelled to relinquish his intention of
exploring the isthmus of Panama.

Near Carthagena lies an Indian village, called
Turbaco, whose fertile woody environs greatly en-
chained Humboldt's attention, more particularly the
remarkable wind or air volcanos, called volcanitoes,*
l3TLng in the midst of palm-groves. A hitherto un-
known world of plants, also, was spread before him
and Bonpland, who indeed occupied himself princi-
pally with botany.

Humboldt endeavoured, by other studies, to com-
pensate for the journey, postponed on account of the
lateness of the season ; and the treasures of science he
had collected on the Orinocco stream encouraged him
to undertake a similar trip on the Magdalen stream,
a river flowing through th» beautiful and majestic
valleys of New Granada, and entering the sea by
several mouths not far from Carthagena. They took
a boat, and went up the stream into the country as far
as Honda, w^here Bonpland explored the rich bota-
nical treasures of the shore, while Humboldt drew a
chart of the river district, in spite of the torments of
insects, climate, and dangerous localities. At Honda
they landed, to proceed to the capital, St. fe de
Bogota, on mules, almost the only travelling conve-
nience on the continent of South America. They had

* These volcanitoes consist of fifteen to twenty blunted cones,
nineteen to twenty-five feet high, situated on a large free spot of
about 1000 square feet in the centre of the wood. They have an
opening filled with water, and emit air bubbles, accompanied by a
loud noise.

ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 7*7

been travelling on the river and in the valleys for
thirty- five days, and remained in Bogota till Sep-
tember, occupying themselves with botanical and
geographical researches, and admiring and studying
the magnificent natural formations of the rocks and
waterfalls of Tequendama, the mines, and the pic-
turesque remains of former earthquakes. On a dan-
gerous path over the inconvenient pass of the Andes
of Quindiu, whose highest point is 11,500 English
feet above the sea, they proceeded to Popayan ; in the
rain, quite wet through, and barefoot on the soft soil,
sleeping under the free heaven at night, and awaking
exhausted in the morning, they passed through the
Canca valley, visited the snow- covered volcanoes,
Purace and Sotara, through Paste, a little town situ-
ated at the foot of a burning volcano, crossed the
equator, and arrived at Quito on the 6th January,
1802, after a journey of four months.

Here Humboldt soon recovered from the effects of
the dangers and privations of the journey, in the
highly agreeable and equable climate of this country,
and he employed his stay of nearly nine months, in
geological and botanical studies; his sense for natural
beauty and cheerful landscapes finding abundant food
for gratification in the enchanting situation of the
place, opposite long ranges of gigantic snowy moun-
tains. He ascended the crater of the volcano Pich-
incha, though not without trouble, and several un-
successful trials. On it, he made experiments on the
electric, magnetic, and hydraulic properties of air,
measured altitudes, and, indeed, studied the chain of
the Andes, in a geognostic point of view, so funda-
mentally that his works became the most impor-
tant materials for the foundation and prosecution
of the study of modern geognosy. He wandered
to the majestic snowy tops of the Antisana, and of
the Cotopaxi, the highest volcano of the Andes, whose
thunders are often heard at a distance of 200 English
miles, at Honda, on the river Magdalen ; he ascended
Tunguragua with Bonpland and a young enthusiast

78 LIFE OF

for science, named Montnfor,* wlio accompanied
him on this jom^ney, and on the 23rd June, 1802, he
even ascended the Chimborazo, where he chmbed to
a height of 3036 toises, an elevation to which no
man before Humboldt had ascended. Nature seems,
indeed, most unwillingly to allow mortals to penetrate
into her mysterious depths, or ascend her mysterious
altitudes ; above she threatens them with the fatal
consequences of a rarified unbreathable atmosphere,
below mth suffocation in a hot condensation of air. On
the point of Chimborazo which Humboldt reached, the
blood flowed fromhiseyes, his lips, and his gums, breath-
ing became dif&cult, and the therm^ometer stood stilLf
Arrived at Quito, Humboldt received a letter,
which communicated to him that Captain Baudin had
sailed to New Zealand, and turned eastward, round
the Cape of Good Hope. The plan of a junction
with Baudin, and the, in that case, practicable journey
to Mexico and the Philippine Islands, which he had
cherished for thirteen months, was now suddenly
frustrated. But he was already accustomed, from
former times, to such disappointments of long che-
rished projects, that he did not lose courage, but, de-
pending on his own resources, resolved not to lose sight
of his purpose. He determined to sail from Quito to the
Amazon stream, and to arrive in Lima, in time to
enable him to observe the passage of the planet Mer-
cury across the sun's disk.

tJnder indescribable difficulties, Humboldt and his
faithful companion Bonpland reached Loxa, on a path
leading through the snowfields of Assuay and Cuenca,
which made the transport of the scientific instruments,
and the extensive collection, more troublesome. In
the woods here, they examined the various species of
the China-tree, then wandered eastward over the

* Don Carlos Montufor fell a victim to political partisanship in
1811.

t On the 16th December, 1833, Boussingault, the only one who
has since ascended this mountain, reached, not the summit, but a
point 400 feet higher than Humboldt could venture on.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 79

Ganges, surveyed the splendid remains of the old
Peruvian viaduct of Inka, which leads from Cuzco to
Assuay, and then arrived at the Amazon. Here, in
the province Jaen de Bracamoros, Humboldt corrected
and revised the chart of the Amazon made by the
French astronomer, Condomime, by sketching a most
accurate chart of this anknown portion of the great
stream, partly from his own observations on an excur-
sion to thp cataracts of Retama, partly from careful
inquiries ; Bonpland, in the mean time, continuing his
botanical investigations.

Crossing the high chain of the Andes for the fifth
time, Humboldt now returned to Peru, ascertained
the position of the magnetic equator, visited the pro-
ductive highly situated silver mines of Hualguayok,
where the silver is found 2000 feet above the level of
the sea, the hot springs of Caxamarca, and the ruins
of the ancient town of Manfiche, with its old p3rra-
mids, in one of which, in the 18th century, more than
four millions French livres of pure gold were acciden-
tally found. Returning to Truxillo, over the western
Cordilleras of the Andes, Humboldt, at his descent,
enjoyed the sight of the Pacific Ocean, for the first
time; and, at the same time, looked down into the
long narrow valley which is celebrated because it
never rains or thunders there. Crossing the sterile
shores of the Pacific Ocean towards the south of
Truxillo, the travellers arrived at Lima, the chief town
of Peru, where they remained for some months, and
instituted important climatic and astronomic inquiries
here and in the neighbouring port of Callao, and
arrived in time to observe the last period of Mercury's
passage, before entering the sun s disk ; for which pur-
pose, even heaven was propitious, as, in Lima, on
account of the thick fogs, the sun is often not seen
for three weeks. We must especially mention Hum-
boldt's investigation of the remarkably cold Peru\ian
coast current, for, subsequently, science has given to
it the name of Humboldt current, in appreciation of
the merits of the great natural philosopher.

80 LIFE OF

In the January of 1803, Humboldt and Bonpland
sailed for Guayaquil, in a royal corvette. But on the
6th January, a noise and roaring Jfilled the air, and
they heard that it was the sound of the volcano
Cotopaxi, which was now in labour, and which Hum-
boldt had ascended the year before. The wish to
observe the volcanic eruptions and ravages of this
mountain as nearly as possible, made Humboldt soon
ready to set out to visit the volcano once again. But
on the way thither, he and Bonpland were obliged
quickly to return, as the news reached them that the
frigate Atalante, in which they wished to sail, was
obliged to start.

After a journey of thirty days, they arrived in
Acapulco, a western port of New Spain, whose scenery
is as picturesque as its climate is hot and unhealthy.
At first, when his plans had necessarily to be changed,
Humboldt intended only to remain a few months in
Mexico, and then to return to Europe, because his
instruments seemed to him to have suffered, and his
endeavours to remedy their imperfections were in vain.
But the country, and the inhabitants of Mexico de-
lighted him so, that he did not like to terminate his
journey as speedily as he had originally proposed.
The scientific and genial charms of a country so rich
and diversified in its scenery, were too strong to be
overcome. But this journey needed also the greatest
precaution, as the yellow fever, which is indigenous
there, and infallibly attacks and kills all those who
descend into Mexico from the highlands, from July
to October, induced Humboldt to remain at Acapulco
till the end of the winter, and then to commence his
journey into the interior. During that period, he was
actively employed in experimenting on the atmospheric
phenomena, and with the arrangement of his manu-
scripts and specimens.

But in the middle of winter they started, and
descended first into the glowing hot vales of Para-
guay, where the temperature, in the shade, was at 32
degrees Beaumiir. He found a milder and fresher

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 81

climate on the plains of Chilpantzingo and Tasco,
lying about 6000 or 7000 toises* above the level
of the sea. and whose rich silver mines he visited ;
thence their journey layover Cuernaraca, and through
the fog exhalations of Guchilaque to the beautifol
town of Mexico.

As the longitude of this place had, down to that
time, been incorrect on the common maps, Humboldt
rectified it by accurate astronomic calculations. But
the antiquities especially occupied him here, and the
statistics of the population. Having borrowed instru-
ments for the purpose of the astronomic measure-
ments above-named, from the excellent mining
academy of Mexico, whose director was also a pupil
of Werner, in Freiburg, he extended his inquiries to
the celebrated mines of Moran and Real del Monte,
and their environs, whence he returned in July, 1803,
to proceed to the northern districts of the country.
He surveyed the artificial breach in the mountain
Sinog, near Desague de Huehuctoca, which had cost
six millions of piasters, and was intended to conduct
the waters from the valley of Mexico ; he then
repaired, by way of Salamanca, to the celebrated
mining town Guanaxuato, where he devoted two
months to geognostic studies, especially to the detec-
tion of ores, and then travelled through the valley of
San Tago, southwards to Valladolid, the capital of the
ancient kingdom of Mechocan. The rainy season did
not deter the bold, and in the interest of science,
indefatigable man from descending with his friend to
the coasts of the Pacific, into the plains of the Jorullo,
where, in the plain Malpais, in 1759, a considerable
volcano had sprung up in one night, whose 2000
craters were still smoking, and were examined at
considerable risk by Bonpland and Humboldt, who
descended 250 feet into the burning crater of the
central volcanic cone, on fragile lava pieces. To these
investigations, science owes a new important increase
of its facts and revelations on the history of the

* One toise is equal to six feet,
G

82 LIFE OF

formation of tlie world in general, and of this remark-
able phenomenon in particular.

Humboldt and Bonpland returned once more to
Mexico, over the high levels of Toluca, in order to
arrange their botanic and geologic collections, to regu-
late and calculate the barometric and trigonometric
measurements, and to prepare the sketches for a
geognostic atlas.

In January, 1804, Humboldt set out on a more
extensive excursion, to examine the eastern side of the
Cordilleras, of Mexico ; the altitudes of the volcanoes
Popocatepetl and Tztaccihuatl, were trigonometri-
cally measured, as well as the pyramid of Cholula,
which Avas once built of bricks, by the Tulteks, and
which was ascended on account of the beautiful view
it affords on the snow-covered tops of the mountains,
and the smiling valleys of Tlascala. After these
investigations, Humboldt proceeded to Xalapa, over
Perote, and had to pass through almost impenetrable
forests of oak and fir trees, through which a road was
subsequently made according to his plans, in conse-
quence of his three times repeated barometric mea-
surements of the locality. Cofre, a mountain, situated
near Perote, and 162 toises higher than the peak of
Teneriffe, was also ascended and measured, and also
the peak of Orizava, past which his way led him.
After a stay in these regions, which had proved most
fertile in scientific studies and their results, Hum-
boldt and Bonpland returned to Vera Cruz, on the
bay of Mexico, fortunately escaped the yellow fever,
raging in this sterile and waterless plain, and set sail
for Havanna, on a Spanish frigate, to take possession
of the collections left there in the year 1800. They
tarried here two months, and then embarked on a
ship which was to transport them to the United States
of North America. After a violent storm, which
lasted seven days, in the Bahama channel, they reached
Philadelphia in thirty-two days, visited Washington
from thence, and after the lapse of about two months,
spent in the free states of North America, and where

ALEXANDEE VON HUMBOLDT. 83

Humboldt especially devoted himself to the study of
the political relations and condition of the population,
they returned to their native Europe, from which they
had been absent more than five years.

In August, 1804, Humboldt and his friend Bon-
pland landed in the harbour of Bordeaux.

The journey of -which we have here given an out-
line could not fail to create a great sensation in
Europe. It was not only unexampled as the execu-
tion of the most magnificent undertaking of a German
citizen ; it was not only perfectly disinterested, and
a sacrifice made solely to the interests of science ;
people admired not alone the courageous determina-
tion, the persevering force, the industry, the intellec-
tual capacities, and inquiring talent of Humboldt's
personality, but the gradually revealed unbounded re-
sults of this journey to the equinoctial regions of the
new continent became of such universal importance
in all branches of human science and commerce, in its
influence on a new system of science even, nay, also
on the political improvements of the country tra-
versed, that Humboldt was hailed in Europe as the
second Columbus. A hitherto entirely unknown or
misunderstood region of the earth was placed in
splendid landscapes before the senses of intellectual
Europe, and not only was the exterior surface and its
phenomena described, but science was made acquainted
with the inner formation of the land, with its riches
and its wants, with the secrets of its heights and its
depths, with the circumstances of its animate and in-
animate life, and from the chain of comparative facts
was developed the discovery and comprehension of the
great eternal world, and life-laws of the earth and its
inhabitants.

And Himiboldt was the best intellectual organ of
these new revelations of science, for universality and
power of combination were united in him ; he had the
talent for harmonious, calm, and reflective observation
of nature, and a happily developed sense for truth and
beauty of form ; in him a creative and regulating
G 2

84 LIFE OF

spirit, a deep liumane mind, and reason, and a heart
animated by the purest love for science and Hfe were
combined, and what he felt he was able to express
truthfully and gracefully.

But he was specially favoured by Providence from
his cradle upwards. Unlike thousands, perhaps the
majority, of learned men, he had not to struggle
against poverty and want ; he had not to rescue his
budding spirit from the despair and privations con-
sequent on the want of the necessaries of life ; he
had not to rouse himself from the flagging of the
wearied body ; he came into the world as a privileged
being ; he was cradled among the highest social
circles ; his youthful education led him through the
widely opened house and domains of science, through
favour and wealth.

But it is his high merit that with these worldly
favourable circumstances he did not give way to the
charms and the indulgences of his aristocratic position,
that he did not fall into the egotism of high birth, nor
the pride of idleness, but that he, on the contrary,
surrounded by the charms of a favoured position in
life, still followed the inborn impulses of his spirit,
that he made himself the self-sacrificing servant of
science. It forms his morally high position as a man
that he voluntarily and unostentatiously rejected the
aristocratic comfort of a nobleman, that he joyfully
sacrificed his property, and bore the greatest dangers
and privations in the service of intellect, in his endea-
vours after knowledge, and a scientific extension of a
comprehension of the world.

ALEXANDEE VON" HUMBOLDT. 85

CHAPTER YI.

EETUEN AND NEW ACTIVITY AT HOME — ASCENSION OF MOUNT VESU-
VIUS IN 1805 — BERLIN — VIEWS OP NATUEE — THE GREAT LITERARY
WORK ON HIS TEAVELS IN AMERICA — DECLINING OF A PRUSSIAN
OPPICIAL POST — NEW PLANS — DESTEUCTION OF CAEACCAS— BON-
PLANDS FATE — HUMBOLDT'S STUDIES IN PAEIS.

When" Alexander von Humboldt started on his great
journey, his brother William lived in Paris with his
family, and we have already stated that Alexander's
letters from Spain had induced his brother to visit
this country. But during Alexander's absence much
had been changed in his brother's position, for William
had been appointed Prussian chamberlain and privy-
councillor of legation, and resident minister at the
Papal court in 1802, and therefore resided at Rome.
His wife, whose health had become very delicate, had
gone to Weimar on a visit, in 1804, and went thence
to Paris, as she still hoped for the return of her
brother-in-law Alexander, in spite of unfavourable re-
ports. On the 28th March in this year, a letter fi'om
Havanna had been received in Rome by William von
Humboldt, in which Alexander announced his speedy
return to Europe. But very soon after, a report had
been spread that he had fallen a victim to the yellow
fever shortly before his debarkation, and this report,
though unconfirmed, spread grief and great excite-
ment in his brother's family in Rome.

But what must have been the delight and surprise
of the suffering Madame von Humboldt when, during

86 LIFE OF

her stay in Paris in August 1804, the sudden news
arrived that the great traveller, already mourned as
lost with but faint doubts of the truth of the report,
had arrived in the Garonne with all his American
treasures. The despatch which brought the intelli-
gence from Bordeaux to the National Institute of
Paris was immediately forwarded by the secretary to
Madame von Humboldt, and as great as her surprise,
was Alexander s astonishment when he, hastening
from Bordeaux to Paris, found his sister-in-law there,
while he had anticipated not being able to see his
brother and his family in Kome till the commence-
ment of the following year. As he had the intention
of settling in Paris, for no town presented so many
scientific and personal advantages as it, and he
also only thought at first of arranging his collections,
of completing his manuscripts to make them the
foundation of a comprehensive literary travelling
history, it was most agreeable for him that his bro-
ther's wife, who was expecting her confinement in the
autumn of 1804, was remaining in Paris till the com-
mencement of the following year. Then she proposed
returning to her husband, who was in the meantime
spending a happy solitude in Albano, commencing
and completmg the long planned translation of the
Agamemnon of ^schylus, and inviting in September
his friend Wolff, the editor of Homer, to share his
charming solitude at Albano, and enjoy with him
the beauties of nature in intellectual intercourse.

In Paris, Alexander von Humboldt really lived
only in the recollection of his great journey, as he
worked daily with Bonpland, the faithful companion
of his joys and dangers, at the regulation of his col-
lection, and he maiatained a lively intercourse with
the most eminent scholars of the capital on the suc-
cess of his journey. Many of these eminent men,
such as Cuvier, Gay-Lussac, Arago, Vauquelin,
Oltmann, Laplace, and others, were actively engaged
in the literary arrangement of his stupendous mate-
rials. Nearly a year elapsed before Humboldt found

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 87

time or was able to tear himself from tlie preparatory
labours for his work. In the spring of 1805, the
longing for his elder brother led him to Rome, where
he paid a lengthened visit to his brother's family.
William von Humboldt lived in Albano in a brilliant
circle of wealth, and of intimacy with the most dis-
tinguished men at that time living in Rome, and
Alexander's arrival increased the brilliancy and charm
of the intellectual and genial circle. The joy of
meeting between the two brothers so tenderly united
in love, and so akin in their spiritual life from their
earliest youth, was rich in exalted feelings and happy
impressions. While William had expected the re-
turn of his brother with anxiety and longing, Alex-
ander brought back into his brother's house that
centre of intellectual life in classic antiquity, beside
the dangers overcome, beside love and affectionate
excitement, the grandest views of a newly discovered
world in the freshest tints of their impressions. How
vivid must have been the exchange of their thoughts
and emotions, how must not Alexander^ as the dis-
coverer of a new scientific and real world, have been
the radiating centre round which all who belonged to
the intellectual circle of Humboldt's house eagerly
crowded.

With what astonishment must they have lis-
tened to his communications, for which nature had
endowed him with a glowing eloquence, when he gave
them the images of new scenes, new natural and
human life from the rich treasure of his new expe-
riences. William von Humboldt especially was most
inspired, as he was, more than all others, able justly
to comprehend his brother's new views, to follow him
in the new regions of science, and to raise his own
European self-consciousness, his classical studies, and
his political views to a higher, more universal stan-
dard through Alexander's descriptions.

But Alexander had brought special treasures for
his intellectually congenial brother from the new
world. We have before hinted that Wilham von

88 LIFE OF

Humboldt pursued philological studies in addition to
the study of Greek and Roman antiquity ; these
studies acquired new impetus in consequence of
Alexander's return, for in distant regions he had not
neglected to cull spiritual food for his brother, and
had, not without great exertions, discovered and col-
lected a considerable number of hitherto unknown
grammars of American dialects in the missions and
cloisters he had visited on his dangerous wanderings.
These he brought home to his delighted brother, and
only made the condition, before presenting them
totally into the hands of William, that he would
occasionally, during the following few years, lend
these philological treasures to Professor Yater, of
Konigsberg, and to Friedrich Schlegel.

If we consider the persons who at this period
formed Humboldt's circle, or who were brought into
temporary relation to it, we must confess that Alex-
ander found a rich source of intellectual and genial
pleasures in Rome. Beside several princes and
statesmen, we need only name Madame de Stael
and A. W. Schlegel, who lived so near to Humboldt's
that they formed but one house; besides Schinkel,
Count Moltke, Tiedge, and Frau von Recke, the
brothers Riepenhausen, Rumohte, Rehfues, Sis-
mondi, &c.

Alexander von Humboldt was called away from
Albano in the summer of 1805 by his studies ;
Mount Vesuvius betokened an approaching great
activity, and an eruption was probable. Humboldt
joined his two friends, Leopold von Buch and Gay-
Lussac, who had come to Italy to observe the
mountam, and was at Mount Vesuvius on the 12th
August, when a remarkable eruption took place.
With the experience and views of the volcanic
phenomena of the earth which Humboldt had gained
on his journey, this ascent of Vesuvius in company
with eminent natural philosophers became an instruc-
tive source of scientific knowledge, and while he
instituted a course of magnetic experiments with

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 89

Gay-Lussac, he added new experiences and combina-
tions to the observations of the magnetic needle
which he had made in Paris in 1798, and examined
especially the magnetic qualities of certain species of
rock, especially of serpentin, a black-green, snake-Hke,
spotted talc.

When Alexander had combined the happy moments
of this fraternal meeting with new scientific inquiries,
he returned from Italy, and tarried in Berlin during
1806 and 1807, where he had unfortunately to
witness the political degradation of his native land,
but at the same time achieved great scientific victories.
It was especially the magnet which occupied him,
and by the numerous experiments which he made on
one and the same magnet during his travels, at that
time, as well as at subsequent periods, he not only
induced other naturalists to similar measurements, but
furnished the elements which Biot worked on in
calculating the magnetic equator. Humboldt had
continued his magnetic observations with Gay-
Lussac, with whom he was in the most intimate,
friendly, and scientific intercourse, in Paris, and he
had discovered that the great mountain chains, and
even the active volcanos, exercise no perceptible force
on the magnetic power, but that it deviates gradually
with its distance from the equator.

But in a literary point of view Humboldt was also
active, for he must have completed, or, at all events,
commenced here in Berlin, the manuscript of one of
the few works he published in German, as it appeared
during the next year, 1808, when he was in Paris.
At this period Humboldt had returned to Paris to
his faithful travelling companion, Bonpland, in order
to continue the gigantic work of travel they
had commenced with the assistance of celebrated
scholars.

The "Views of Nature,'' written in flowing German,
under the impressions of vivid recollections, and cele-
brated for their thoughtful conception and rich
revelations of terrestrial life in which he describes

90 LIFE OF

the tropical countries, steppes, and mountain scenery
he has traversed, in a masterly manner, and gives a
physiognomy of plants, a description of the formation
and effects of Indian volcanos, &c., was literally a gift
of love to his brother William, and was publicly dedi-
cated to him.

William von Humboldt, who remained in E-ome
as ambassador, to the end of 1808, responded to this
literary present of fraternal love by a poem, which he
sent from Albano to Alexander in Paris, and which
the latter did not publish until after his brother's
death. This poem bears evident tokens of the
emotions of longing and of anxiety which Wilham must
have felt for his brother, wandering about in a foreign
world-quarter, and gives us an insight into the happiness
which their meeting in ] 805 must have caused them.

It also reflects the great impression which these
"Views of Nature,'' these grand descriptions of a
foreign world, must have made on William von Hum-
boldt, especially as he had already enjoyed the verbal
description of the same subject. In this poem,
William, after reading the book dedicated to him,
transposes himself into the same wild and grand
nature, in the midst of that undeveloped higher life,
but describes also the self-consciousness and the hopes
•of this new world. He compares its poverty and its
grandeur with the old world — compares the Pelasgians
and Greeks to the American Indians, and reveals the
great laws of historical existence which govern the
two worlds, as Alexander had discovered theh natural
laws.

When Humboldt had returned to Paris in 1807,
he devoted himself principally to literary acti-
vity, by directing the completion and gradual
publication of the great [results of his travels. But
the fruits of his journey were so considerable, so
varied, and entering into so many spheres of science,
his studies and collections were so exciting for further
research and comparison, that he had to unite with
other scholars, and allow them to complete in a more

ALEXANDER VON HUZvIBOLDT. 91

especial manner the various branches of science.
The most eminent men of the age considered it an
honom- to be fellow-labourers in this gigantic work ;
they emulated each other in the sterling value of the
contents, and the most accurate adaptation of the
material afforded them. Artists and artizans strove
to make the artistic contributions, the atlas, the
landscapes, the t3rpographic arrangements, as perfect
and brilliant as possible. Although the great work
required several years, and its completion extends
to the latest period, and even into the future, we deem
this a fitting occasion to give a sketch of this great
literary undertaking.

The whole work, which is written in the French
language, is subdivided into a series of pamphlets,
which belong to the various special spheres of science.
For the astronomic observations and barometric alti-
tude measurements, Oltmann was employed, under
Humboldt's superintendence and assistance ; in che-
mistry and meteorology, the celebrated Arago and
Gay-Lussac willingly assisted him with their know-
ledge ; Cuvier and Latreille devoted their energies to
the zoological portion ; Vauquelin and Klaproth to the
mineralogical part ; and the Berlin professor, Kunth,
was fellow-labourer in the department of botany. This
assistance of celebrated scholars in special natural
scientific branches, was inevitably required, if the
work should have any chance of completion during a
long human life. The materials which Humboldt
entrusted to each fellow-labourer resembled a mine,
from which every workman produced new treasures
and pure gold for science. It was to be expected that
the parts which gradually appeared would soon find
translators and compilers, and thus it happened that
the various single branches were translated into Ger-
man and other languages by clever men, and were
frequently enriched with new experiences and com-
parative descriptions.

As the original was written in a foreign tongue, —
as it appeared only at long intervals, and was ex-

92 LIFE OF

pressed in the severest scientific form, the great work
was a treasurable and important one only for the
really scientific, while the German nation in general
had little insight into it, and only the German popu-
larly written " Views of Nature'' could be found on the
library shelves of the educated classes. There were,
indeed, some who endeavoured to popularize Hum-
boldt's great journey, by transcribing interesting ex-
tracts from it, but yet the German nation, as a whole,
gained no insight into the entire great importance of
the results of Humboldt's acquirements for science
and life. To innumerable persons Humboldt is yet
a fabulously miraculous individual, over whom the
report of mysterious adventures throws a supernatural
halo.

The great work bears the title, "Voyage aux Regions
equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, par A. de Hum-
boldt et A. Bonpland." Two editions of it appeared,
one large and one octavo edition ; the former consisting
of three volumes folio, and twelve volumes in quarto,
besides an " Atlas Geographique et Physique," and a
collection of picturesque drawings, the latter intended
to form twenty-three volumes. Four quarto volumes
contain the real account of the journey — " Relation
Historique," the fourth volume appearing after a long
delay. The reader may judge of the immense com-
prehensiveness of this colossal work, by the length of
time its completion required, in spite of the important
assistance given to it ; for although the first volume
appeared nearly forty years since, its completion dates
down to the present time.

In order to gain a comprehensive idea of the whole,
according to its contents, we will enumerate the parts
and their respective subjects, without regard to the
period of their publication in single volumes or
pamphlets.

The " Vues des Cordilleres et Monuments des Peuples
indigenes de I'Amerique," give us, in two folio volumes,
with sixty partly black, partly coloured copperplates.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. ^^

splendidly finished, a picture of the rich nature of the
tropical countries, the mountain formation of the
Andes, as well as clear descriptions of the manners,
origin, migrations, languages, morals, laws, and wor-
ship of the inhabitants; and also inquiries into, and
illustrations of, the ancient buildings and monuments
of the old Mexican and Peruvian nations.

The " Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nou-
velle Espagne," in two volumes, with the atlas belong-
ing thereto, and also the " Essai Politique sur ITsle
de Cuba,'' in two volumes, give a clear insight into
the state of Mexico and Cuba, in respect of politics
and statistics, and still afford a rich source of know-
ledge, in spite of the great changes which have since
taken place there.

The Zoology, the observations on animals which
Humboldt made during his journey, are contained in
a work of two volumes, entitled, " Recueil d'Observa-
tions de Zoologie et d'Anatomie comparees, faites dans
un voyage aux Tropiqiies,'' at which Cuvier and La-
treille actively assisted, and which comprehends an
accurate description and interesting comparison of dif-
ferent species of animals, and many new facts concern-
ing the earth as the dwelling place of animals. In
Botany Humboldt's fellow-traveller was particularly
active, and while Bonpland depicted the new specimens
of a hitherto unknown veo^e table world, havinsf brouQ-ht
home more than six thousand species of new plants
from America, Humboldt extended his view over the
laws of vegetable life, and their relation to the earth
itself The great work, " Essai sur la G^ographie des
Plantes," which was in some sort a conclusion to
Humboldt's treatise, " Ideas on the Physiognomy of
Plants," in the above-mentioned "Views of Nature,"
and which was more extensively treated in the work,
"Prolegomena de distributione Geographica Plantarum
secundum coeli temperiem et altitudinem montium,"
proves in a genial manner, rich in experience, how
important the influence of geography is on botany ; it

94 LIFE OF

shows how vegetable geography stands in closest
relation to the life of plants and the study of climate,
' — ^how the number, the form, and the local distribu-
tion of plants, must differ according to the universal
laws of the diiferent zones, from the pole to the
equator, from the depth of the mines and the bottom
of the sea to the mountain-tops of eternal snow,
according to the geographical latitude of the locality,
and the constitution of the sm-rounding landscapes.
This work may truly be said to have opened a new
sphere in the science of botany : for the first time the
relation of the medium temperature of a place to the
atmospheric pressure, and the humidit}^ and electric
tension of the atmosphere, is explained, and that by
his own measurements and investigations. To this
work is added that beautiful picture of a vegetable
geography of the tropics, the so-called "Tableau des
Plantes equinoxiales,'' from the level of the sea to a
height of fiYe thousand metres, in which Humboldt
gives a clever, aesthetic, but, at the same time, strictly
scientific and pleasing picture of the vegetable world.*

* Vegetable geography is a new branch of botany really founded
by Humboldt. After he had instituted the most comprehensive in-
vestigations into the laws of the distribution of plants, and shown
their intimate connexion with the conditions of height and climate,
and the chief points of a numerical calculation of the local distribu-
tion of plants over the earth, he formed a basis for this branch of
natural science, whose development by himself and others has at-
tained such a degree of completion, that it has not been without con-
siderable influence on the civilization of nations. His writings on
this subject, and the excellent illustrations accompanying them, con-
tain an accurate distinction between the characteristics of the various
forms of plants in the warmer regions. His description of the moun-
tain Flora, rising terrace-like upwards, as well as of the social and
the solitary plants, excited such a lively interest among all educated
men, far beyond the bounds of merely scientific circles, that we must
give a short sketch of his system. What would be a landscape with-
out plants ? They alone refresh atid vivify, and thus they are the
companions of man. But to describe their geography, one must be
susceptible to their existence. Humboldt was so to a high degree ;
and this we may recognise, not alone from his classification of the
varieties of plants, from his doctrine of the distribution of plants from
the equator to the poles, and from the level of the sea to the boun-
daries of eternal snow, but more especially from his "Physiognomy
of Plants," which reveals the intimate conformity of his comprehensive

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 95

The special explanation of the new discoveries in
descriptive botany Humboldt left to his fellow-
labourers, as he had at the same time to devote his
energies to other fields of natural science. Thus Bon-
pland alone wrote two works, namely, '•' Plantes Equi-

mind with the mysterious life of plants^ and their relation to the
earth. The surface of plants which is spread over the world has had
its HISTORY, its gradiial distribution over the sterile earth, and its
great epochs. If a volcano from the bottom of the sea suddenly
divides the surging tide and forces a slaggy rock to the light of day,
or if the coral insects gradually raise their edifice, after thousand
generations, to the level of the sea, everywhere on the naked rock^
as soon as it comes in contact with the air, the organic powers are
ready to vivify the dead stone. The first vegetation on the stone
begins with a coloured spot, gradually darkening and appearing to
be streaked with velvet, an organic structure rises layerwise over
the stone, and, as the human race must pass through certain grades
of moral culture, so is the gradual distribution of plants dependant
on certain physical laws. Where high forest trees now raise their
verdant tops, tender lichen once crept over the soilless rock — mosses,
grasses, weeds, and bushes, fill up the unmeasured periods of gradual
development between then and now. What the lichens and mosses
effect in the north, the pontulace, the gomphrenes, and other low
shore plants serve to effect in the tropics. This developement and
advancing renovation varies according to the diversity of the climate.
Periodically nature becomes dormant in the cold zones, for fluidity
is the condition of life ; only such plants can develope themselves
here as are capable of supporting a temporary intemiption of their
vital functions, and a periodical deprivation of heat ; but the nearer
to the tropics the more varied are their nature, their graceful forms
and colours. But in this increase from the poles to the equator each
different climate has its peculiar beauties, excepting of course the
sterility of certain large tracts of land in consequence of former floods
or volcanic revolutions. The tropics, for example, have variety and
size of form, the north enjoys the prospect of meadows and of the
periodic awaking of nature — every zone has its peculiar character,
its natural physiognomy. The descriptions of such landscapes need
not only afford a pure delight to the senses, but Humboldt showed
how the knowledge of the natural character of different regions of
the world is intimately allied with the history of the human race and
its civilization, how the tendency of the national character, how a
cheerful or a depressed humour chiefly depends on climatic in-
fluences. The wonderful number of different species of plants, of
which 56,000 have already been discovered on the earth, Humboldt
divided into only a few well-defined classes, which form the basis of
all. He did not classify them, as the systematical botanist does,
according to the minute parts of the buds and fruits, but according
to the entire impression which individualises a district, and by this
means he established sixteen classes of plants which especially deter-
mine the physiognomy of nature. More will probably be found

96 LIFE OF

noxiales au Mexique, dans Tlsle de Cuba, dans les pro-
vinces de Caracas, Cumana, &c./' in which he gave a
methodical description of the plants in the Latin and
French languages, with remarks on their medicinal
virtues and domestic application. In another work,
" Monographie des Rhexia et des Malasthomes" (plants
which occur almost exclusively in South America, being
principally trees and bushes, and of which all those
which bear berries affording eatable fruit, which per-
manently colours the mouth black, Avhence their name),
he described more than 150 specimens of new species
of these plants.

Humboldt, besides this, united with the botanist

when the at present entirely unknown vegetation of South-eastern
Asia, of central Africa and New Holland, of South America, fi^om
the Amazon to the province of Chiquitos, will have been revealed.
In our temperate zones a certain monotony obtains ; the physio-
gnomy of our landscapes may be characterized by very few forms,
which shrink more and more as they approach the pole, and become
more varied and gigantic towards the equator. Like our animals, of
which a lizard is there repeated as a crocodile, a cat as a tiger, lion
or jaguar, the monocotyledons of our marshes grow in the soiith as
majestic bamboos, as palms and uranies. The shrivelled needle
leaves of our pines there unfold themselves as the immense leathery
leaves of the bread tree, our German foliaceous moss grows to a tree-
like form, our ferns are trees there like our alders and lindens.
Humboldt characterizes the botanical forms in the following man-
ner ; — 1. The palm tree as the highest and noblest of all plantile
forms, the stem of which is often 180 feet high. 2. The PUcmg or
Banana form, which compensates for our northern grain in the
torrid zone. 3. The malvaceous form, to which the monkey's bread
tree belongs, which is probably the oldest and largest momument
on our planet. 4, The Mimosa form. 5. Heaths. 6. Cacti. 7. Or-
chidaceous plants. 8. Casuari form. 9. Pines. 10. Pothos plants,
11. Lianas and vines. 12. Aloe plants. 13. Grasses, which, in the
tropics often exceed in height our alders and oaks. 14. Ferns,
often thirty-five feet high in hot climates. 15. Lilyplants, and
16. Willow form. The ti-opics afford the natural requirements for
the production of all the representatives of the botanical world by
its districts ascending from the level of the sea to the highest moun-
tains. The inhabitant of the torrid zone may see all the plantile
forms of earth without leaving his home, for he is surrounded not
only by palm trees and pisang bushes, but by plants which,
belonging, in a less stately arid dwarfish form to the northern
world, flourish there in imposing height and luxurious fertility.
This short sketch will suffice to prove how interesting and attrac-
tive Humboldt's system is for every intelligent mind.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 97

Kunth, and delivered to liim tlie material for tlie
compilation of several works, which have appeared
under the titles, " Famille des Mimosacees et autres
Plantes legumineuses ; " also " Graminees Rares de
TAmerique Equinoxiale ;" and " Nova Genera et Spe-
cies Plantarum ; " and of which the latter, seven folio
volumes, with 700 copper-plates, describes 4500 plants
which Humboldt and Bonpland had collected in
America. A projected " Geographic des Plantes,"
which was to be illustrated by twenty copper-plates,
of which several were to give a picturesque delineation
of the character of the vegetation, was not realized.

In physics, geology, and astronomy, Humboldt
also produced a number of works, which he either
composed himself, or gave the materials from his rich
treasures. With Altmann's assistance, two volumes
appeared, called "Observations Astronomiques," which
contain the calculated observations made by Hum-
boldt between the 12th degree of south and the 41st
degree north latitude, on the passage of the sun and
the stars through the meridian, on the obstruction of
planets and moons, on eclipses, refraction of light in
the torrid zone, and barometric measurements of the
Andes of Mexico, Venezuela, Quito, and New Gra-
nada, and which were accompanied by a chart on
which 700 geographical localities are determined. A
comparative description of all geological formations of
the old and new world was given by Humboldt in the
work, " Essai sur le gisement des Roches dans les
deux Hemispheres," which was translated into German
by von Leonhardt. The " Tableau Physiques des
Regions Equinoxiales" contains a universal physical
survey of the chief phenomena of natural and geolo-
gical existence ; and a special treatise " Sur les lignes
Isothermes " gives the doctrine of climate, especially
the fundamental principles of the medium tempera-
tures of the earth's surface, which study he continued
in subsequent years. The before-mentionod "Yue
des Cordilleres" contains many descriptions of phy-
sical life, which properly belong here ; and a work_.

H

98 LIFE OF

important in its plan, and intended to extend to ten
volumes in four divisions, called "Examen critique de
THistoire de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent et
des progres de TAstronomie nautique, aux XY et
XVI siecles,'' witli an " analyse raisonne'' treating of
the materials employed, was not translated into Ger-
man until the year 1836, by Ideler.

As regards the time when Humboldt published the
different portions of his American travel library ; his
essay on Botanical Geography appeared in 1805, at
the time when he was visiting his brother in Italy ;
his Ideas on a Geography of Plants, and a Picture of
the Natural Productions of the Tropics, appeared in
1807, when he was living in Berlin, at the same time
that his Tableau of the Equinoctial Regions was pub-
lished ; his work on Equinoctial Plants was commenced
in 1808, and continued to the year 1816 ; while Bon-
pland's " Monographie des Melasthomes'' was com-
menced in 1809, and completed in 1816. In the
year 1810 the first volume of the political essay on
the kingdom of New Spain was published, at which
Humboldt worked till 1815 ; in 1811 he published
his Views of the Cordilleras; in 1815 — 1831 his
"Hanptreisewerk,'' with the large atlas. His pam-
phlet on the isothermic lines (the lines wdiich connect
all places of the earth of equal mean temperature)
was already published in 1817 ; in the same year
appeared his "Introduction to Botanical Geography;'^
and at the same time he submitted to the Academy
of Sciences in Paris his " Chart of the Orinocco, and
its junction with the Amazon by means of the rivers
Cossiquiare and Rio Negro/' Professor Kunth super-
intended the publication of the " Famille des Mimosa-
ceous Plantes'' in 1819 ; of the "Revision des Herbes''
in 1820; of the great "Synopsis of Botany'' from
1822 to 1825 ; and Humboldt's political essay on
Cuba was printed in 1826. Besides these works,
Humboldt contributed to a number of journals, and
wrote academical essays which cannot yet be enume-
rated collectively.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 99

. In 1844, when this gigantic work was still incom-
plete, the cost of a copy of the folio edition was 2700
dollars, about 405^. This is twice the cost of the
celebrated French national work, " Description de
rEg3rpte," towards the preparation of which the
government of that country advanced about one-eighth
of a million of pounds sterling. A simple calculation
will show how great must have been the expense of
the whole work, when a single copy cost 2700 dollars
(each dollar is worth 3s.); but it will become more
evident when we state that the printing, paper, and
copper-plates alone, have cost more than 226,000
dollars. And yet this important literary undertaking
was not only realized and supported by the assistance
of the purchasing public in all civilized states in
Europe, but also by large voluntary pecuniary sacrifices
on the part of Humboldt.

From 1808, Alexander von Humboldt lived princi-
pally in Paris. Towards the end of this year, Wil-
liam had been obliged to quit Rome, and his new
political position in the Prussian state did not induce
his return thither. He had been appointed councillor
of state in the ministry of Home Affairs, and chief of
the Section of Religion, and of Public Instruction;
and in this very appropriate post he, by his represen-
tations, induced the king to decree the institution of
an University in Berlin, in 1809. William von Hum-
boldt was the soul of this undertaking, although the Lord
Chancellor Beyme, the finance minister Von Altenstein,
and the professors Wolff, Schleiermacher, Reil, and
others, assisted him in its erection by w^ord and deed.
He induced the most eminent men to accept posts in
the new institution; Grafe of Ballenstadt, as surgeon;
Reil, from Halle, as physiologist; Rudolphi, from
Greifswalde, as comparative anatomist; Illiger, from
Brunswick, as entomologist; Gauss, from Gottingen,
as mathematician ; Savigny, from Landshut, as lawyer ;
Fichte, from Erlangen, as philosopher; Niebuhr, from
Halle, as teacher of political economy ; Bockh, De
Frette, and Marheinecke, from Heidelberg; and Alt-
H 2

100 LIFE OF

mann, who had edited Alexander von Humboldt's
astronomico-geographic collections, from Pans; and
his dearest wish now, was to induce his brother
Alexander to leave Paris, and honour the new uni-
versity of Berlin with his name. But William von
Humboldt was not to be present at the opening of the
university founded by him ; he was, on the 14th June,
1810, named extraordinary ambassador to the court to
Vienna. His successor in the Department of Keligion,
ISricolovius, continued the work in Humboldt's spirit,
and the chancellor wrote to Alexander von Humboldt,
to Paris, to offer him the direction of the Section of
Public Instruction. But the great task w^hich Alex-
ander von Humboldt had undertaken, and the labours
of his literary work, — perhaps also, a dislike to official
life, — induced him to decline the proffered honour.

William von Humboldt had gone to Vienna, where
he was joined in the autumn of 1810 by his wife, who
had till then remained in Rome. Here, again, his
house became the centre of intellectual life ; here he
associated with Metternich and Gentz, with the counts
Bernstorff and Stadion, with F. Schlegel, who was in the
Austrian service, with Amstein, Caroline Pichler, &c.
But the following year brought, besides the youthful
Theodor Korner, and the equally young Varnhageii
von Ense, a welcome guest into the ambassador's
palace in the person of his brother Alexander, who
had left Paris after the publication of the first |)ortions
of his American literary trophies, to take leave of his
family, as he had projected, and prepared for, another
great journey, — one to central Asia and Thibet. The
minister Romanzow had proposed to him to accom-
pany a mission, across Kashghor, to Thibet, and Alex-
ander at once assented, as he purposed visiting the
celebrated mountains of India, and to study them in
comparison with the Cordilleras of the new world.

This great plan, which was to be put in execution
in the commencement of the year 1812, and which
was already a favourite plan of Humboldt's, met with
a sudden obstacle in the war between Russia and

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 101

France. Although his proposed journey was now
frustrated, he did not lose sight of the once formed
plan, and returned from Vienna to Paris, not alone
to speed his American work, but also thoroughly to
prepare himself for the perseveringly cherished plan
of an expedition to Asia, with the hope of a future
opportunity for its realization. With this view he
occupied himself for several years with the study of
the Persian language, so that he might, at his own
expense, proceed to India by way of Teheran or Herat,
He gained so accurate a knowledge of the structure
of the Asiatic mountain-chains from literary sources
that he was able to give critical judgments on the
explorers who had travelled to the Himmalaya moun-
tains. The idea of this journey had an especial charm
for him ; the mountain plains of central Asia, where
old traditions fix the first seat of the human race,
and the fabulous giant mountains of India, the curious
circumstances of the boundary of eternal snow ; all
these things inspired him with an especial pre-
dilection for Asiatic studies. The French govern-
ment had, in the interests of science, proffered its
assistance to the execution of this plan, and even the
king of Prussia, when he was in Aix-la-Chapelle in
October and November 1818, had granted the cele-
brated naturalist an annual sum of 12,000 thalers,
and the expense of preparing the expedition for this
journey to Asia, but " particular circumstances,'' which
we cannot reveal here, prevented the execution of his
favourite plan, and he at that time relinquished it
himself

Before Humboldt's departure from Paris in 1818,
we must look back on the year 1812, to mention an
event which grieved Humboldt deeply when he heard
of it in Paris. This was the melancholy intelligence
that the town of Caracas, in which he and Bonpland
had spent two months, and where they had been so
hospitably entertained, had been destroyed on the
26th March, 1812, by a terrific earthquake, in conse-
quence of which nine to ten thousand inhabitants were

102 LIFE OF

killed under the ruins of their houses, and by the fall-
ing of the church during a religious procession. Hum-
boldt exclaims, mournfully — " Our friends are no
more ; the house which we have inhabited is a heap
of dust ; the town I have described no longer exists.
The day was hot, the sky cloudless, the air calm : it
was Maundy Thursday, and the population was mostly
assembled in the churches ; nothing seemed to an-
nounce the threatened misfortune. It was four o'clock
in the afternoon. Suddenly the bells, which were
silent on this day, tolled ; it was God's hand, not a
human power, which rung the grave-bell. A shock
of ten to twelve seconds terrified the people, the earth
swayed like a boilmg fluid. The danger was thought
to have passed away when suddenly the subterranean
thunder was heard. The town was utterly destroyed.
The nine to ten thousand dead, of whom four to five
thousand were buried beneath the falling church,
where a solemn procession was taking place, were the
more fortunate, as they were suddenly and unexpect-
edly overtaken by death when partly engaged in
devotion and prayer, when we compare them to the
unfortunate beings who, injured and wounded, sur-
vived their friends for months, and then perished for
want of attendance and nourishment. The following
night was calm and bright, the moon shone, the quiet
heavens formed a fearful contrast to the earth, covered
with corpses and ruins. Mothers carried the dead
bodies of their children in their arms, mourning fami-
lies wandered through the town seeking a brother,
husband, or friend, of whose fate they were igno-
rant.''

The vividness of this description, in which Hum-
boldt transports himself to the desolated town, and
enumerates his friends and favourite spots there,
evinces clearly what a deep, painful impression the
news of the fate of Caracas had made upon him.*

* Never, probably, has pity shown itself' more active, or more in-
ventive, than in the efforts which were made to extend assistance to
the unfortunates whose sighs resounded in the air. Tools to dig up

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. lOS

We have already mentioned that Alexander von
Humboldt left Paris in the end of the year 1818.
Another separation had taken place in this year — an
eternal separation for this world — from his friend and
faithful travelling companion, Bonpland. The inte-
rest which this companion of Humboldt may claim
from us in the dangerous pilgrimages and river pas-
sages of America, will excite some interest also in his
subsequent fate. Soon after his return from America
with Humboldt, he gained the esteem and affection
of all with whom he came in contact, by his amiable
character. As the Empress Josephine was passion-
ately fond of flowers. Napoleon appointed Bonpland
superintendent of the gardens of Malmaison, where a
splendid collection of exotic plants already existed.
When the empire was overthrown, he no longer liked
to remain in France, and he went to Buenos Ayres
in 1818, as professor of natural history. For a long
time nothing was heard of him, until at last the in-
telligence of his misfortunes reached Europe, and
consequently Humboldt's ears. Bonpland had, it

or clear away the dead were totally wanting, and hands had to be
made use of to dig out those buried under ruins. The wounded and
the saved w^ere encamped on the shores of the Gua5n'a stream, where
the branches of the trees were their only roof. All beds, linen, surgi-
cal instruments, medicines, all the primary objects of human necessi-
ties, were buried under the dust, and for the first few days thei'e was
a want of provisions. The water had become rare— the aqueducts
were destroyed, the springs choked. The interment of the dead was
demanded by religious as well as by sanitary considerations ; but it
was impossible to bury so many people, and commissaries were there-
fore appointed to superintend the burning of the corpses. Among
the ruins of the houses piles were erected, and this mela,ncholy busi-
ness lasted several days. Among universal lamentations the sur-
viving population fulfilled religious ceremonies, by which they hoped
to assuage the wrath of Providence. iSome instituted solemn pro-
cessions, singing funeral songs. Others, seized with insanity, con-
fessed aloud in the streets. Eighteen hours after this terrible event
new shocks wei-e felt, accompanied by subterranean thunder. The
inhabitants of Caracas dispersed ; but, as the neighbouring villages
had suffered equally, they could only find shelter beyond the moun-
tains, in the valleys and Savanas. Enormous pieces of rock fell from
the Silla, which Humboldt had ascended ; and it was maintained
that the two points of the mountain had been lowered by from
50 to 60 toises.

104 LIFE OF

seems, proceeded into the interior of Paraguay, in
1 820, to visit an Indian colony which he had founded
at St. Anna, on the eastern shores of the river Parana.
Scarcely had he arrived at St. Anna than he was sur-
rounded by soldiers, who carried him off a prisoner
and took him to St. Martha, after having destroyed
the plantations of the colony. This violent proceed-
ing was a revenge of selfishness which took place by
command of Dr. Francia, dictator of Paraguay. The
latter had long cast a jealous eye on the tea planta-
tions which Bonpland had established on several
points of Brazil, for the tea plant is peculiar to Para-
guay, and foims the staple export of the country. His
first command was, therefore, to seize on his rival Bon-
pland, on his next visit to the boundaries of Paraguay.
The prisoner was detained at St, Martha, where he was
allowed liberty of person, and was permitted to prac-
tise as a doctor. When Alexander von Humboldt
heard of this attack on his friend, he was untiring in
his intercessions with all his high patrons and friends,
but his efforts had no effect in Paraguay. In the
year 1829, the news arrived that Bonpland had at-
tained his liberty, and had returned to Buenos Ayres.
In September, 1818, Alexander von Humboldt pro-
ceeded to London, where his brother William had
resided for a year as Prussian Ambassador, and
been particularly active at his post, for the suppres-
sion of piracy in the northern states of Africa and the
extinction of the slave trade. But Alexander von
Humboldt's presence in London was not to be merely a
fraternal visit, as it was seven years earlier in Vienna,
especially as William's wife had remained in Berlin
on account of illness. The Allied Powers had com-
missioned him to compose a political survey of the
South American colonies. But in October the King
of Prussia summoned him to Aix-la-Chapelle, where
he arrived on the 13th of the month, and remained
with the king till the 26th November. Here his
new plan of a journey to Thibet and the Malayan
Archipelago was spoken of, and the king granted

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 105

Mm annually 12,000 thalers during the period of the
journey and the expenses of the preparations. Hum-
boldt was at this time so ardently full of this plan
that he proposed to commence his journey in a few
months, and it is therefore strange that he could
so quickly relinquish it. William von Humboldt also
came to Aix-la-Chapelle, on the 5th November, to be
present at the last meetings of the Congress.

From Aix-la-Chapelle, Alexander von Humboldt
returned to Paris, where he devoted several years
exclusively to his studies.

106 LIFE OF

CHAPTER VII.

JOURNEY TO ITALY WITH THE KING OF PRUSSIA — ASCENT OF MOUNT
VESUVIUS — VISIT TO BERLIN AND TEGEL — REMOVAL FROM PARIS
TO BERLIN — HUMBOLDT'S PUBLIC LECTURES IN BERLIN — FIRST
SKETCH OF '-'KOSMOS" — OFFER OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS — THE
- SOCIETY OP NATURALISTS IN BERLIN — FAMILY AFFLICTIONS —
APPOINTMENT TO THE CABINET — DEPARTURE.

While Alexander von Hmnbolclt was living a quiet
and studious life in Berlin, the course of his brother
William was a more animated and a more public one.
On the 12th August, 1819, he was appointed Minister
of the Interior with Von Schuckmann, but on the
31st December, he, with the Chancellor von Beyne,
retired from the ministry into private life, in conse-
quence of their opposition to Prince Wittgenstein and
the Lord Chancellor Hardenberg. After this, William
also devoted himself entirely to science and art, and
his house — the first story in the house of Councillor
Rush — was the meeting-place of the best society, in-
cluding princes, ministers, scientific men, and distin-
guished women, such as Rahel, Beltina von Arnim,
Charlotte von Kalb, Countess Schlabrendorf, &c. But
he missed his brother Alexander in this brilliant circle
of science and art, and it was his dearest wish that
Alexander should change his residence in Paris for
one in Berlin. But Alexander found all the intel-
lectual resources he required in the great capital, and
no other town was able to afford them. He was,
besides, in constant personal intercourse with his scien-

ALEXANDER VON" HUMBOLDT. lOT

tific friends and assistants, especially Arago, Gay-
Lussac, Julian, Cuvier, Valenciennes ; and the constant
addition of new and strange elements, made Paris
especially agreeable for his studies.

William had commenced the alteration of his man-
sion of Tegel in 1822, and on the spot where he and
Alexander had spent their childhood, a splendid build-
ing now stood, whose interior was ornamented with
productions of all branches of art. But another diplo-
matic appointment had nearly taken him again from
Tegel. In 1822, the Lord Chancellor Hardenberg
died in Genoa, and the minister Yon Yoss, who en-
joyed the king's confidence, was fixed on as his suc-
cessor, but also died, on 23rd January, 1823, which
caused some embarrassment in the choice of a prime
minister. The Count Kleist von NoUendorf, who
would have been called to the post, also died, strangely
enough, on the 17th February, and the king's choice
would now, though not without hesitation, have fallen
on William von Humboldt, had not other diplomatic
considerations prevented Humboldt's return to office.
The General von Witzleben had represented to the
king that he was the only man completely qualified
for such a high position. But he remained in Tegel,
quietly devoting himself to arts and science, and thus
had more leisure and time to welcome his brother
Alexander on their paternal grounds.

When the king of Prussia proceeded to the congress
of Yerona, in 1822, Alexander von Humboldt, coming
from Paris, met the king in Yerona, and accompanied
him from there on his journey through Italy to Yenice,
Eome, and Naples — an excursion which is of peculiar
interest to science, because Alexander von Humboldt
ascended Mount Yesuvius three times between the
22nd November and the 1st December; partly to
repeat and correct his former barometric altitude
measurements, partly to examine the edge of the
crater, and its condition after a previous violent erup-
tion. He had ascended it once before, with Leopold
von Buch and Gay-Lussac, on the J 2th August, 1805,

108 LIFE OF

when he was visiting his brother in Rome, on his
return from America.

Alexander returned to Berhn, from Italy, with the
king of Prussia, and arrived there in the commence-
ment of 1828, and was warmly welcomed in Tegel by
his brother William. He spent some months of
mental activity here, as not only the learned friends
of Berlin eagerly seized the opportunity of his presence,
to associate directly with the celebrated man, and
draw from the rich spring of his knowledge ; but he
also obeyed the beneficial and agreeable impressions
of home, and, in his brother's society, exchanged the
memories and experiences of a new tropical world,
on the spot of his earliest boyish dreams. During his
visit to his beloved brother, those circumstances took
place at court which we have already mentioned,
and which had nearly summoned William von Hum-
boldt, from the calm pleasures of a fraternal visit,
into the restless, public, political world.

Berlin and Germany enjoyed the honour of har-
bouring its celebrated naturalist but few months.
The desire to be near his fellow labourers in his great
work, and the thirst for the magnificent resources of
sciences in Paris, attracted him to the capital, where
he was literally and practically active for natural
science. But what fraternal love alone could not
effect, was soon afterwards made possible by the king
of Prussia's invitation. The king had formed a great
partiality for Humboldt's person, and had expressed
the wish that he would remove to Berlin entirely,
that he might be the welcome companion and scien-
tific adviser of his king. It was not royal favour, or
vanity, or pride, which now determined Alexander
to choose his native town as his dwelling-place ; the
wish of the affable king, who honoured science in
Humboldt, only gave the impetus to a determination,
whose deeper motives had been long working in the
natural feelings of the noble man, and whose carrying-
out needed only that more powerful impulse to tear
him from the chains formed in Paris by his scientific

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 109

pursuits. He had often felt and expressed the desire
to live together with him from whom he had always
been separated, although their characters were so
similar, their talents so nearly allied, that they com-
pleted and assisted each other, and although most
tender affection united them. He had determined to
live for his brother William, when the king summoned
him to Berlin.

In the autumn of 1826, Alexander von Humboldt
went to Berlin to satisfy his king's wish, and to
announce his approaching removal to his brother
William. He only remained till the middle of De-
cember, as the change of residence required his
presence in Paris, to arrange the commenced and
projected scientific plans, to prepare his instruments
and collections for the journey, and to design many
works which his friends were to complete.

He was on the point of returning to his Prussian
fatherland, in February, 1827, when a visit from
Berlin temporarily gave a new direction to his move-
ments. The count Bulow — William von Humboldt's
son-in-law, who had accompanied him to London, as
secretary of legation on his embassy, in 1827, and
had married his daughter Gabriele, in 1821 — had just,
been appointed ambassador to London, and was now^
proceeding to his post through Paris, without his wife
and family, when he found a companion in Alexander
von Humboldt. In London, Alexander was most
honourably and kindly received by Canning ; he, how-
ever, did not remain long there, but continued his
journey to Berlin, through Hamburg. On the 21st
May, 1827, William writes to his friend Gentz :
"Alexander is here also, and has taken up his residence.
He is more active and lively than ever, and we often
speak of you."

Henceforward, Alexander remained in Berhn,
though not uninterruptedly ; he lived in the imme-
diate neighbourhood of the king, and was often with
him in Potsdam, accompanied him on his journeys,
and only proceeded once a year, for some time, to the

110 LIFE OF

Frencli capital, which had, since 1804, been to him a
second home, abounding in friends and in agreeable
reminiscences, and opportunities for study. But he
found the same also in Berlin. At his first arrival, he
met Fresherr von Stein, who had come to Berlin on a
lengthened visit, intended partly for the Humboldts.
In May, A. W. von Schlegel arrived on a visit to his
friends, after an absence of twenty years, for he had,
through the exertions of William von Humboldt, been
appointed professor at the then commencing univer-
sity of Bonn ; and his presence was rendered parti-
cularly interesting by his public lectures on the theory
and history of plastic arts, which were delivered before a
select audience. All these individualities exercised a
beneficial influence on Alexander, and uiduced him to
deliver a public lecture to the Academy of Science,
on his favourite subject, the varieties of temperature
on the earth.

But in July of the same year the two affectionate
brothers had to separate again, and this time the reason
was a sad one. William accompanied his wife, who
had been ill for several years, to Gastein, as the bath
had benefited her the previous year, and he could not
bear to leave her in the then delicate state of her
health. He cherished the hope also of meeting his
friend Gentz there. The bath operated beneficially,
and they returned to one of their estates towards
the end of August, and to Tegel in October. But
William did not remain long in his beautiful little
castle, as a great intellectual treat summoned him to
Berlin. Alexander von Humboldt commenced his
lectures on physical cosmography on the ord Novem-
ber, 1827. The announcement sufficed to assemble
all the intellect of Berlin and its vicinity to hear the
celebrated naturalist.

As he had before done in Paris, in the French lan-
guage, Alexander now, in his native tongue, gave the
rich fruits of his researches in physical cosmography
to the public, in a course of lectures delivered before a
select but numerous assemblage. He enchanted his

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. Ill

hearers by the peculiar force of his intellectual clear-
ness, and by his eloquence, by the genuineness and
warmth of his feelings, and by the inexhaustible no-
velty of his subject ; he stood before them as a con-
vincing, inspiring teacher, who, like a talented creative
artist, brought a series of wonderful natural pictures
of a boldly-explored world before an attentive public.
This course of sixty-one lectures, commenced on the
3rd November, and concluded on the 26th April,
1828, was, as it were, the first sketch of the "Kosmos,'"
published subsequently as' the result of his life and
studies, given to the world in one work, whose contents
may be compared to a mine rich in precious metals,
and which such persons can best appreciate who
already have a general knowledge of natural sciences.

The first lectures which Alexander von Humboldt
gave in the university building, and which no scholar
living within a practicable distance missed, caused
such a great sensation, not only in the town but in
all parts of the country, that scholars and friends of
science frequently came from long distances to be
present at least at one of these lectures, of which they
could read the reports and effects in nearly every
newspaper, and to be able to say they had seen Hum-
boldt.

When some of the first lectures had been delivered,
the press of people from all ranks was so great that
Humboldt was literally forced to give a repetition of
the first course, adapted for a more general public,
nearly contemporary with the others, in the large
hall of the Musical Academy. And these popular
lectures were eagerly visited by the highest and the
most learned persons in the town. The king, the
royal family, the court, the highest lords and ladies,
attended regularly and * listened with the people,
which showed its pride in the celebrated man by its
enthusiastic admiration. Here Alexander stood im-
mediately before his fellow-countrymen as an intellec-
tual giant and inexhaustible spring of mental riches.
Every one, even the lowest and most ignorant, heard

112 LIFE OF

his name, — ^lie was something wonderful, mysterious,
and remarkable, and they thronged to see the man
who had discovered a new world. His brother Wil-
liam wrote to a friend in Vienna, who considered
every intellectually-uncommon development as some-
thing demoniacal: — "Alexander is really a '-puis-
sance,' and has gained a new kind of glory by his
lectures. They are insurpassable. He is always the
same ; and it is still one of the principal features of
his character to have a peculiar timidity and unde-
niable anxiety in the mode of his appearance."

These lectures of Humboldt were also new and
remarkable, in respect of the position he took towards
the people. For, while other learned men, whose
social position is always higher than that of the
people, nearly all, in their scientific and academic
pride, did not deem it worth their while to dissemi-
nate their knowledge among the people, whom it
must, ultimately, most benefit ; Avhile they generally
keep their learning as the property and mystery of a
caste, and interchange it among themselves; while
they consider it infra dig. and degrading for a man
of science to popularize his knowledge ; Alexander
von Humboldt set them the noble example, that a
baron, a chamberlain, a privy councillor, and confi-
dential adviser of his king, did not consider it beneath
his rank and dignity to appear publicly as the teacher
of his favourite science ; he showed that a true man
of science does not attach himself to an exclusive
caste, and that all considerations of birth, rank, and
title, are as nothing in the high service of science.
And thus, Alexander, in the impulses of his heart
and of his mind, fulfilled the noble duty which the
mentally gifted man owes to his people — of bestowing
on them, and instructing them with, the rich treasury
of his knowledge and experience, thereby raising
them nearer to himself.

William von Humboldt had waited for the termi-
nation of Alexander's course of lectures, in April,
1828, before he started on his last journey, which led

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 113

him, for a few weeks, to Paris, whence he visited
London, in order to accompany his youngest daughter,
Gabriele, thither, who had been married to the Prus-
sian ambassador, Von Biilow, and had hitherto re-
mained in Berlin. His wife and eldest daughter
accompanied him, with the intention of visiting Gas-
tein on their return, while Alexander, who at first
intended to proceed to Paris with his brother, was
detained in Berlin by important affairs. His public
lectures on physical geography had excited the uni-
versal wish that he would reprint them for the general
public, and thereby make them available for such
students, whose distance from Berlin had precluded
them from hearing the famed lecturer. This wish
had become an universal one in Germany, and was
urged most pressingly in all the public journals. At
last, Alexander von Humboldt consented to prepare
his lectures for publication, under the comjorehensive
title, " Kosmos.''

But this great work was first interrupted, then de-
layed for several years ; and, " Kosmos,'' enriched with
new views and experiences, was not given to the
world until years after.

Humboldt had long secretly cherished the plan of
a journey to Asia. The Russian minister, Homanzow,
had offered him an expedition to Thibet, in 1812,
which, as we have before stated, was prevented by the
French campaign against Russia. When Humboldt
met the king of Prussia at Aix-la-Chapelle, in No-
vember, 1818, his favourite plan of exploring the high-
lands of central Asia, and, if possible, the gigantic
mountains of India, those legendary districts pro-
mising rich fruits for scientific research, had induced
the king to offer him a sum of 12,000 thalers annu-
ally, for the duration of the expedition. The plan was
not executed at the time, but by no means abandoned.

The Emperor of Russia had again agitated the
subject in 1827, at the time when Alexander von
Humboldt was busy with his public lectures. The
Emperor Nicholas made him the magnificent offer

114 LIFE OF

of forming an extended expedition in the Russian
dominions at his sole cost, with the express injunction
to consider the advantages which the Russian govern-
ment might draw from his researches in the mining
capabihties of the country merely as of secondary
importance, and to devote himself solely and entirely
to the advancement of science.

Humboldt could not refuse such a proposal; but
that he did not at once, in the spring of 1828, make
use of it, shows the highmindedness of the man, for
he held it to be his duty first to complete his public
lectures, and to sacrifice his personal desires to the
promise he had given to the public. But he deferred
his publication of the lectures to prepare for the
great journey to be commenced in the spring of
1829, and to arrange his plans with the other na-
turalists whom he was to choose to accompany him.

Humboldt's devotion to natural science made the
year 1828 important far more than the preparations
for the Asiatic journey. For the purposes of com-
parative researches, he caused the temperature to
be measured in all the Prussian mines, and this
led Humboldt's reflective and comparative mind to
new results ; and besides this, he was occupied in the
autumn of this year by the seventh annual meeting
of the German naturalists and physicians (an institu-
tion originated in Oken), which held its sittings in
Berlin this time, and elected Humboldt, and Lichten-
stein, as presidents for the year.

Here Humboldt's penetrating mind was again
revealed in his just conception and comprehension of
science and its duties, which consist partly in extend-
ing and popularizing knowledge, partly in exciting to
further inquiries, in gaining new disciples, and in
making itself of practical utility in life, and of
educational service for the people.

These annual assemblies failed to fulfil their pur-
pose, partly because the different branches of natural
science were not properly separated from each other,
and the constantly-increasing material could not be

ALEXANDER YON HUMBOLDT. 115

surveyed, and certainly not arranged in the few days
that the assembly lasted. Humboldt soon recognised
this imperfect arrangement, and caused the insti-
tution of sections for the various special depart-
ments, in which every one had the privilege of an
interchange of progress, and only the universal matter
of general science was debated in the general meetings.
Humboldt opened this seventh annual convention
with a profound speech on the spirit and utility of
such annual meetings, and his words had, as always,
such a deep influence over the whole intellectual
world, that soon afterwards annual convocations were
instituted on the model of the Society of Natural
Historians in England and in Italy.

But the year 1828, spent by Alexander von Hum-
boldt in working for science, and in preparations for
his great Asiatic journey, also brought an event
which afflicted him deeply.

We have already stated that the wife of William
von Humboldt had been ill for several years, — that
she had frequently visited the baths of Gastein for the
benefit of her health, and that she had, after the
termination of Alexander's lectures, accompanied her
husband to Paris and London, to use the baths on her
return. When she returned to Tegel, with her hus-
band, in the middle of September, her chronic disease
attacked her with greater violence than before, and by
the end of November, she was lying in constant ex-
pectation of her approaching dissolution. What Alex-
ander must have suffered we can judge by his feeling
heart, which had so often revealed itself in his life,
and in his works. What must have been his feelings
wdien he saw his ardently loved brother grieving in-
consolably by the death-bed of his adored wife; and
when he felt the last hour of his dear sister-in-law, so
pre-eminent for all the virtues of heart and mind, in-
evitably approach ! The dissolution did not take place
as soon as was anticipated; she survived the new-
years-day of 1829, and on Sunday, the 22nd of
January, when Alexander had been with her in Tegel,
I 2

116 LIFE OF

he wiites to his friend Rabel these few words, which
will express the deep grief he felt: "She was dying;
opened her eyes and said to her husband, 'Another
human being is ended/ She expected her death, but
in vain ; she lived again, and took an interest in what

was going on around her. She prayed much/'

In this condition she lay until the 26th of March,
1829, on which day it was announced in Berlin, under
universal mourning, that death had released her from
her sufferings. Her early death was an unfortunate
event, for her travels had brought her into intimate
relation with all the celebrities in science and art ; her
house had always been the centre of the most agree-
able and intelligent society in Rome, Vienna, Paris,
and Berlin. We can imagine what Alexander must
have suffered, when we know his brother's grief Both
brothers, so intimately and affectionately united, in
life and in study, always shared joy and grief with
each other. William's love for his wife had increased
each year, and her death again revived, and heightened
that sentimental devotion, which had been in his
youth a feature of his cha^racter. The thought of his
wife seemed to him an intercourse with a higher world ;
her image was never absent from his soul; it entered
into all his thoughts, and ennobled his own existence.
Alexander von Humboldt remained for some time
with his brother, and we may assume that the de-
parted one was often present to his mind, for she was
the nearest female friend he had related to him by
blood and affection; as he had never known the ties
of conjugal tenderness, his heart could only have been
occupied with the delightful picture of his brother's
matrimonial happiness. After the death of his wife,
William was almost exclusively occupied with the
plan of a monument for the departed one, whose re-
mains rested, until its completion, in a spot of the
church-}; ard of Tegel chosen by herself*

* Tills monument was executed by the sculptor Rauch^ and erected
in the park of the mansion. An alley of cypresses leads to it ; and,
on the top of the monument is placed a marble statue of Spes, ex-
pressly made for Madame von Humboldt, by Thorwaldsen.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 117

Recreation and employment were now absolutely
necessary for William, to divert his mind from its
grief in the one exclusive direction. Alexander had
hitherto consoled his brother, and endeavoured to
cheer him, but the time had arrived when he was
obliged to leave him for a long period. The service of
science called him away.

He was to leave Berlin on the 12th April, 1829,
to commence the great expedition into Central Asia,
his famous second voyage into the interior of the
great Russian empire, to the Ural Mountains, Altai,
• and the Caspian Sea. Before his departure he pro-
bably felt that his mourning brother should not be
left in the solitude of the Castle of Tegel, at the grave
of his Caroline ; and it is probable that he had re-
quested the king, who had become more his friend
than his patron, to divert his brother by official em-
ployment, for soon after Alexander's departure, the
king summoned William to Berlin at the head of a
commission for the interior arrangement of the new
museum, and this new sphere was most excellently
adapted for him, as he was quite au fait in these
matters, and as he was obliged again to enter into
nearer intercourse with well-known men, such as
Ranch, Tiech, the sculptor ; Schinkel, the architect
of the museum ; Wach, the painter ; Waagen, after-
wards director of the picture gallery ; and Hirt ; also
with the art-loving Crown Prince, the present king
Frederick William IV., and with the other intellec-
tual circles of Berlin.

But Alexander also received a new public token of
royal favour and esteem shortly before his departure.
Although it could not fail that a scholar living in the
court of his king, who, by his birth, his travels, and
his reputation had come into contact with foreign
princes, should receive also the symbols of honour
and acknowledgment from the highest person in the
realm, and should not want the outer decorations of
life, it will not be considered superfluous if we men-
tion that before his departure to Russia a rank was
conferred upon him which rarely becomes the share

118 LIFE OF

of learned men in Germany. Alexander von Hum-
boldt was appointed an acting pri^^ councillor with
tlie title " Excellency." It was the rank of a minis-
ter, and showed that he was the most capable of re-
presenting the mind in the kingdom of science, and
most proper for governing the realm of knowledge.

On the 12th April, Humboldt left Berlin, aftar an
affectionate farewell from his brother, and we must
prepare to accompany him on his new journey.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 119

CHAPTER YIII.

JOURNEY TO RUSSIA WITH G. ROSE AND EHEENBERG, IN 1829 —
KASAN AND THE RUINS OP BULGARIA — EXPLORINGS IN THE VICI-
NITY OP JEKATHARINENBURG THE PEARPUL BORABINSKI STEPPES

— ARRIVAL IN THE CENTRE OP ASIA — WAY TO THE SOUTHERN URAL
DISTRICTS — PROM ORENBERG TO ASTRACHAN — RESEARCHES AND
JOURNEY ON THE CASPIAN SEA — RETURN — RESULTS OP THE ASIATIC
JOURNEY.

Alexander von Humboldt had communicated
with Gustav Rose and Ehrenberg, two naturalists,
living in Berlin, and had induced them to accom-
pany him on his projected journey. Each of the
three travellers had a special branch of activity
allotted to him, so that it might be more easily pos-
sible to superintend and arrange the rich materials
certain to accrue on this journey. Humboldt under-
took the observations on magnetism, the results of
geographical astronomy, and the general preparation
of the geognostic and physical plan of North- Western
Asia. Gustav Rose undertook the chemical analyses
of mineralogy and the subsequent keeping of the tra-
velling diary, while the botanical and zoological
labours fell to Ehrenberg's share.

The munificence of the Emperor Nicholas does
indeed deserve warm acknowledgments, and has
been of great advantage to science, which owes it to
these not inconsiderable sacrifices of the Russian
government that long existing errors have been cor-

120 LIFE OF

rected, and great progress in the study of the physio-
logy of the earth has been made. Therefore Alex-
ander von Humboldt states in his dedication to the
Russian emperor that he had vividly a]3preciated the
munificence shown to him in the mountains of the
Ural chain and on the shores of the Caspian Sea,
where the importance of this expedition and its re-
sults were most plainly revealed to him. The em-
peror had granted that the localities which Humboldt
was to explore should be left entirely to his discre-
tion, as the chief aim had been the advance of science,
especially of geology and of magnetism, which is of
such importance in the present time, and that the
material and local interests of the country were only
to be secondary considerations.

The Russian minister of finance, the Earl of Cancrin,
who has done much for scientific plans and purposes,
had made the most appropriate arrangements for the
comfort and security of the travellers, and to facilitate
their expedition in general. A Russian officer, sub-
sequently the inspector of mines. Von Menschenin,
was appointed as Humboldt's constant companion, to
give him every information on ways and localities,
and to levy the necessary assistance from the Russian
authorities ; thus prepared, and furnished with all the
comforts of Russian hospitality, they left Petersburgh
on the 20th May, and proceeded to Moscow. At
Nischnei-Nowgorod they embarked on the Wolga,
and arrived at Kasan on the 4th June. When they
had visited the Tartar ruins near Bulgari, the ancient
capital of the Moguls, they proceeded over Perm to
Jekatharinenburg, on the Asiatic side of the Ural
mountains, where Humboldt, during a stay of four
weeks, made a series of important observations on the
central and northern portion of the mountain ridge.
The mountains here afforded him a highly interesting
sphere for investigation, in their situation, their form,
and their metallic formations. This ridge, consisting
of several nearly parallel lines, whose highest point

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 121

rises to a height of 4500 to 4800 feet, was extremely
remarkable, as much for its extent, as for its direction
in the meridian, which was in a line standing perpen-
dicularly upon the equator from the pole, and which
reminded Humboldt of a similar situation of the chain
of Andes which he had explored in America. These
Ural formations — beginning on the sea of Aral, with
so-called tertiary formations,* and extending to the
greenstone rock on the Arctic sea — contain gold and
platina in their northern and central portions, princi-
pally where alluvial deposits predominate. This cir-
cumstance urged Humboldt to especially interesting
inquiries, and he gained, spite of his short stay of four
weeks, such important results, and new disclosures on
the composition and formation of the gold and plati-
num contained in alluvial soil, he discovered such alarge
quantity of new minerals, and made such highly im-
portant observations on the relative positions of the
various rocky formations, that we should be more sur-
prised if we did not know Humboldt's unwearying
industry, and his unusual and practised talent for
observation.

When he had visited the malachite f pits of Zume-
schefskoi, the remarkable magnetic mountain, Bla-
godad, and the famed deposits of topaz and barytes,
near Murzinsk ; after he had found a piece of pure
platinum, weighing more than eight kilogrammes,!
near Nischnei-Tigilsk, a district which reminded him
of Choco, in South America ; and when he had, be-
sides this, fixed the astronomic position of several
localities, and made several magnetic and altitude
measurements, he continued his journey from Jekath-

* By this is understood the strata of earth lying beneath the
superficial layers of more modern times, and which consist of upper
peat, of coarse lime, and of lower peat,

f Malachite is carbonated oxide of copper. It is genei'ally met wuth
in veined radiating groiips ; is of silky lustre, and of a fine emerald
green colour. It sometimes also occurs in coarse, earthy masses,
and crystallizes in irregular rhomboidal cones,

X A kilogramme is nearly equal to two pounds six drachms.

122 LIFE OF

arinenbiirg over Tjumen to Tobolsk, on the Irtysch,
and thence over Tara, through the fearful steppe of
Borabinski. This steppe is notorious in the whole
country, and dreaded by all in its vicinity, for its
innumerable stinging insects of the genus Tipulce,
but nevertheless Humboldt and his companions tra-
versed it with the same disinterestedness and devotion
to the cause of science which we have already had
occasion to admire in the heroism of this great na-
turalist during his Orinocco journey. On the 2nd
August he reached Barnaul, on the shores of the Obi,
and now the travellers explored the picturesquely-
beautiful ■Kol5rvvanlake, and the rich silver mines* of
the Schlaugenberg, of Biddersk, and of Zyrianowski,
situated on the south-western side of the Altai moun-
tains. The highest point of this ridge, the mountain
Bjelucha, called by the Calmucks, God's Mountain,
Jyctu, or barren mountain ; Alastu is of about the
height of Mount Etna, or, according to the investiga-
tions of the botanist Bunge, equal to the Peak of
Teneriffe. From Biddersk, Humboldt and his com-
panions turned southward to the little fortress XJst-
Kamlenoigorsk, and crossing Buchtorminsk, arrived
on the boundaries of the Chinese Dsungarei. Here
he obtained permission to cross the boundary, which
he at once made use of to pay a short but interesting
and productive visit to the Mogul settlement of Bate,
also called Chonimaila-chu ; and where he entered the
real Asiatic district of the proximate centre of Asia,
situated north of the Dsaisang lake, on the 17th
August.

The return from here to the fortress Ust-Kamenoi-
gorsk was highly interesting for its geological value,
and was suggestive of new researches ; for as he was
sailing back down the Irtysch, he saw on the secluded
shores of these waters, on a surface of more than
16,000 feet, immense rocks of granite, lying horizon-

* It may be imagined how considerable these mines are from the
annual proceeds^ which amount to above 76,000 marks, or 49,842
pounds.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 123

tally and in layers, and resting on clay-slate, whose
layers were partly perpendicular, partly in an angle of
85 degrees. This was a highly -important fact for
Humboldt in his theory of the formation of granite.

When he had again arrived at the abovenamed
fortress, he proceeded thence through the steppe of
Ischim, which belongs to the central tribe of Khir-
gises, to the southern portion of the Ural chain ; he
crossed the line of the Cossacks of Ischim over Semi-
platinsk and Omsk, and arrived at Mjask. From
here, frequent excursions were made into the vicinity.
On a district of inconsiderable extent, and only a few
inches below the surface, three pieces of pure gold
were found, of which two weighed 28 and the third
43:^ marks (18 and 28 pounds). The course of the
southern Ural was followed as far as Orsk, where the
remarkable quarries of green jasper attracted Hum-
boldt's attention, and where his geological studies
found abundant scope in the river Jaik, which
crosses the mountain-ridge in a north-western direc-
tion.

Humboldt now turned his course to Orenburg,*
where he arrived by the road over Guberlinsk, on the
21st September. Here in Orenburg, where caravans
of many thousand camels arrive yearly, Humboldt
made the acquaintance of a certain Herr von Gens,
who was a very intelligent man, and interested him-
self particularly for the geography of Asia, for which
he had collected a quantity of important materials.
He had travelled far, and Humboldt gained many
useful explanations and descriptions from him. Among
others, he learned of a high mountain, which had
once been a volcano, and which still disturbs the
passing caravans by storms which it is said to occa-
sion, and whose anger the inhabitants propitiate by
sacrifices of sheep, situated to the north-east of the
great Balkasch lake, which receives the waters of the
river Sli. Gens had this communication from a Tartar,

* Orenburg lies below the level of the sea.

]24 LIFE OF

and Humboldt at once remembered the volcanos
mentioned in Chinese books as lying far from the
ocean, and which had excited much surprise among
geologists in Klaproth's and Amusat's literary de-
scriptions. Humboldt subsequently obtained more
accurate information from the Russian police-director
of Semipalatinsk, von Klostermann. He devoted
special attention to this subject, and on his return
composed a highly interesting sketch of the geo-
graphy of this little-known district, with the object
of bringing the remarkable volcano into organic re-
lation with the other phenomena and conditions of
the district.

The famed rock-salt mines of Jlezk, in the steppe
of the minor tribe of Kirghides, and the chief station
of the Uralskian Cossacks, was the next point on
his journey. Then he arrived at the German colonies
on the Wolga, in the department of Saratow, at the
large salt-lake Elton ; and then visited the fine colony
of Moravian brethren in Sarepta, and arrived in
Astrachan, on the Caspian Sea, in the middle of
October.

His chief objects in this expedition to the Caspian
Sea were to analyze the waters of the largest inland
sea of the world with chemical accuracy, and to dis-
cover its constituent elements — a task which Gustav
Eose undertook ; then to make barometric measure-
ments comparative to the measurements in Orenburg,
Sarepta, and Kasan, and to collect zoological trea-
sures. The sj3ecimens of fish from the Caspian Sea
were to complete the work on fishes by Cuvier and
Valenciennes,* and Humboldt arranged a little excur-
sion by steamer on this lake, for the purpose of
collecting them.

From Astrachan they returned to Moscow, over the
isthmus which separates the rivers Don and Wolga,
near Tischinskaya, through the territory of the Don

* Of the fish here caught, Humboldt sent a very complete collec-
tion to the Museum of Natural History, in the Botanical Gardens of
Paris.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 125

Cossacks, across Woronesch and Tula, and arrived in
Petersburg on the 13th November. Humboldt re-
mained here only as long as his obligations to the
government and court required, and until the re-
ceipt of his specimens, and arrived safely in Berlin on
the 28th December, 1829.

Humboldt had been absent from Berlin from the
12th April to the 28th December, and such a consi-
derable territory has probably never been explored in
such a short space of time. During eight months and
a half he had travelled a distance of 2500 geographi-
cal miles on land.

This journey, like the American one, was of im-
mense importance for the physical - geographical
sciences in their most extensive form. The marvel-
lously extensive materials which Humboldt brought
with him, and their application to a just compre-
hension of the nature of the earth, would not bear com-
pression into a condensed, popularly comprehensible
description. The results of the journey were therefore
to be published in three works, of which each of the
travellers undertook to prepare one. Humboldt's
" Fragmens de Geologic et de Climatologie Asiatique''
was the first to appear ; a portion of it, however, only
flowed direct from Humboldt's pen, and it contains
much varied matter, very productive for further scien-
tific works, and which has been enlarged by Klaproth
with important notes.

These Asiatic fragments can only be considered as
the forerunner of a greater work ; but we must indi-
cate its general contents to show what were Hum-
boldt's chief studies and researches during this journey
to Central Asia. The first volume of the original
French work treats especially of the mountain-ridges
and volcanoes of Central Asia, with additional re-
marks on the therm o-waters of Alagut, and on the
gas-mud and fire eruptions on various spots of Central
Asia and America. This shows how Humboldt con-
stantly compared and combined his new discoveries
and experiences in Asia with those of America, and

126 LIFE OF

created a picture of the entire earth and its laws from
the results of his comparisons. He has everywhere
interspersed numerous geognostic observations and
notes on the general formation of the soil between the
Altai and the Himalaya mountains, and his commu-
nications on the remarkable occurrence of volcanoes
in the middle of the continent, and far from the ocean,
are of great interest. Here Humboldt placed science
on a new footing, for he had had the special oppor-
tunity of observing the volcanoes in three different
quarters of the world. He perceived that the volcanic
phenomena could no longer be considered as belong-
ing to geological developments, but that they must be
explained by physical history in general, as the vol-
canic activity seemed to him to be the result of a con-
tinual communication between the interior of the
earth, which is in a molten fluid condition, and the
atmosphere which surrounds the hardened and oxy-
dised crust of our planet. On this theory he explained
the still active and the extinct craters, the direction
of the mountain-ridges, and the formations of the soil ;
he deciphered the traces of former terrestrial revolu-
tions, their relative age, and the physical jDOwers which
have influenced and still influence the form of the
earth's surface. Thus the masses of lava which pour
from the craters were to him the petrified streams of
formerly gushing springs of the interior of the earth ;
from the connexion and similarity of effects he traced
the causes and conditions of the formation of rocks
and superincumbent strata, of the chemical results of
volcanic eruptions, of elevations and depressions of the
earth's surface. By the strictest investigation of all
occurring new appearances, and by penetrating com-
bination of analogous, observed facts, he explained
numerous physical and geological problems, whose
exact solution had hitherto been deemed impossible.
Humboldt thinks that the volcanic activity of our
earth, compared to former ages, is considerably de-
creased ; it can no longer bring forth new elevations
or heat in the north, but can only produce small

ALEXANDEE VON HUMBOLDT. 127

craters, and an agitation of the earth's surface. Be-
fore the advent of man into terrestrial nature, a tro-
pical animal and vegetable world flourished every-
where on the volcanically heated earth ; now, on the
cooled planet, the petrified surface only receives
warmth from the sun, the tropical luxuriance died out
towards the north, and only flourishes where the sun
can exercise its perpendicular influence over the
tropics.

In those remote ages of the boiling centre of our
earth ball, the hot fluid and the gases it generated
often and on many points burst through the firm
crust with tremendous force, made clefts and de-
pressions in it into which the molten masses of metal,
basalt, and other matter flowed, which were petrified,
and now lie in the thus-formed mountain ridges.
Thus arose the Cordilleras of the Andes, the Hima-
laya mountains, and thus was petrified the waving
surface of the broken soil into those hills and valleys
which transform our plains into picturesque landscapes.
From these causes Humboldt explained the peculiari-
ties of the Asiatic soil. The volcanic power which
raised mountains and continents, and swelled up the
earth-crust bubbling like a gigantic vault, had the
consequence that these hollow vaults sank down in
the course of ages, and thus Humboldt established
that the depression of the surface of the old world,
where the level of the Caspian sea, like that of the sea
of Ural, lies 32 to 50 toises below the level of the ocean,
and where the depression of the firm soil extends as
far as Orenburg, Saratow, and south-east probably as
far as the so-called central plain, is nothing but a
crater-land like that of the moon, where the large
points, above 100 miles broad, called Hipparch, Archi-
medes, and Ptolemy, fonn a basin formation such
as exist also nearer home, for instance, in Bohemia.

Before Humboldt's journey into the interior of
Asia, there existed many erroneous notions of the
geography, the connexion of the mountain chains,
and the productions of the soil of those districts, but an

128 LIFE OF

entirely new view of the country was acquired through
this bold and penetrating traveller, who made a
large number of independent latitude measurements,
and who obtained varied information on travelling
routes and local circumstances from travelled Tartars,
Bulgarians, and Taschkents, as well as from the
Russian officers. The inner, central part of Asia was
not, as had been supposed, an immense agglomeration
of mountains, nor an uninterrupted table land, for
Humboldt established that this part of the world
was crossed from east to west by four mountain-
systems (by the Altai, which ends westward in the
Kirghiz district, by the Himmelsberg, by Kuenlun,
and by the Himalaya), which have exercised authen-
ticated influence on the historical migrations of
nations. And thus Humboldt discovered a volcanic
territory in the centre of Asia, which is 1000 to 1400
miles distant from the ocean, and which presents a
surface of 2500 geographical miles.

The second volume of the "Asiatic Fragments'"
contains, beside the description of the twelve
routes, " Observations on the Temperature and the
Hygrometric Condition of the Atmosphere in some
portions of Asia, and Investigations into the Causes
of the Deflection of the Isothermic Lines,'' — i. e.,
the imaginary lines which unite all points on the
earth of equal mean temperature. In this volume Ave
have important contributions to a climatic knowledge
of that country, and in it are indicated also the causes
which produce the deflection of the isothermic lines
from the parallel circles.* These results, based on
numerous astronomic and magnetic measurements,
throw an entirely new light on this branch of science,
and are again closely connected with the results of
the former American journey, as Humboldt had there
also construed the terrestrial laws from similar phe-
nomena in the old and new world.

* The parallel circles i"uu parallel with the equator, and the mean
animal temperature generally decreases with their increasing breadth
— the approach to the poles.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 129

"We must devote especial attention to this subject,
— ^the isothermic lines, — because it plays a very im-
portant part in Humboldt's scientific life, and lias
occupied him much during his whole career as the
favourite branch of his studies. In the year 1817,
when he published his essay, " De la distribution de
la chaleur et des lignes isotherrnes,'' in the third vo-
lume of the French journal, Me'inoires cVArcueil, he
had already paid great attention to the distribution
of heat over the earth, and had endeavoured to deter-
mine the direction and form of these isothermic lines
more accurately. He also gave a lecture ten
years subsequently, on the 8rd July, 1827, before a
public meeting of the Academy of Sciences, on the
chief causes of the varieties of temperature on the
globe, and in his Asiatic fragments, he communicated
his detailed investigations and increased experiences
upon the subject.

Alexander von Humboldt begins by treating of the
climatic condition of Asia, and herein entirely follows
the impressions of his accurate comprehensive geo-
graphical acquirements, and at the same time extends
the subject to the entire earth, and goes back to its
universal laws. On this field many errors had to be
corrected, and science had to be raised to a new grade.
It was formerly believed that the coldness increasing
from Europe towards the east was caused by the ele-
vation of the ground above the level of the sea, but
it has now been plainly proved by facts that this is
not the case, and that, on the contrary, one may travel
from the Brabantine heaths eastward, as far as the
Asiatic steppes on the western declivities of the
Altai, a direct line of 80 degrees of longitude, with-
out crossing an elevation of 1200 to 1300 feet. And
travelling in a higher latitude from the Brabantine
heaths to the Asiatic steppes, one would cross only
unbroken plains as far as above the 65th degree of
latitude, a distance of nearly half the earth's circum-
ference. This Humboldt perceived, and that there-
fore the climatic changes must have other causes than

K

130 LIFE OF

the hitherto accepted ones ; he developed these facts
with skilful a.pplication of the rich store of experience
he had had the opportunity of collecting in two dif-
ferent quarters of the globe. When he compared the
European remarkably warm winter temperature with
that of Asia or America in the same latitude, he
could no longer, from his experience, content himself
with the already-accepted explanation of the unusual
European warmth ; it had hitherto only been custo-
mary to search for the causes of the coldness in Asia
and America, without at the same time considering
the warmth of Europe, and looking upon it as an
anomaly. Humboldt perfectly enlightened science on
this point; he perceived the reason of the winter
warmth of Europe to lie not only in the general form
of this quarter of the world, but also in its position
beside a large, hot Asiatic zone of continent, which is
much more heated by the constant influence of the
sun's rays than the mobile and self-cooling ocean
which surrounds the other quarters, and vmich sends
its rising wa.rm atmosphere over the plains of Europe,
which have a warm winter. A still more important
cause of heat he finds in the current of the ocean,
called the gulf current, because this current perpetu-
ally drives the heated waters of the American torrid
zone to the north-east, and its warm exhalations float
particularly across the coasts of Great Britain, Ireland,
and Scandinavia. Therefore, the west and south-
west winds, moving in the same direction with this
warm ocean current, blow over the northern part of
Europe as warm currents of air impregnated with
warm moisture by the exhalations of the sea ; they
modify the severity of winter, but as they discharge
their warm moisture, they cool more and more, and
reach the Asiatic plains as dry cold winds. The
west wind, therefore, which brings us damp warmth,
brings dry coldness to the inhabitants of the Asiatic
plains, and while Western Europe has an insular coast
climate, Eastern Europe has more a continental
climate, with regularly opposed warmth of summer

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 181

and frigidity of winter ; and although on the southern
boundary of Siberia the constantly and perpendicu-
larly-falling rays of the sun must generate heat, this
has no other consequence than that a very hot sum-
mer there succeeds a very cold winter. Humboldt
nowhere found finer grapes than in Astrachan, on the
coast of the Caspian Sea ; and yet here, and still
further south, in Kislar, at the mouth of the Tarek, in
the same latitude as Avignon and Rimini, the cold in
winter is from 28 to 30 degrees of Celsius' thermometer.
Humboldt calls this great contrast between summer s
heat and winter's cold a peculiarity of Siberia ; the
vines there must be buried deep in the earth in the
winter, and in summer, on account of the dry heat,
they have to be artificially refreshed by water. As
high as the 58th degree of latitude, Humboldt could
ascertain the mean temperature of the localities with
tolerable accuracy from the temperature of the springs.
A little further north the ground remains constantly
frozen to a depth of from 1 2 to 15 feet, while in Norway,
which is as near if not nearer the north pole, fresh moss
and grass grow beneath the snow, even in winter.
Humboldt had a spring dug in Bogoslawsk in the
middle of winter, and came to ice nine and a half
feet in thickness six feet belov/ the surface, and it is
remarkable that, in spite of these subterranean masses
of ice, the short but powerful summer's heat quickly
thaws the upper crust, and produces a very abundant
harvest.

All these observations, with others arising from them,
and further investigations, were combined to geologi-
cal truths of scientific importance in Humboldt's
active mind. From these causes, he solved the for-
merly inexplicable riddle, how remains of animals
whose organization belonged to a hot climate — for
example, even the mammoth — had been found in a
state of decay in the iceblocks of these northern
regions. Not long since. East Indian tigers were
exhumed there, in the same latitude in which
Hamburg and Berlin lie; and it is Humboldt's
K 2

1.32 LIFE OF

opinion that the southern animals had wandered
too far north into higher latitudes in hot summers —
especially in former ages, when, by the greater
Yolcanic activity of the then hotter earth, those north-
ern regions, also, must have had a higher tempera-
ture— that they had been suddenly overtaken by the
winter, and had been buried in ice which has not
melted since that time ; and that inundations of rivers,
flowing northward, on whose shores numerous remains
of southern animals may yet be found, may have
washed them towards the north.

Humboldt also acknowledged the direction of the
winds and tides, as one modifying cause of the cli-
mate prevailing over certain large portions of land, and
these again stand in intimate relation to the form of
the continent, and often divert the isothermic lines
considerably from their regular course. This ex-
plained, clearly, how two countries or districts lying
under the same degree of latitude, but at a great dis-
tance from each other, could have two entirely diffe-
rent climates.* Humboldt showed how the revolu-
tion of the earth on its axis must cause the great
current of the waters of the ocean to flow from east
to west, and that this current must be the strongest
at the greatest peripherium of the earth, beneath
the equator ; that another current from the poles
towards the greatest peri23herium, must necessarily
CO- exist, which must flow from the north pole, first
towards the south, and then westward, following the
chief current.

The cold waters coming from the polar circles there-
fore, wash the eastern shores of the countries of the
earth, while the heated waters, flowing back from the
equator, beat against the western coasts. The pre-
vailing winds blow analogously with these ocean tides ;
and hence the coldness of the eastern, and the
warmth of the western coasts, are self-evident "We

* These theories of Humboldt have been worked out by Schouw
and Dowe, who have founded many important facts on this basis.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 133

can, therefore, not be surprised at the coldness of
Northern Asia, as the north-east winds prevail there.

Humboldt has also extended these studies on cli-
mate, to the special local influences ; and has scienti-
fically explained the co-existing effect of the rays of
heat. This radiation of heat is variously modified by
the nature of the soil, its cultivation, its vegetable
world, even by the form of the plants, and situation,
and direction of their leaves ; it reflects the warmth
generated by the sun's rays, from the surface of the
earth back into the atmosphere, and exercises a great
influence on the climate.

In this way Humboldt established a climatology,
for which he had collected the elements as a favourite
occupation, from the commencement of his studies;
he gained rich material from his own experience, and
did not reject the experience of others, which he was
able, in his own genial manner, justly to apply.

But the Asiatic journey became of vast importance
in its more extensive results. Where Humboldt
could not himself institute observations, he arranged
further studies for others, with prudence and fore-
sight. In many parts of Siberia, he left carefully
compared thermometers, in the hands of competent
and intelligent persons, and awakened the taste for
these measurements and comparative experiments,
especially among the Russian mining superintendents
of the Ural mountains. In addition to this, he
gained the assistance of the imperial academy of St.
Petersburg, by submitting to them an excellently
regulated plan for instituting over the entire extent
of the Russian empire a regular system of observa-
tions on the daily changes in the state of barometer,
thermometer, and hygrometer, on the temperature
of the soil, the direction of the wind, and the
moisture of the atmosphere. The interest which
all the members of the academy took in Humboldt's
plan, was increased by the emperor's interest; and
if it is taken into account that the Russian empire
presents a surface larger than the whole visible

1.34 LIFE OF

surface of the moon, it will be comprehended what
important laws of terrestrial organization can be de-
duced and revealed by contemporary and comparative
observations over such a large field. The Russian
government at once acknowledged the importance of
these plans, and instituted a physical observatory in
St. Petersburg, whose task it was to choose the other
observatory stations, to compare and adjust the instru-
ments with which the experiments were to be made, —
accurately to determine the astronomical position of
the stations selected, to superintend and direct the
magnetic and meteorologic researches, to arrange the
collected results, to calculate them, and to publish the
mean results.

The special mineralogic geognostic experiences and
inquiries which had resulted from the Asiatic expe-
dition, Avere confided to the care of Gustav Eose, one
of Humboldt's companions. His work appeared in
two volumes in the years 1837 and 1842, as a portion
of the collective work,* under the special title " Mine-
ralogical geognostic division and historical account
of the journey,'' and Humboldt had given the com-
piler a large number of notes and observations from
his own diary. But before the third part of the col-
lective work appeared, which was to contain the
botanic and zoological results arranged by Ehrenberg,
and the investigation into the geographic distribution
of plants and animals, Humboldt published another
new work under the title : " Asie centrale, recherches
sur les chaines des montagnes et la climatoloo^ie com-
paree,'' (Paris, 1843, in three volumes,) which was
soon afterwards enlarged and translated into German,
by W. Mahlmann.

This work is the real result of the studies, which
Humboldt had for many years devoted to this subject.
We have mentioned in former chapters, when he first

* The collective title runs thus : ''Expedition to the Ural, the
Altai, and the Caspian sea, by command of his majesty the Emperor
of Russia, in the year 1820, made by Alexander von Humboldt,,
G. Ehrenberg, and Gustav Rose."

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 135

planned a journey to Asia, and if possible^ to East
India, v/ith what perseverance and trouble he had
prepared himself for a journey to the little-known
districts of Central Asia. He was then excited to it
by his favourite project of travelling to these unknown
territories, over Kashgar or Persia. He freely ac-
knovv^iedges, that this has always been a favourite idea
of his, and if he speaks of it now, he declares that he
regrets nothing so much in his old age, than that
he did not then carry out that cherished project. But
the preparatory studies for that plan were not lost to
science, for they gush forth amply in this work on
Central Asia, and give it a serious characteristic of
profoundness and great erudition. After the publi-
cation of the Asiatic fragments, in 1831, twelve years
elapsed, during which he collected a multitude of
fresh materials, especially the communicPitions received
from his correspondents in Kussia, entrusted with the
comparative observations, and from the physical obser-
vatory of St. Petersburg. The entire surface of the
Russian territories had been lying open before his
mental perceptions for twelve years, and it is, therefore,
very natural that Humboldt preferred, instead of
preparing the required second edition of his Asiatic
fragments, to write an entirely new work, which might
include the considerably increased facts of his geolo-
gical experience. Only he was able to conceive, and
to realize such a work, for, whatever he, as a single
individual, was not able to master, was gladly prepared
for him on all sides by the disinterested and voluntary
assistance of the most profound scholars and oriental
linguists of the Chinese, Arabic, and old Indian Zend
dialects, and by celebrated naturalists, such as Klap-
roth,* Stanislaus Julien,f and Eugene Burnouf.J

* Klaproth. prepared new notes from Chinese sources.

+ Member of the Institute of France. He gave special physi-
cal and orographical (of mountains) explanations; and Humboldt
publicly declares that he feels himself honoured by his fi-iendship.

I He made ethnographical and geological investigations on pas-
sages in the Zend books for Humboldt's work, and Humboldt himself
calls his labours most surprising.

136 LIFE OF

Geograpliy gained new sources of information. The
knowledge of the direction, the construction and the
geological peculiarities of the great Asiatic mountain
ridges, acquired an extraordinary degree of profundity
and accuracy, by Humboldt's method of the constant
comparison of all scientific elements ; and the regu-
lar taking into account similar and opposite experi-
mental results in Asia, America, and Europe, created
a climatology, which was founded on the most im-
portant revelations of all the natural sciences. Only
the adept in the science of nature can entirely per-
ceive and comprehend Humboldt's greatness ; the
uninitiated can only admire the mysterious extent of
his labours, and Mahlmann, the German translator of
" Central Asia,'' who had given a sketch of Humboldt's
labours several years before in the Illustrirte Zeitung,
concludes his preface to the German edition of the
work, with the following enthusiastic words :

" If Alexander von Humboldt be the chief founder
and representative of that condition, to which research
has developed itself in our century, striving after
universalit}^ in everything ; and, if for that reason
alone, each of his works is a great inheritance for
future generations, we are more than ever impressed
with admiration in his investigations on the forma-
tion of the earth, how the most profound study of
countless sources of knowledge were united in Hum-
boldt, with the most comprehensive acquirements in
all branches of human knowledge. We see with
increased interest, with what talent Humboldt reco-
gnises the mutual interconnexion of all branches of
natural sciences, and the eternal influence of nature,
on the life and destinies of nations, and with what
unusual simplicity he can represent it. With in-
creasing delight we watch him in the art which few
possess, of collecting, regulating, and sifting a chaos
of facts, and then of combining them to universal
ideas and reflections in which all individual facts meet
as the rays in a focus. Then we perceive with as-
tonishment, how, by the union of these rays, the

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 137

internal connexion of apparently foreign phenomena,
is clearly understood, and how Humboldt has gradu-
ally introduced us to those great natural laws which
rule in the apparently anomalous whole, and which
had been hitherto concealed from the eye of the
student/' Humboldt's travels are not WTitten for the
great public, and therefore they have all been modi-
fied by other writers for the popular taste ; but these
modifications even are only intelligible to the more
intellectual reader, and can only be appreciated by
him. Every man, even the illiterate follower of
material interests, knows the name of Humboldt, but
his works are only read by the thinkers, for it is not
Humboldt's manner to describe his personal adven-
tures on his travels, and afford that amusement, which
the travels and voyages of many others are intended
to aw^aken. His descriptions are all distinguished for
their real scientific character, which requires intelli-
gence, education, and serious reflection in the reader.
The results of the Asiatic journey, which Humboldt
has given in his work on Central Asia, are very various,
and cannot yet be combined under one common head.
The most important new investigations which have
here led to further inquiries, are the treatise on the
mean altitude of the great continent of the earth, on
the table-lands of the interior of Asia, on the mountain
system of Knesslun, on the depression of the Caspian
Sea, and its environs, below the level of the ocean ;
also historio-geographical investigations into the for-
mer course of the fiiver Oxus, and communications on
the boundary of perpetual snow. Besides this, the
work contains plates, which give the mean tempera-
ture of more than three hundred places, and besides
the voluminous geognostic revelations of the Ural, the
volcanos, the beds of gold, and on the produce of the
gold washings in the Ural districts, and in Siberia, on
the diamonds in the mountains, there are explanatory
essays by Stanislaus Julien, on Chinese historical
sources, additions by Klaproth, on volcanos, notes by
Yalenciennes, on the sea-dogs of the Caspian Sea, &;c.

138 LIFE OF

The work abounds in important results, and includes
a chart of Central Asia, drawn by Humboldt himself,
v/hich is prepared entirely according to the latest
astronomic and altitude measurements. The calcula-
tion of the astronomical observations made for this
purpose, in Siberia, was the last work of Humboldt's
constant fellow-worker, Oltmann, who died soon after
the completion of this task.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 13^

CHAPTEE IX.

ALTERNATE EESIDENCE IN BERLIN AND PARIS — DIPLOMATIC EMBASSY
— DEATH OP WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT — LITERARY ACTIVITY —
HUMBOLDT'S RELATION TO KING FREDERIC WILLIAM IV. — DIS-
TINCTIONS— RETROSPECT.

After Humboldt's return to Berlin on the 28tli of
December, 1829, he commenced the igreat literary
labours on the stupendous material which was to be
prepared for publication by himself and fellow-travel-
lers, as the result of their vovag^e. Although Hum-
boldt had fixed his residence in Berlin, the publication
of his work on Asia soon necessitated a longer stay in
Paris; for in that city lived friends and scholars, whose
personal assistance was required for his great literary
purposes. So he spent his time alternately in Paris
and in Berlin. In 1830, the peace of Europe was
terribly shaken by the French revolution. The people
demanded new arrangements; the sense for political
Hfe was aroused; the Polish nation demanded their
freedom; and Germany in general, but Prussia in
particular, was in a critical state.

Alexander von Humboldt had never interested
himself in the details of politics; but he who enjoyed
the personal affection and complete confidence of the
king, — who, in the sphere of sciences, belonged to two
nations — for the French ranked his works among the
highest of their national literature, and claimed him
for the honour of their country; and Germany, to
which he belonged by birth, did the same — he seemed

140 LIFE OF

in the critical moment, when France and Prussia had
been momentarily disturbed in their friendly relations,
as the most fitting mediator between two nations who
were both proud of him. Therefore, King Frederick
William III. sent Humboldt to Paris, in September,
1830, with the diplomatic mission to acknowledge
King Louis Philippe, and the new dynasty ; and in
Februar}^, 1831, he was again sent thither on a diplo-
matic mission, Avhile his brother William was also at
this time summoned from his private position, and by
the decoration of the order of the Black Eagle, and
admission into the Council of State, received — as
Alexander said a few days before his departure for
Paris (on the 26th of September, 1830) — a kind of
compensation for the former slights of the Chancellor
Hardenberg. It is very probable that Alexander von
Humboldt availed himself of his confidential position
with the king* to speak of his brother Wilham to him,
and to bring about this restitution.

Henceforward the brothers lived quite for each
other, and their social, as well as their intellectual
joys, flowed from the common fount of love. The
exchange of their ideas was now a personal, direct
one, and the former long separations were compen-
sated by the most intimate interchange of knowledge
and of feelings. We quote what the biographer of
William von Humboldt (G. Schlesier) says on this
subject: "William now had his brother Alexander
constantly with him; and how much had they not to
speak who had been so long separated, and who, for
reasons which may be easily imagined, could not even
express their affection in writing. The letters they
interchanged Avere rare and barren, like a landscape
without water or vegetation ; for, as is generally the
case, they did not even communicate to each other
what they might unhesitatingly have written. What
must have been William's joy at the return of his
brother, and when he saw him, the younger and
stronger one, advance gloriously on his career. We
know how their studies had always been in common

ALEXANDER VON HIBIBOLDT. 141

from their childhood upwards, and how each affec-
tionately watched the other's course, and how in their
totally different pursuits, those fields of intellectual
enjoyment, on which they could both meet, were never
overlooked. When the one brother was deep in the
laws of intellectual and historical life, or among the
remains of extinct nations and languages, and seemed
chained to one spot in his studies ; while the other
examined the physical world in its enlarged sphere ;
both could meet again on the subject of the nature of
the human mind, of the races of man, and the di-
versity of languages. But even when their respective
spheres were farthest asunder, their perfectly harmo-
nious education, their disposition and character, and
even the manner and eloquence of their style, reveal
their common origin, and the intimate connexion of
their whole being. It can therefore not surprise us
that these brothers are honoured by the title of ' the
German Dioscuri.' "

Alexander von Humboldt must also have been in
Weimar in 1831, and have visited Goethe, for we
find in a letter from Goethe to William von Hum-
boldt, dated the 1st December, 1831, the passage :
" I owe some hours of a frank, friendly conversation
to your brother, for whom I can find no expressive
title. For although his views of accepting and ope-
rating on geological objects is quite impossible for my
cerebral organs, I have seen with real interest and
admiration how that of which I cannot convince my-
self, is with him clearly deduced, and enters into com-
bination with the stupendous mass of his knowledge^
where it is then digested by his most estimable cha-
racter."

In 1830, already William von Humboldt regarded
the physical strength of his younger brother as a for-
tunate circumstance, to which he attached the hope
that he, as the survivor, would arrange and superin-
tend his literary inheritance, as he could not imagine
a fitter person. This hope was soon to be realized.
Fate granted but a few years of close union to the

14^2 LIFE OF

two brothers, which union had also brought Alexander
into nearer social intercourse with the friends of his
brother, — such as Goethe, Wolff, Frau von Varnhagen,
Kareff, Colta, Gentz, &c. Many of William's friends
had already been called from this life, when he was
seized with debility in the winter 1834-5, — among
them Niebuhr and Stein in 1831, Goethe and Gentz in
1832, Hegel, and Schleiermacher. He was living at
Tegel at the time, with his eldest daughter Caroline,
the lady Adelheid von Hedemann, who had, with her
husband, been living some years with her father and
¥rau von Biilow, while Alexander was in Berlin,
anxiously awaiting news of his brother's health, as his
nervousness, his stooping, and the trembling of his whole
body, had alarmed him. Dieffenbach and Rust were
attending him, but a cold which he took on the birth-
day of his departed wife, over her grave, hastened his
death ; he died on the 8th April, 1835, in Alexander's
arms. During the last illness of his beloved brother,
Alexander wrote a letter to Varnhagen,* which ex-
presses his fraternal grief ; and immediately after his
death, he wrote from Tegel to Arago, in Paris, v/hich
letter as evidently shows what the surviving brother

^' The lettei' is as follows : —

"Berlin, 6 o'clock a.m., 5th April, 1835.

" You, my dear Varnhagen, who do not fear pain, but consider it
reflectively in the depth of the feelings, you must receive a few words
of love which the two brothers feel for you in this mournful time.
The dissolution has not taken place yet. I left him at eleven o'clock
last night, and hasten hither again now. Yesterday was a less
painful day : he was in a half soporific condition, had much and not
very restless sleep ; and, at each awaking, words of love and conso-
lation, and the clearness of his great intellect, which comprehends
everything, and examines its own condition. His voice was very
weak, hoarse, and sharp, like a child's, therefore the physician ap-
plied leeches to the larynx. He is perfectly conscious. ' Think often
of me,' he said, the day before yesterday, ''but always cheerfully.
I have been veiy happy ; to-day also was a happy day for me, for
love is the greatest happiness. I shall soon be with your mother,
and comprehend the laws of the higher world.' I have no hope. I
did not think my old eyes could shed so many tears. It has lasted
now eight days.

'■'A. V. Humboldt."

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 143

had lost.* Alexander has smce fulfilled the noble
duty towards the sacred memory of his brother by
superintending his literary remains, and by publishing
them regularly.

Alexander soon again devoted himself exclusively
to science, and a year rarety elapsed in which he did
not cast a fertile glance into the kingdoms of nature,
or did not discover some new treasure for science. Of
his brother s manuscripts, he made his extensive re-
searches on the Kawi-language into a subject for his
own labours, for he had himself collected the materials
for it, and its publication was therefore especially
interesting for hun. He lived on, working, and pro-
ducing labours even in others, who often took a
thought or single fact from Humboldt, developed it,
and were led by it to important results. His Asiatic
works occupied the principal part of his time, and
necessitated an extensive correspondence with his
friends in Russia and Paris ; and besides this he had
constantly to superintend and direct the labours which
others devoted to his pui^oses.

Besides this, he was employed in the continuation of
formerly-commenced works, and with his "Critical
Investigations. ''t In 1838 he published a politico-
economical essay on the variations in the supply of

* One passage of this letter says : " I am in the deepest grief, and
at such times one thinks of those dearest to us. I feel a little re-
lieved while writing to you, ... I remain quite desolate. I
hope that I shall have the pleasure of being with you this year. . ."

t These critical investigations on the historical development of a
geographical knowledge of the new world, and the progress of nauti-
cal astronomy in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, appeared
originally in French, and were pubHshed in German, by J. L. Ideler.
They contain the most important results of Humboldt's leisure hours
during thirty years, and are the foundations of a history of Columbus,
which he once intended to write.

The work is in four divisions : the first treats of the causes which
prepared and led to the discovery of the new world — the second, of
several facts more nearly relating to Christopher Columbus, and to
Amerigo Vespucci, and of the dates of several geographic discoveries
— the third, of the first maps of the new world, and of the time
when the name America was first commonly used — and the fourth,
of the progress of nautical astronomy and chart drawing in the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries.

144 LIFE OF

gold, in Cotta's quarterly journal, which was an
application of his researches in the Ural mountains.
In 1839 and 1840 he drew a new hypsometric chart
of the mountain-chains and volcanos of Central Asia,
which is sketched and completed with wonderful
accurac}^, and is appended to the revised edition of
his work on Asia. The publication of this work was
delayed, because Humboldt made several short jour-
neys, especially to Paris and to other German and
foreign capitals, but partly because he was disturbed
from his private affairs by the death of Frederic
William III., an event which touched him very
nearly.

His position towards the highest person in the
realm remained the same after the ascension of
Frederic William IV. ; for the latter had always felt
the personal intercourse with Humboldt as an intel-
lectual and social necessity. As crown-prince, he had
also been a friend and admirer of William von Hum-
boldt, to whom he felt attached by his artistic tastes
and by his interest in sesthetic and learned education,
although the two were entirely at variance in their
political and religious views. Alexander von Hum-
boldt soon became the new king's confidential com-
panion and scientific adviser, and has since always been
in the immediate vicinity of the king, with whom he
has lived in Berlin, Potsdam, Sansouci, &c., and
whom he has, in his advanced age, accompanied on
longer and shorter journeys. Thus the Prussian court
honours itself with one of the brightest stars of the
highest intellect in the person of Humboldt, although
ijb cannot be denied that his relation to the court
steals many hours from his valuable life — which
should be strictly husbanded — from science, and
especially from the completion of his great work.

Down to the present time, Humboldt has devoted
much of his time to astronomical-mathematic geo-
graphy, which science never inade such speedy
progress until Humboldt's day. By his acute

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 145

observations in America he has opened an entirely new
sphere for this science, and has constantly worked
himself, and urged others to labour in its interests.
This made him more and more intimate with the geo-
graphy of America, and with the history of nautical
instruments, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The fifteenth century may be said to have doubled the
works of creation by the revelation of a new world,
and has introduced many new objects into the old
world, which have gradually tended to change many
relations and views of Europe. This era has a
peculiar interest for Humboldt, because the human
race made an intellectual and material progress by
the discovery of America ; new fields for commerce
and insight into a new world were opened. None
other but Humboldt was so fitted to continue the
history of those great and bold exploring expeditions.
Had he not also gone to sea from Spain as the second
discoverer of America, and had he not stood on the
same spot where Columbus had landed and taken
possession of the new continent ? And he who, forty
years before, had intended to write a history of
America, and had even commenced it, though he sub-
sequently abandoned the plan — who had therefore
acquired the special knowledge of the territorial and
national condition, and had examined with great par-
tiality and eagerness the original accounts of America
in the European libraries — he was especially qualified
to give a sketch of the cosmographic views of the
fifteenth century, and the astronomic systems of that
period. He established the most important results in
these critical investigations, and proved them by
numerous new facts referring to the history of the
world, the most ancient histories of man ; and adduced
the intimate connexion — in spite of the barbarism of
the middle ages — between the views and opinions
at the close of the fifteenth century, and those of the
times of Aristotle, Eratosthenes, and Strabo ; and im-
parted his proofs with surprising lucidity, basing them
on the gradual and universal progress of the human

L

146 LIFE OF

mind. Thus he attributed the great ruling thoughts
of hfe and history to the grand discovery of the
fifteenth century. He also constituted himself the
scientific defender of his predecessor, Columbus, whose
merits his contemporaries and successors notoriously
endeavoured to traduce. Humboldt's critical investi-
gations have established beyond a doubt that Columbus
had commenced his great work of discovery at the
suggestions of his own mind and opinions ; that he
made use of traditions and suppositions of former
ages till they became his independent opinion, and
the spring to bold adventure and unfettered action.

In the year 1840, Humboldt published Academic
Dissertations on his ascent of the Chimborazo, and on
the mean elevation of the continent ; also a critical
memoir on some important positions in Guiana ; be-
sides this he re-commenced the work which had been
interrupted in 1828 — his universal physical description
of the world, under the title, " KosMOS," which he
now continued on a more extended plan, and was also
superintending the publication of his brother's posthu-
mous works, being at the same time an active mem-
ber of the academic committee for the publication of
the works of Frederic the Great. In January, 1842,
the king summoned him from these labours by honour-
ing him with the command to accompany the court
to England, for the christening of the Prince of Wales.
Although Humboldt was honoured by this distinction,
and by the respect paid him by the English court, he
also did honour to the king's journey by his person-
ality, and the intelligence of England worshipped him
wherever he showed himself

In May of the year 1842, Humboldt received an-
other royal favour on the 102nd anniversary of the
ascension of Frederic the Great. About this time
Frederic William IV. instituted a peace class of the
order of Merit, founded by Frederic the Great only as
a military order,* which was henceforward to decorate

■'■ Undei' Frederic the Great, only five non-military persons were
admitted to the order, namely, Voltaire, Maupertius, Algarotti, the

ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 147

the greatest scholars and artists of the world as a
symbol of royal favour. Thhly knights were entitled
to a vote to choose such individuals among the
German nation whom they considered as meriting this
distinction, and it was also decreed that the number
should be limited to thirty German scholars and
artists. Besides these thirty Germans the order could
be conferred on distinguished foreigners. Alexander
von Humboldt, as the greatest living scholar who
united the attainments of a whole academy in him-
self, was appointed grand chancellor of the order.

We have not, in this biographical sketch, spoken
much of the personal decorations conferred on Hum-
boldt, as every reader would think it self -understood
that a man who had attained the highest summit of
scientific fame, and who stood in the most intimate
relation to the princes of all countries, would not be
wanting in exterior tokens of favour and merit. And
he not only received numerous honourable distinctions
from princes and from learned associations, but he
received them very early in life. We have mentioned
his elevation to a Prussian acting privy councillor,
with the title " excellency,'' and need only add that
not only all the great academies of science and art,
all the learned societies of the world, considered it an
honour to have Humboldt as member, but that all
the princes of all countries testified their esteem for
him, and their consideration for science, by conferring
their highest honours upon him. But these exterior
forms can add nothing to Humboldt's greatness, for
the glory of his mind and his fame outshines all the
stars of merit, which are indeed very rarely seen on
his breast.

Humboldt now lives wherever his royal friend lives.
There are apartments for him in Berlin, Potsdam, in

minister Von Mai'scliall, and a councillor Eckwricht in Silesia. After
1815, it was scarcely ever conferred by Frederic William III.,
"because there is no opportunity for military distinctions in peace ;
and the last member on whom it was conferred was the Archduke
Frederic of Austria, for his exploits before Acre, 1S41.
L 2

148 LIFE OF

all the royal palaces, and not a day passes that he
does not see the king. In spite of his eighty-one
years he works unweariedly in those hours which are
not occupied by the court ; he is active and punctual
in his immense correspondence, and answers every
letter of the humblest scholar with the most amiable
affability. The inhabitants of Berlin and Potsdam all
know him personally, and show him as much honour
as they show the king. With a slow but firm step, a
thoughtful head, rather bent forAvard, whose features
are benevolent with a dignified expression of noble
calmness, either looking down, or politely responding
to the greetings of the passers by with kindness, and
without pride ; in a simple dress, frequently holding
a pamphlet in his hand, resting on his back, so he
wanders frequently through the streets of Berlin and
Potsdam, alone and unostentatiously, a noble picture
of a blade of wheat bending^ beneath the weis^ht of its
numerous rich golden ears. Wherever he appears he
is received by tokens of universal esteem, the passers-
by timidly step aside for fear of disturbing him in his
thoughts ; even the working man looks respectfully
after him, and says to his neighbour, "there goes
Humboldt.'' And whoever has had the happiness of
conversing with him, never forgets the force of his
lucid, simple, natural, and unaffected conversation, for
in everything he says, depth and learning, clearness
and unbounded knowledge, are revealed without any
of the pride of learning, the stiff pedantry and precise-
ness of many German men of science. Humboldt has
evidently been educated in the highest society; his
manner is dignified, open, unaffected, and frank ; he
has lived with all nations, and adopted and united in
himself the advantages of all.

With the name Humboldt, a whole world seems to
rise before the mind's eye. We involuntarily see him
standing on the highest points of the Cordilleras or
the Altai, and looking down into the realms of nature,
gazing into the depths of the ocean and into the
boundless expanse of heaven like an inspired prophet.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 149

And in his activity he seems like a sun of science,
which sheds its rays over the whole earth, and excites,
fertilises, and inspires science everywhere. He is in
constant correspondence and zealous communication
with all ministries which take any interest for the
advancement of science, and with all learned acade-
mies. The fortunate accident of his birth, as a son
of a wealthy and aristocratic family, his influential
position at the court of an intelligent king, are very
important means in his power, for every government
is ready to serve him when it would perhaps have
scarcely listened to a man of mind bom in a humbler
sphere and a less favourable position. None but
Humboldt could have encompassed the earth with a
circle of magnetic observatories such as were erected
at his instance. To assist him in his investigations
on the deviations of the magnet was a point of honour
for the governments, a.nd his wish sufficed to induce
them to raise a series of stations for magnetic obser-
vations over the entire middle of the old continent
from Pekin to Lissabon, which have been increased
and extended since 1840 over the southern hemi-
sphere, nearly to the extreme limits of the southern
polar circle.

If we now glance over the life of this distinguished
man, evidently elected by Providence as the especial
medium of scientific revelation, then his intellectual
individuality, as we sketched it in the introduction to
this biography, will be more plainly before the reader.
We will endeavour again to paint the portrait in its
universal features. He was pre-eminent in so many
branches of science for infusing intelligibility and
lucidity into them, that one scarcely knows where to
commence. But it may be said of him in general
that he was the first to arrange and sift the chaos of
isolated experiences of the former and of contempo-
rary ages, to place everything in its proper depart-
ment, to make it a comprehensible member of col-
lective nature. The anomalous was made conform-
able to rules by his critical penetration, isolated facts

150 . LIFE OF

were incorporated into their relative groups, and the.
entire system of nature in its great natural laws was
revealed to the inquiring human mind. Thus he
became, as we have shov/n, the founder of compara-
tive geography ; he was the founder of a new theory
of geology, and in a work prepared by him and his
friend Leopold von Buch, he referred to the influence
of the volcanic agency on the formation and conti-
nual alterations of the earth, rejecting his teacher
(Werner's) theory of Neptunismus, * and acquiring
new facts on volcanic agency ; he was the founder of
botanical geography, a new theory on the laws of the,
distribution of plants ; he was the discoverer of a new
world with new phenomena, new manners, new lan-
guages, and traditional remains of an entirely unima-
gined antiquity ; he was the reformer and teacher of
a new chartography for accurate delineation and super-
visual description of large territories ; he was the
representative of a new mode of treating natural
science in general, which he created himself, and
which has been developed by the tendencies of the
present age. This system, striving for universality,
studies the connexion of the various fields of nature
in its most secret recesses and with pure experience,
without speculative deduction or explanation, only
seeks facts, arranges, combines, and explores the inti-
mate connexion of cause and effect as a means for
the comprehension of natural laws. He was the
founder of the new school which combines physical
science with the history of humanity, and which has
been the most prolific in unexpected results. This
mathematically " exact '' method was originated by
Humboldt ; it has been adopted by the greatest
scholars, but it has also unfortunately led to the most
trivial empiricism with those who only know Hum-
boldt's method, but are incapable of imitating his
mental aptitude for combination and his intuitive
power.

* Explanation of the formation of the world by the effects and de-
posits of the waters of the earth.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 151

And if we consider his style, the manner and form
of his literary descriptions, the artistic side of the
author, we shall here again find the truth of the well-
known proverb : ^' le style c'est lliowinfie."

Two nations, the German and the French, claim
Humboldt as one of their classical authors, for he is
equally great in the simple elegance and fluency of
literary description in both languages. Although he
often treats of subjects dry in themselves, and which,
by a rigid enumeration of self-describing facts, seem
little adapted for an elegant diction, his writings are
all distinguished by a style which is as easy, fluent,
and lucid in its simplicity and unaffected elegance, as
it is lively, eloquent, and elevated whenever the sub-
ject permits it. His scientific communications bear
the characteristic of clearness, and of being founded
on ample proofs ; his descriptions of nature, vdthout
being overburdened with words, seem like living
landscapes painted with accurate fidelity, and tlieir
interest and charm are increased by being inter-
spersed with genial interpretations of nature and its
grand phenomena, while the narrative portion of his
travelling experience is often given with a witty,
cheerful, even humorous, freshness of conception and
of judgment, and his simple sketches of scenes from
natural or national life often attain to poetical
elevation.

He has peculiarly the talent of describing the
splendour of natural scenery by undeviating fidelity
and absence of all merely rhetorical ornamentation,
whether these descriptions paint the calm or the
stormy ocean, the savannas of Central America, the
giant forests of the tropics, the deserts and precipices
of the Peruvian and Mexican mountains, or the
unvegetating snow summits and craters of volcanos.
Wherever he describes a single object, any pheno-
menon or discovery, he always bears in mind its
relation to nature in general, short and concisely,
without degenerating into poetical exaggeration; he
can keep alive our admiration for the grandness of

152 LIFE OF

nature, whether he describes a majestic or a terrible
landscape, a mineral, a plant, or an organic law. By
this nnadulterated faithfulness of description, this
simple painting of subjects just as nature reveals
them, and as the mind and heart are normally moved
by them without intermixture of morbid sentimenta-
lity, or subjective peculiarities — by this, Humboldt
enchains the reader, and gives him such a conception
of the tropics, that he forgets whether he has seen
these scenes himself, or has only made their acquaint-
ance throuo^h a written delineation.

Humboldt is the representative of pure objectiveness
and reflectiveness ; like a concave mirror, he reflects
all the received rays in the purest light, but having
a collective ideal focus in the back-ground.

In his work on the journey to the equinoctial
regions, he made use of a species of description which,
if not quite new, was employed with very happy effect
by him, and perfected to a high degree. This method,
which has since been frequently adopted, has the
peculiarity that he frequently pauses in the narra-
tion of his adventures and journeys to make observa-
tions, and give explanations on what has passed, and
prepare the reader for the better comprehension of
what is to follow by communicating general facts, and
by remarks on the general aspect of the coming events
on these stations in the journey. By this method of
description such travels, especially when they refer to
the personal adventures and accidents of journey, lose
that uniformity, subjectiveness, and monotony which
is but little removed from tediousness. Humboldt
never obtrudes his individuality; his aim is always to
give a scientific character to the narration in which
he plays a prominent part, and it must be especially
mentioned that he always rigidly distinguishes and
explains what is the result of his own observation,
and what he has adajDted from other sources, or made
use of as auxiliary explanations. This characteristic
is quite in unison with his modesty and scientific con-
sciousness, which makes him sift and arrange his facts

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 153

and his observations, in order to classify them as strictly
as he respects the scientific acquirements of others,
and use them only as an acknowledged loan when
this mutual exchange promises any advantage to the
interests of science objectively. His reader will per-
ceive in every page of his works that when Humboldt
writes, such a mass of scientific material crowds upon
his happy memory, that in thinking, he compares,
quotes, corrects, confirms, or contradicts. The entire
field of science lies open before his mind when he
perhaps only intends to communicate one single fact
of his experience. Hence it comes that his writings,
especially those that are purely scientific and de-
scriptive, have, besides the original by himself, a
rich appendix of notes, quotations, comparisons, and
references, in all sciences and from all ages, which
sometimes surpass the purely descriptive text in force,
and adorn it like pearls on the string which connects
them. These notes especially force us to admire the
unexampled universality and profundity of his erudi-
tion and his power of memory.

Humboldt displayed much tact in the composition
of his great works. He wrote them originally in the
French language, the universally-understood medium
of the civilized world, and thus made it possible that
they should be available to all nations. Thus the
great effect of his writings on the majority of intelli-
gent readers was at once an universal one, equally
effectual at the same time with all nations in
producing a speedy development of the universally-
awakening sense for natural science and comparative
studies, and by arousing and increasing an interest
for Humboldt's system of scientific observation. His
writings have also been frequently translated into
other languages — by Wimmer into German, by Wil-
liams and Macgillivray into English. Some works
were translated into German under Humboldt's super-
intendence, as, for example, his Asiatic vo3^age by
Mahlmann, and some were popularised and published
by extracts. During the last few years he has com-

154 LIFE OF

menced to publish a work great in its plans but not
yet completed, a testament, as it were, of bis scientific
labours of sixty years, a heritage for the world to
which we will call especial attention in another
chapter.

ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 155

CHAPTER X.

KOSMOS, AS THE EPITOME OF HUMBOLDT'S SCIENTIFIC LIFE.

In speaking of the lectures on physical geography
given by Humboldt in the winter of 1827-28, in the
Lecture-room of the University, and in the Large-
hall of the Singing Academy of Berlin, we mentioned
that he had the intention of publishing these re-
nowned lectures in a work called " Kosmos,'' but that
other occurrences forced him to delay its revision and
publication. He considered these lectures, delivered
before a large miscellaneously educated public, as an
easy conclusive means of proving the good or imper-
fect connexion of single portions of his theories, and,
therefore, he had before coming to Berlin given
similar lectures in Paris in the French language. He
laid down in unstudied addresses, and without
written notes, his conception of science ; and how
anxious the public were to retain the fugitive words,
is evident from the fact that of his capable hearers
several took down his lectures, and several prepared
and published them by means of notes and an excel-
lent memory. Humboldt did not write down what
he had then lectured until 1843 and 1844, but how
could he have written the same when in the inter-
vening time the treasures of observation and ex-
perience had so considerably increased, and opinions
and theories had been developed by more mature
consideration? But in order to give unity, spiiit,
and life to his subsequent descriptions, he started
from those lectures and the era of science therein.

156 LIFE OF

represented, and developed them from his former
themes, on the footing of continual progress.
This is the exterior history of that great work,
which has appeared in modern times under the
title " Kosmos."

But this work has also an inner history which
reflects the mental development of Humboldt's life.
We have called this work a testament, a heritage to
the world, and Humboldt himself says of it that he
offers a work to the German public in the evening of
his active life, the plan for which has been present to
his soul in faint outline for nearly half a century.

He recognised the importance of his scientific testa-
ment, for he knew that he must conclude the results
of his life. He often deemed the undertaking impracti-
cable, and yet, urged by the collective fruits of his life,
and by the feeling that he owed the world a general
resume of his researches, extended over a period of
fifty years, he always returned to this work of making
the treasures of his eminent mind the common pro-
perty of his German fatherland, and to delegate it to
them as a valuable inheritance. This feeling is
expressed by the fact that he wrote the work in the
German language. The great purpose of his life was
to comprehend all matter in its general connexion
and entire nature as a unity, moved and impregnated
by inner powers. By the investigation of a single
fact in natural science, the knowledge of other single
facts were revealed to him, for the different domains
of science fertilized each other ; he explained the
complicated causes of the varied forms of existence,
and traced them to the prevailing laws of the unity
of nature.

This great aim of his life was especially advanced by
the happiest social circumstances which are rarely
offered to a scientific traveller ; for he not only found
the opportunity of seeing coast lands, like most
circumnavigators, but also of penetrating far into
interior plains of two world-quarters, where he inves-
tigated the most prominent contrasts of nature, — the

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 157

Soutli American tropics and the steppes of Northern
Asia, — and was thereby led to comparisons and
general observations, and thus became qualified to
conceive heaven and earth in its entirety as a physical
unity.

His immense scientific attainments were at the
service of all men of science. Humboldt not only
imparted them freely, but arranged them comprehen-
sively in his works. But the summary of his know-
ledge, the fruit of his life, he dedicated to his father-
land, and for this purpose he started from the point
where he had first been a public instructor of the
people, from his lectures in Berlin, which commenced
what Kosmos was intended to complete. But the
lectures and Kosmos have nothing in common except
the order of subjects ; for since 1827 science has ne-
cessarily taken another form in consequence of the
progressive explanation of natural phenomena and
physical laws, in consequence of the increasing per-
fection of experimental instruments and the conse-
quent enlargement of the perceptive limits ; the
mysterious had been explained, the impenetrable had
been cleared, and the mind itself had risen to a
higher standard by the simultaneous action of new
views and experiences. Humboldt felt, more than
any one, the great difficulty of producing a work
which might be a faithful, enduringly correct picture
of an eternally progressive world ; for the higher the
student attains in the progress of the human mind,
the more the horizon extends with new fields for
observation. Works on natural science become old in
time and are forgotten ; but Humboldt, inspired by
the high dignity of natural science, and by an ardent
love for it, was not discouraged when he was-
reminded of a future perfection of human knowledge,
for he knew that he had been instrumental in raising
the firm, indestructible foundations for many of its
most important branches. And if even what now
appears as a single phenomenon be in future classi-
fied under a general law, if new powers are disco-

J 58 LIFE OF

vered or explained^ if apparently simple matter be
increased in number or recognised as being compound,
Humboldt's researches will nevertheless be important
to the most remote ages, for they show us nature in
its animation, and point to the eternally immutable
and regular amid physical mutability.

The order in which the lectures were given is ad-
hered to in Kosmos. We have stated that the course
consisted of sixty-one free addresses, which were sub-
divided as follows : —

Five lectures treated of the nature and limits of
physical geography, and included a general sketch
of nature.
Three were devoted to a history of the science of

the world.
Two to inducements to a study of natural science.
Sixteen to the Heavens.

Five to the form, density, latent heat, and mag-
netic power of the earth, and to the polar light.
Four were on the nature of the firm earth crust,

on hot springs, earthquakes, and volcanos.
Two on mountains, and the type of their forma-
tion.
Two on the form of the earth's surface, on the con-
nexion of the continents, and the elevation of
the soil over ravines.
Three on the sea as a globular fluid surrounding the

earth.
Ten on the atmosphere as an elastic fluid surround-
ing the earth, and on the distribution of heat.
One on the geographic distribution of organized

matter in general.
Three on the geography of plants.
Three on the geography of animals.
Two on the races of man.

This will serve as a review of the general contents
of Kosmos. A world is revealed to our senses and
our intelligence in this work of Humboldt ; the en-
tire world as a scientific, strictly objective, but at the
same time truly animated picture of infinite variety

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 159

and sublimest unity, of constant motion, and of the
immutable repose of eternal laws. He first brings us
to the right point of view for the contemplation of
this great picture, by explaining the variety of its
pleasures, — he facilitates the comprehension of natu-
ral laws by his experience, and then unveils the great
picture in perspective, commencing with the most
distant nebulae and revolving stars, and proceeding
gradually to the earth, its geography, its plants, its
animals, and its human inhabitants. Herein he shows
the intimate connexion of general truths and special
developments, with that geniality of scientific treat-
ment in the choice of matter, and in the form and
style of composition, which is so peculiarly his own ;
and then follow the incentives to natural studies,
among which he enumerates, especially, lively de-
scriptions of natural scenery, landscape painting,
intercourse with plants, and their taste-elevating cul-
tivation in conservatories.

The great truths explained in Kosmos are a legacy
to the German nation, and therefore this biographical
monument is the most fitting place for explaining the
basis of this scientific testament to the people in in-
telligible language.

Nature, as Humboldt represents it, is as capable of
affording the noblest pleasures as it is of inciting to
the highest intellectual development, and to an in-
sight into the profounder duties of humanity. In
any intercourse with nature, as a well-understood and
explained world of phenomena, where every form and
motion are referred to a well-considered law, man
must become nobler and more self-conscious ; but
it is not indifferent by what means man attains to
a higher enjoyment of nature. Humboldt says this
in the introduction to Kosmos, and reveals the indi-
viduality of his own nature. He thinks that the
lowest kind of appreciation of nature is independent
of an insight into the effects of its powers, but
almost independent likewise of the peculiar cha-
racteristics of the surrounding scenery. He says : —

160 LIFE OF

" Where uniform social plants cover the plain, and the
eye rests on the boundless distance, where the ocean's
waves playfully wash the shores and thread their way
through elms or sea-weed, the feeling for free nature
penetrates us everywhere, and the inward presenti-
ment of its existence by eternal laws/'

Whoever has felt that a secret power exists in these
emotions, which refreshes, exhilarates, and strengthens
the wearied spirit, or soothes the afflicted heart, and
the storm of passion, will admire Humboldt's clear-
ness of perception, before which nature revealed her-
self to him. The solemn and serious feeling which
inspires us at such moments rests on the almost un-
conscious sense of a higher law and natural legality ;
it is universality which stands before our own limita-
tion from which we would escape ; it is an enjojrment
of nature accorded to all men, intelligent and ignorant,
on all portions of the world filled with animal and
vegetable life.

But Humboldt perceives another higher enjoyment,
likewise appreciated by the feelings, in the circum-
stance that man is moved not only by a communion
with nature, but by the special character of a locality.
He says : " Such impressions are more vivid and more
decided, and therefore fitted for peculiar emotions.
Sometimes our feelings are excited by the grandeur
of nature in the wild struggle of conflicting elements,
or we are impressed by the desolation of immeasur-
able prairies and steppes, pictures of the immutable
and rigid ; sometimes we are enchanted by a more
pleasing image, the sight of a cultivated field, the first
settlement of man, surrounded by rocks on the brink
of the bubbling mountain rivulet."

These two phases of an enjo3mient of nature, espe-
cially the latter individual one, where the positive circle
of ideas and feelings which are excited by nature
prove its force and stability, are felt by Humboldt in
a truly poetic manner, as we shall often find in his
works. Wherever he indulges in recollections, his
emotions wander back to the impressions of nature —

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 3 61

lie thinks of the ocean in mild tropical nights, when
the calm starlight, not sparkling in those regions,
pours over its expanse of waves; he thinks of the
wooded vales of the Cordilleras, where strong palm
trees, like pillars, break through the dark foliage ; he
thinks of the Peak of Teneriffe, where layers of clouds
separate the cone from the lower earth, and a sadden
rent in the clouds opens a view for the spectator on
high over the vine-covered hiils of Orotava and the
gardens on the coast. These great scenes of nature
exercise their influence by the individual character of
the landscape, and not by the calm, creative power
of still life, for even the terrible, the infinite, and in-
comprehensible, are a source of enjoyment here. The
imagination endeavours creatively to supply what re-
mains veiled from the senses, and we erroneously
believe to receive from the material world what our
feelings have introduced into it. Humboldt says :
" When after a long voyage far from home we for the
first time set foot in a tropical country, we rejoice to
see on the steep precipices the same rocky formation
which we have quitted on European soil, and whose
universality seems to prove that the earth crust was
formed independently of the exterior influences of the
present climatic relations ; but this well-known earth
is decked with the forms of a foreign flora. Then the
wonderfully adaptive power of the human mind re-
veals itself to the inhabitants of the northern zone,
surrounded by unaccustomed plants, by the overpower-
ing grandeur of the tropical oiganizations, and by an
exotic nature. We seem so familiar with all organized
matter, that if it even at first seems as if our native
landscape, like a native dialect, would seem more
familiar and agreeable than this foreign, voluptuous
fertility, we are very soon at home in the palm climate
of the torrid zone. By the mysterious connexion of
all organic matter (and the feeling for the necessity
of this connexion is involuntarily latent within us),
those exotic forms seem to our phantasy as the ennobled
and more elevated forms of the same objects which

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162 LIFE OF

surrounded us in youth. Thus obscure feelings, the
connexion of material observations, and afterwards the
active exercise of reflection, lead us to the knowledge
which penetrates through all grades of civilization,
that a common, ordained, and therefore eternal unity
prevails over all nature."

But another and a higher enjoyment of nature is
that where ideas are united with the excitement of
the feelings, — where the regular and immutable laws
of nature are not only felt, but acknowledged by the
reasoning power. Humboldt not only did much for
the development of this feeling, but has endeavoured
to excite men to it, and educate them for it, by his
writings. For an appreciation of nature in its regu-
larity is a duty of civilization ; it is a human, ennobling
enjoyment, for which a want is felt by the increasing
education of our age, and needs a greater development.
In spite of a generally high intelligence, the grossest
ignorance on natural subjects still prevails even in the
higher classes, and an appreciation of nature rarely
rises above the before-mentioned lower grades of a
simple emotion. But in the present age, where all
classes strive to enrich their life by a greater abun-
dance of ideas, a better insight into nature cannot
fail; and therefore Humboldt's "Kosmos'^is impor-
tant for the German nation, as this work professes to
be an educational medium to develop in the people
the highest phase of an appreciation of nature — the
knowledge of nature in her regularity and legitimacy,
besides its individual influence on the feelings.

It is sometimes asserted that nature loses her
charms, when we inquire into its secret powers and its
constitution, that it loses its mysterious halo and exalted
elevation ; but, even if the play of imagination is cir-
cumscribed, and the charm of the mystery dissolved, if,
even, an erring philosopher alleges ignorance of na-
tural laws to be the only source of admiration and
elevation; an insight into the intercoherence of all
natural objects, when it is attained and practised in
Humboldt's manner, and is not merely a crude col-

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, 163

lection of infinite materials, induces that highest phase
of natural enjoyment, worthy of a reflecting man ; it
enlarges and ennobles mind and heart, it awakes joys
of a higher intelligence, and leads to a comprehension
of the divine. Every law of nature points to a higher,
unrevealed one ; with increasing knowledge the sense
of infinity increases in the intelligent mind, and
Humboldt says, truly, the assertion that natural
studies destroy natural pleasures, can only proceed
from ignorance, or a sentimental obstruction of the
mind. He adds, indeed, that powers, in the real
sense of the word, only then work mysteriously in
the obscurity of a mysterious force, when their work-
ing lies beyond the reach of universally known con-
ditions of nature. The astronomer, who determines
the diameter of a planet with the heliometer, or the
Iceland crystal, who measures for years the meridian
height of the same sta,r, who discovers telescopic comets
between crowds of nebulae, does not, fortunately for
the scientific result of his labours, feel his imagination
excited any more than the descriptive botanist, while
he counts the petals of the calyx, or the stamina of a
flower, or investigates the simple or double, the free or
the annularly complicated teeth of the seed capsule.
But the measuring and discovery of numerical pro-
portions, the careful observation of single parts, pre-
pares for a better knowledge of nature in its entirety,
and of the organic laws. The heavens and the fertile
covering of earth, must, certainly, seem a more mag-
nificent sight to the natural philosopher, who, like
Thomas Young, Arago, and Fresnel, measures the
irregular long streams of light, diminishing or in-
creasing in the distance ; to the astronomer, who^ by
means of a space- annihilating telescope, examines the
moons of Uranus at the extremity of our solar
system, or, like Herschel, South, and Struve, dissolves
masses of light into double stars; or, to the initiated
eye of the botanist, who recognises the circulation of
the sap seen in the Charaplants, in nearly all vege-
table cellular forms, and who perceives the unity of
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164 LIFE OF

form, that is, tlie coherence of forms, subdivided into
races and families — than to the observer whose sense
for nature has not been refined by an insight into its
laws.

But, to attain to this, men must make themselves
familiar with the universal views of creation; and
this is, indeed, becoming an undeniable want for the
people, which strives after educational means for the
extension of intelligence and learninsc. Humboldt
endeavours to inculcate such general views which help
to explain the single and special laws of nature, in
this, his legacy to the German people ; and, thereby
expands the mental life of the nation, by bringing it
from its ignorance into connexion with the entire
world, by letting it surmise the coherence in the
natural phenomena from these general views, and
urges on to varied study.

Partly with the view of calling attention to these
works of the great philosopher, and of assisting in
advancing his purpose in those classes of the people
v/here "Kosmos" still requires a popular interpretation,
partly, also, to present, at the close of this biographic
sketch, an intellectual portrait of Humboldt, drawn
by his own hand, in the general character of the
truths acquired by him, by a contemplative observa-
tion of natural phenomena; we will now endeavour
to give a very brief summary of " Kosmos,'' which may
be generally comprehensible. "We address ourselves
especially to those of whom Humboldt says: "Whom-
soever his position permits, sometimes to rise above the
narrow boundaries of civic life, blushino; that he has
been so long a stranger to nature, and has passed by
her without emotion, will find one of the noblest en-
joym'ents which a developed reason can afford to man
in the contemplation of the great and unbounded
life of nature. The study of natural sciences will
awaken faculties in him which have long slumbered ;
he enters into a closer connexion with the material
Avorld, without becoming insensible to the industrial
progress and intellectual development of humanity/'

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 16^

We will first follow Humboldt in the general
sketch of nature, v/here he gives us an abstract of
natural phenomena. With the word " Kosmos," he in-
cludes the All, the universe with its regulations and
its laws. Beginning vfith the most distant nebulse of
the depths of space, he descends gradually to the
life of our little earth. Humboldt has studied this
universe for half a century, with penetrating thought-
fulness, and clear mind, and he paints faithfully from
experience. If we take the universe according to his
spirited description, to be filled with a world perva-
ding ether, a vapour-like mass ; we see it first con-
densed into the nebulae of the sky, and then con-
densed still more into the comets, but still penetrable
by light, until in the planets, all grades of density,
from that of antimony to that of honey, water and
firwood have been passed through, one planet showing
the denser, the other the less solid matter. Hum-
boldt describes these formations in the space filled by
ether as balliform matter.

The stranger to astronomic science will be surprised
that Humboldt has ventured to determine the locality
of our solar system, and of the lens-shaped space filled
by the collected stellar bodies m their course round
the sun ; but this question has long since been solved
by astronomy, with measurements of the stars, and
observations of their course, and of their variations.
It has further been discovered that the self-illuminated
suns, falsely called fixed stars, also change their
position ; that, although our solar system, or, as Hum-
boldt expresses himself, our world-island, only consists
of one central body, which we call sun, and of planets,
comets, and asteroids, yet other solar systems have
two or more of such self-luminous bodies, which
has been proved by the discovery of the so-caUed
double stars, and that these several suns in their turn,
circulate round their common centre, lying in space
therefore not indicated by any visible body. Our
solar system includes, according to Humboldt, besides
the chief planets, moons, countless comets (of which^

166 LIFE OF

three, with ahuost a planetary formation, do not move
out of the planetary course, while the others float far
into space), a vaporous, rotatory ring, which seems to
be situated between Venus and Mars, to cross the
earth's course, and to appear to us in a pyramidical
form as the zodiacal light; also a host of asteroids,
whose course crosses that of the earth, or approaches
very near it, and then, attracted by the earth, fall
down as meteors, or star-shoots.

Humboldt has always observed the comets with
particular interest, and endeavoured better to compre-
hend the constitution and qualities of these strange
bodies. The old astronomer, Kepler, once said that
there were more comets in space than fish in the sea;
and according to modern astronomy, the course of
scarcely 150 has been computed.

It was to be expected that Humboldt would not
pass over in a superficial manner these remarkable
bodies, which, with their small bulk, often scarcely
3-oL-^th part of the earth, occupy, with their tail,
sometimes milhons of miles. Their form is varied;
sometimes only a cloud of light, a round, brilliant
vapour, with a denser centre, sometimes having
head, centre, and tail; sometimes changing as if it
were engaged in a process of formation. Hum-
boldt endeavours, scientifically, to allay the fear that
a comet might some time come into contact with
the earth. As these tranquillising reasons, which are
founded on calculations of probability, can only in-
fluence reflection and reason, and not a desponding
mood, or the imagination, science now has destroyed
fears which it formerly excited. It is on record that
returning comets have approached very near the earth,
like the Lex all-Bur ckhardt comet of 1770, which passed
within six moons' distance of the earth, and in 1767
and 1779 passed through the system of the four
moons of Jupiter, without causing the least disturb-
ance in their relation to each other, or to Jupiter. But
from the scientific facts that Jupiter and Saturn may
cause considerable diversity of a comet from its course

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 167

by their attractive power, which is commensurate with
their bulk ; that there are comets returning in a very
short time, that Biela's comet traverses the earth's
course, and that comets are very different in their in-
dividuahty; many causes might arise which would
make apparently harmless bodies dangerous ones, and
which might scientifically confirm the indefinite fears
of former centuries.

Our readers will remember that Humboldt observed
remarkable showers of shooting stars on his journey
to America. In "Kosmos,'' he gives his accounts of this
subject, which he always treated with great minute-
ness. He calls the star-shoots, and the meteors, and
fire-balls of the same class, the smallest of all asteroids,
and includes them in the number of bodies revolving
round the sun ; he considers them, with great apparent
probability, as little bodies moving with planetary speed,
and revolving round the sun in space according to the
laws of universal gravity in conic sections, elliptical
and hyperbolical. When these masses meet the
earth, in their course round the sun, and attracted by
it, become luminous on the verge of our atmosphere,
they often let fall a more or less hot, stony matter,
covered with a black, lustrous coating. These showers,
of star-shoots have been observed to be periodical (by
Humboldt, 1799, in Cumana, and 1833 and 1834, in
North America, besides recurring annually in Novem-
ber, from the 12th to the 14th, and in August, from the
9th to the 14th, and known as November shoots, or
St. Laurentius showers), and Humboldt found them
brighter, more coloured, leaving a longer, brighter
trace, in the tropics, than in the temperate and cold
zones, on account of the greater transparency of the
hot atmosphere. Humboldt considers the connexion of
the meteor stones with the fire-balls as proved; namely,
that the former — often seven feet long — fall from the
latter, and often strike fifteen feet into the earth, and
the intimate resemblance betAveen fire-balls and star-
shoots seems to him no longer doubtful, from evident
facts. Not so evident is the constitution of these

168 LIFE OF

bodies, their plastic power, their physico-chemical pro-
cess, whether the parts which form the dense mass of
a meteor stone exist separately as vapour, and con-
dense by illumination. What passes in the black
cloud of meteors in which it thunders for some
moments before the stones fall, whether from "the
little star-shoots something solid falls, or only a
vaporous iron and nickel, containing meteor dust ;
all this Humboldt has hitherto not been able to dis-
cover. The motion, direction, and vicinity of these
meteoric phenomena, seem to prove that they come
from space into our atmosphere. They always pro-
ceed from one region of the heavens, independent of
the revolution of the earth, their relative speed is four
and a half to nine miles in a second, which is the
speed of the planets, the beginning and termination
of their visibility vary between four and thirty-five
miles. Humboldt believes that the meteoric streams
which fall periodically, especially every half year, in
August and November, and which are composed of
myriads of minute bodies, cross the course of our
earth, like the Biela comet, and form a close revolving
ring, in which the asteroids are so unequally dispersed
that there are few dense and many loose groups ; the
earth then periodically comes in contact with these
dense groups, and this is the time of the meteor
falls.

As we have before mentioned, Humboldt adds
another circle to our solar system, besides the comets
and asteroids ; and this he calls the ring of the zodiac,
and ascribes to it the phenomena of the zodiacal light.
In describing it, he remembers his visit to the " palm-
zone,'" where he has often seen the zodiacal light
rising pyramidically, and illuminating a portion of the
equally long tropical nights, often shining more bril-
liantly than the milky way in the sign Sagittarius, as
well in the thin dry atmosphere of the tops of the
Andes, at an elevation of from 12 to 14,000 feet, as in
the great prairies of Venezuela, on the sea shore, or
beneath the ever clear sky of Cumana. This pheno-

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 169

menon of tlie zodiacal light, is described in one part of
Humboldt's diary, written on the voyage from Lima to
the western coasts of Mexico. He says : " For three or
four nights, between ten and fourteen degrees northern
latitude, I saw the zodiacal light in such brilliancy as
I have never observed before. Judging by the bril-
liancy of the stars and nebulae, the transparency of the
atmosphere in this part of the South Sea is very
great. From 14th to the 19th of March, no trace of
the zodiacal light was visible three quarters of an
hour after the sun's disk had set in the sea, although
it was completely dark. An hour after sunset, it
suddenly became visible in great splendour, between
Aldebaran* and the Pleiades ; narrow, long drawn
clouds were dispersed over the lovely blue near the
horizon, like before a yellow carpet ; the upper ones
from time to time played into bright colours, as if it
were a second sunset. In this region of the firma-
ment, the brightness is increased like at the first
quarter of the moon. About ten o'clock, the zodiacal
light was generally already very faint, and at midnight
only a slight trace was visible." In our dull, so called
temperate, northern zone, the zodiacal light is plainly
visible only in the commencement of spring, after
twilight, over the western horizon, and toward the end
of autumn, before the morning twilight, over the
eastern horizon.

We now come to Humboldt's explanation of this
extraordinary natural phenomenon, which did not
excite the attention of natural philosophers and astro-
nomers, until the middle of the seventeenth century,
and whose views on the subject are as variously differ-
ent as imperfect. Humboldt refutes the hitherto
accepted opinion, that the luminous solar atmosphere
itself causes the zodiacal light, but considers it pro-
bable that its material cause may be the existence of
a very much flattened ring, formed of vaporous matter,
which revolves in space between the courses of Yenus

* The beautiful red star in the sign of Taurus, the bull.

170 LIFE OF

and Mars. He can, however, give no explanation of
the material dimensions of this ring, of its enlarge-
ment by the exhalations from the tails of the many
myriads of comets which approach the sun ; he can
give no positive account of the strange variations in
its extent, which sometimes seems to stretch far
beyond the course of our earth, nor of its supposed
connexion with the dense ether surrounding the sun.
He presumes that the aerious parts of this ring
which, according to planetary laws, revolve round the
sun, are either self-luminous, or only illuminated by
the sun. That bodies may exist in a self-luminous
state, Humboldt proves by the fact that, in the year
1743, a terrestrial vapouring, during the new moon
time, was so phosphorescent in the night, that objects
could be distinguished by its light at a distance of 600
feet. In the year 1831 also, the nights were so extra-
ordinarily light, that in northern Germany, small
print could be read at midnisfht ; and at the same
time the morning and evening twilight were unusually
lengthened. When Humboldt was living in the Ame-
rican tropics, he often wondered at the varying degree
of illumination in the zodiacal light, especially when,
for months he was spending the nights in the open air,
in the prairies, and on the river shores. At that time, he
often perceived vibrations and scintillations, and he
believes that these are especially dependent on the
evolution of light on the boundaries of our terrestrial
atmosphere.

"We have hesitatingly followed Humboldt so far
into his higher phase of natural appreciation, in which
he not only feels the regularity of nature in the soul,,
but perceives and acknowledges it. We have followed
his traces at a great distance, because we feared other-
wise to neglect our purpose of a general survey in the
profoundness of his scientific reasonings. But in his
surveys of the starred sky, he refers to the picturesque
gracefulness of the firmament, and calls his readers'
attention to the position of the constellations, and
their dependence on the eternal regular courses and

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 171

changes of the stars. What seems to us immuta-
bility in the sky, is only apparent, caused by the
incalculable distance and changes operating gradu-
ally to our limited senses, during millenniums; on
every spot of the vault of heaven the same motion
exists as on earth, for in this motion the whole
universe has its existence.

Humboldt had most efficient and celebrated co-
labourers on the field of astronomy, and during his
life an immense progress in this science has taken
place, as well as the improvement and perfection of
the necessary instruments. Humboldt was able to
follow this development of astronomical science of the
last sixty years ; his position secured him the intimacy
of all great astronomers; he could see from the
observatories, what thousands possessing high attain-
ments only know from description ; he has personally
watched all discoveries made respecting the heavens
and the earth, for more than half a century. Hence
proceeds his knowledge of the universe, his partiality
for the recurrence of the self-discovered laws of this
earth in space, his ingenious explanation of hitherto
unintelligible facts.

The sky exercises a mysterious charm of attraction
over every one — wherever one may look with the
strongest, space-annihilating telescopes, one finds stars
or luminous nebulse, of which many have already
been resolved into stars; but there are also starless
regions of which Herschel once said that devastations-
had there already taken place by time. Humboldt
calls them chasms in the sky, and thinks they are
views into an infinite depth of space at whose back-
ground another starry expanse lies, whose light cannot
reach us. This view is almost incomprehensible to-
the senses, when it is known that light travels with
the speed of 41,518 geographical miles in a second,
and that nevertheless the light of well-known and
therefore relatively very near stars travels twelve
years to reach us, and that Herschel, through his
famed telescope, discovered luminous nebulae whose

172 LIFE OF

rays, according to his calculations, must have travelled
nearly two millions of years to reach the earth. And
if we now, as astronomers frequently observe, hear of
a star which suddenly loses its light, or increases it
considerably, these are, as Humboldt says, events
which, in their historical reality, belong to other ages
than those in which we perceive them by the changes
in their rays. They are voices of the past ; an hour
for us is for a ray of light a space of 1 48 millions of
miles, and we may possibly be admiring a star whose
last rays are now on the way to us, while the star
itself may have ceased to exist ages ago.

Reflections such as these are induced by con-
templating the stars with Humboldt ; we learn to
know, in the light of distant worlds, the oldest per-
ceptible sign of the existence of matter.

After this introduction, the ingenuous naturalist
brings us back to the real field of his experience, the
earth. Considering first its form, its mean density,
its warmth, and electro-magnetic power, he acknow-
ledges, from the relations of the earth and its powers,
working from the centre outwards, a universal natural
force — namely, subterranean heat — ^whicli produces
earthquakes, hot springs and volcanic phenomena.
The surface of the earth disturbed, raised, or broken
through by this force, has in the course of centuries
formed the relation of the land to the water, and
the form of the ocean — temporary or permanent
clefts into these unknown depths serve to connect this
interior of the earth with the air; fiery springs of
molten masses rise gradually or suddenly from the
unexplored abysses and petrify into lava, and while
the ancient rocks are changed by the influence of the
waters, new ones are formed before our eyes ; the waters
reveal remains of plants and animals, precipitations,
aggregates, crushed rocks mixed with the osticular
ashes of an extinct animal creation. Humboldt intro-
duced a scientific knowledge into this varied scene by
thoughtful comparisons of the present with the past,
of the analogous and the dissimilar, by a combination

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 173^

of real plienomena and ideal views, reflected and
mirrored in tlie entirety of nature ; he brings darkly-
surmised truths on the self-discovered basis of
geognosy. While we know more of the interior (the
weight, volume, and density,) than the exterior of
other planets, we had studied only the surface of the
earth, and Humboldt was the first to open the creative
laboratory of the interior of the earth to the investiga-
tions of science. By means of natural fissures, shafts,
and mines, we know the thickness of the superficial
strata of the earth, but the greatest perpendicular
depth which has yet been reached does not exceed
2000 feet, that is to say, only about one-ten-thousandth
part of the semi-diameter of the earth. The masses
which the volcanos eject, and which, for the most part,
resemble the superficial rock, must, without doubt,
come from sixty times greater depths than those which
have hitherto been explored by man. Some sinkings
prove that coal-beds, with their antediluvian remains,.
lie (for instance, in Belgium) 5000 or 6000 feet below
the present level of the ocean, and that mountain
limestone has probably double that depth. Add to
this the mountain tops as the most elevated portion
of the surface, and we have a difference of about
37,000 feet, or nearly --i-p of the semi-diameter of
the earth.

No more than this is known of the thickness of the
earth ; and the bottom of the ocean, felt at some spots,
(but frequently not fathomable with a line 25,400
feet long) is perfectly unknown. Hence the mass of
the whole planet and its mean density, can only be
deduced from comparison of the upper attainable
portions. Nothing which lies below the above-
named depth has been examined. Nothing is known
of the depths where rocks are still fluid, of the cavities
filled with elastic vapours, of the condition of the
fluids under the pressure of confinement, of the law
of the increase of density, from the peripherium to
the centre.

Humboldt acknowledges all this, and yet has given

174 •J.IFE OF

US a science of tlie eartli wHcli points out the right way
for a future perfect knowledge, and gives the means
for a general explanation of the law which may lead
to analogous conclusions on their as yet undiscovered
causes. His observation of the warmth of the earth
increasing with its depth, and the opposite effect of
the centre towards the surface, brings him to an
explanation of volcanos as the causes of the form of
the earth's surface, some parts of which are raised to
the regions of eternal snow, while some are split by
rising vapour or burning fluids. Continent and sea
interchange, and the atmosphere — the air ocean, as
Humboldt calls it — covers both.

The distribution of land and water, the form of the
surface, the direction of the isothermic lines, influence,
as Humboldt shows, the geographical distribution of
plants and animals on our planet, but the different
characteristics of the human races, and their distribu-
tion over the earth, are entirely independent of these
conditions of nature.

Humboldt introduces into all these branches of science
that unity of observation which proceeds from an ar-
rangement of facts according to their natural relations.
It has never been his purpose tabularly to arrange iso-
lated experiences ; his descriptions begin with the
form and bulk of the earth, but he did not draw his
history of their origin only from the examination of
their mineralogic qualities, of petrifactions and crysta-
lizations, but he found the history of the earth's origin
in its geometric form. He knew that an elliptical
spheroid revolving on its axis proves a former soft and
fluid body, that therefore the e?trth once was in a fluid
and afterwards a soft state. Humboldt finds this hypo-
thesis proved by the depression at the poles, by the
elevation of the surface on the line which the moon
describes round the earth, and by the elevation at the
equator, the line of the greatest velocity which the
soft earth would necessarily take. He calls the level
of the ocean the mathematical form of the earth,
which it must form as a revolving ball, but accidental

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 175

circumstances, the latent forces which caused inequa-
lities and elevations, and formed the solid part of the
earth, change the mathematical into a physical form
of surface. On the first form, science has made all its
graduated measurements of the earth. By eleven such
measurements, of which nine were made in this cen-
tury, while the two others date from the old Peruvian
times, and the East Indian astronomy, it has ascer-
tained the incurvations of this surface and the size of
the earth, and it has been found by this means
that the flattening of the earth spheroid, in which the
denseness of the mass must increase towards the centre,
is nearly equal to the xio'^h part. These measure-
ments for ascertaining the incurvations of the earth's
surface have not only been made by graduated measure-
ments, and by observations of the pendulum oscilla-
tions and the divergence in the moon's course, by
geometrical astronomic means, but also from conclu-
sions on the observed movements, on the powers
generated, and by these powers back on their origin.

By these measurements, of which eight were made
in Europe, it has been ascertained that the semi-
diameter from the centre of the earth to the poles is
2i geographical miles shorter than the semi-diameter
from the centre to the equator ; this shows that the
surface of the earth from the poles to the equator is
swelled by a little more than 4|- times the height of
Mont Blanc. The observations made by the oscilla-
tions of the pendulum have become of extreme im-
portance for science, and Humboldt justly says :
" When Galileo, as a boy, saw during church service
that by the duration of the oscillations of the cande-
labra the entire height of a church dome might be
measured, he could not suppose that the pendulum
rod would one day be carried from pole to pole to
determine the form of the earth, or rather to produce
the conviction that the unequal density of the earth
strata affects the second pendulum by intricate local
influences which reveal themselves similarly on large
surfaces.''

176 LIFE OF

Thus this time-measuring instrument became as im-
portant for the geologist as the lead is to the mariner.
Both reveal unseen depths ; the variations in the pen-
dulum oscillations even showed whether cavities, or
dense basalt masses, exist in the depth of the earth.

When it was at last possible to ascertain the physi-
cal form of the earth by means of the moon also,
science achieved a great triumph, and Laplace was
justified in saying that an astronomer, without leaving
his observatory, was not only able to determine the
form and size of the earth, but its distance from the
sun and moon, results which could, however, not have
been achieved without long and laborious expeditions
to the most distant portions of both hemispheres. It
is a fact that the form of a planet exercises a consider-
able influence over the movements of other bodies,
especially on the never distant moons, and therefore
the form of the earth can be ascertained by an accu-
rate knowledge of the moon's movements. And what
measurements and pendulums could not establish, was
ascertained by these observations of the irregularities
of the moon's movements, as not only the flattening
of the earth was ascertained by it, but also the proof
acquired that the strata of the earth increase in den-
sity from the surface towards the centre, and thus, as
Humboldt says, the knowledge of exterior forms jus-
tifies conclusions on the inner constitution of a body.
The actual form of the earth, depending on the in-
equalities of the hardened suiface, is to the regular
mathematically precise form as the uneven surface of
an agitated sea to the same surface when calm.

But the earth was not only measured, it was also
weighed, by means of pendulum and lead. If with
these simple instruments the mean density of the
earth could be determined (which is much greater
than pure Avater, being 5 '44) its mean weight could
also be ascertained. Even naturalists have advanced
hypotheses on the interior of the earth, whose bulk
must increase in density the nearer it approaches the
centre; these Humboldt rejects, partly as unfounded.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 177

partly as fabulous. Some calculated liow deep in the
earth fluid and aerious matter were so condensed by
the pressure of superincumbent masses, as to exceed
platina in hardness ; others represented the interior
of the earth as a hollow ball, filled with unwieldy
matter and tremendous repulsive power ; they even
imagined animals and plants as existing on the inner
surface of a central globe ; two subterranean, revolv-
ing planets, Pluto and Proserpine, were said to illu-
minate this inner space, and near the north-pole the
opening which led to this inner earth was supposed „
to exist, tlumboidt relates that Captain Symner, a ^ ?
believer in this theory, repeatedly invited him and
Humphrey Davy to make such a subterranean expe-
dition. So powerful, says Humboldt, is the morbid
tendency of men to fill unseen spaces with marvellous
creations, totally disregarding the contradictory testi-
mony of well-founded facts and universally-acknow-
ledged natural laws.

The result of Humboldt's researches on the interior
of the earth is a totally different and a scientific one ;
his views have become the basis of the present doc-
trines. Proceeding on the well-founded theory, that
the form and density of the present earth must stand
in close relation to the forces which prevail through-
out it, independent of those which are produced
and influenced by the sun — Humboldt arrived at his
conclusions. The flattening of the earth, in conse-
quence of the centrifugal power of a rotatory ball,
shows that our earth has once been fluid. When the
original mass, which Humboldt seems inclined to
consider as a vaporous one in an extreme degree of
heat, gradually hardened, heat must have been
evolved ; while the surface cooled, the centre of the
earth must have remained fluid and hot, until, by the
continuous radiation of heat from the centre towards
the surface, a certain temperature has become perma-
nent, and the sabterranean heat has remained higher
as the depth increases. This is proved by the hot
waters of the Artesian springs, the temperature of

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178 LIFE OF

rocks lying deep in the mines, the glowing mass
which volcanos eject from the depth of the earth.
Humboldt does not venture to fix the boundary of
the hardened surface and the fluid centre ; but he
considers that even in these more fluid parts, the
movements of ebb and tide dependent on the sun
and moon prevail. Now, as experience shows us that
heat, in a perpendicular line downwards of .92 Parisian
feet, increases by one degree of the decennial Celsius
thermometer, granite must exist in a fluid state at a
depth of 5*2 geographical miles, four or five times as
much as the height of the highest point of the
Himalaya mountains.

Humboldt distinguishes three modes of the deve-
lopment of the inner heat of the earth. The first is,
that the strata of earth are periodically warmed
and cooled by the sun and the seasons of the year,
and thus arises a stream of heat from the exterior
inwards, and then again from the interior outwards,*
Secondly, in the regions of the equator, a portion of
heat penetrates the earth, and flows in it towards the
cooler poles, where it is again united with the air.
Finally, our earth has been, since incalculable ages,
in a state of gradual refrigeration ; the inner central
heat, which originally made the earth glowing hot,
loses more and more by the gradual discharge towards
the surface and into the atmosphere, although millen-
niums do not sufiice to measure the degrees. We
therefore live, as Humboldt expresses himself, between
the glowing heat of the lower strata and the cold
atmosphere, of which the temperature is probably
below the freezing-point of quicksilver. (40 degrees
of cold of Celsius = 32 degrees of Reaumur)

There are celebrated naturalists who have denied
the uninterrupted increase of heat from^ the surface to

* This heat does not penetrate far. In the temperate zones the
strata of permanent temperature begins at a depth of fifty -five to
sixty feet ; and at half the deptli winter and summer warmth have
scarcely half a degree influence on the thermometer. In the tropics,
the unchangeable temperature lies one foot below the surface.

ALEXANDER VON" HUMBOLDT. 179

the centre of the earth ; as, for example, Poisson, who
declares all heat to proceed from the exterior inward ;
but this hypothesis can now no more affect Hum-
boldt's theory, which if it were even only a suppositioUy
fully explains many phenomena which would other-
wise be unintelligible.

An important mysterious force of the earth, which
surrounds all atoms of existence like a wonderful
chain, is magnetism, to which subject Humboldt has
devoted a great portion of his time. Every change of
temperature produces magnetic and electric streams,
and these Humboldt investigated for 3^ears by means
of the magnetic needle. The electro-magnetic streams
circulate mysteriously in a continual variety of deve-
lopment through the earth, and their changes, which
are shown by the sensitive needle, occur, to the hour,
according to j)lace, solar position, and warmth, and
are suddenly modified only by the polar light. The
sudden interruption of the constantly-flowing earth-
magnetism, which takes place during the northern
light, occurs sunultaneously, even if the observers
were thousands of miles distant ; it is like a vibration
of the entire earth, or it runs like a pulsation in all
directions of the earth's surface, with such extreme
regularity that distances might be measured by it.

Humboldt has not been able to ascertain the causes
of these sudden vibrations of the magnetic needle,
the sign of disturbances and revolutions in the earth's
magnetism.* It is a known fact that all matter is
magnetic (i. e. attractive) as long as it is pervaded by
electricity, and this fact may be explained by future
philosophers. Humboldt discovered the variability in
the mode of development, the inclination and the
horizontal divergence of the earth-magnetism, to be
the three phenomena by which this force can be
observed on the earth's surface. He added three
scientific lines as determining its equal force, equal
attraction, and equal repulsion, which he called the

* Humboldt calls them magnetic storms.
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180 LIFE OF

isodynamic, tlie isoclinic, and the isogonic lines, and
by imagining three lines graphically drawn over the
earth, he showed thereby the vibrating and advancing
direction (curves) of that mysterious force. Observa-
tions of this kind are extremely difficult and arduous
to make, and Humboldt thinks that not for centuries
will it be possible to understand the history of these
intricate magnetic lines by accurate systematic obser-
vation. As he has always pursued this subject with
great interest, he endeavoured to institute such regular
experiments. Through his exertions Europe, Asia,
Africa, &c., have been covered since 1828 with a cor-
responding net of magnetic observatories, extending
from Toronto in Upper Canada to the Cape of Good
Hope and Van Diemen's Land — from Paris to Pekin.
The discoveries of Oerstedt on electro -magnetism, and
the corresponding results of Arago and Faraday were
very welcome to Plumboldt. Oerstedt found that
electricity developed near a body being a conductor
of electricity generates magnetism, while Faraday
remarked that magnetism so developed would, on the
contrary, also generate electric currents. Hence it
follows that magnetism is one of the numerous forma
in which electricity shows itself, and science acknow-
ledged that the two forces were identical.* But the
question of the last named of the physical develop-
ments of the many and intricate phenomena of earth-
magnetism is not yet answered. It is yet unexplained
whether the constant change in the direction of the
magnetic phenomena — which would seem to indicate
various systems of electric streams in the earth — is
excited directly by the unequal distribution of heat, or
whether it is introduced by the solar heat, whether the
planetary revolutions influence it, or whether the
currents in the atmosphere have their origin in the
space between the planets, in the polarity of the sun
or the moon. But the magnetic observatories erected
at Humboldt's instance will assist the solving of this

* Pliny had already surmised this.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 181

mystery, for now every regular or irregular move-
ment of this force is observed on the most distant
spots of the earth, and instruments as well as the
senses are now so sharpened that Humboldt assures
us the persons in charge of the observatories can at
certain times take down observations every two-and-
half minutes for twenty-four hours, and are able to
measure a decrease of the magnetic power by ^-o cnj-o
degree.

Humboldt calls the north-light (the polar light or
aurora borealis) the end of a magnetic storm, and con-
siders it a phenomenon which, since Faraday has dis-
covered that the magnetic power developes light,
stands in the most intimate relation with earth-
magnetism. In the morning, the evening appear-
ance of this discharge of light is pre-indicated by
irregularity hi the course of the magnet, and this
shows that a disturbance must have taken place in the
equable distribution of the magnetic power. Accord-
ing to Humboldt, the north-light is a kind of
magnetic discharge, (as the lightning restores the
disturbed equilibrium of the atmosphere) — which is
sometimes so violent that it has been seen in full day-
light (at Lowervorn in 1786). This phenomenon has
not only been seen at the North and South Poles,
but Humboldt has ascertained that it has been met
with also in the tropics, even in Mexico and Peru
towards the north, so that the spectator always has
his own northlight according to the angle of view.
But the explanation which Humboldt gives of the
existence of this north light, which only received its
name from the direction in which it was most fre-
quently observed, is of the greatest interest. He
considers it a self-luminousness of the earth, a light
development of the planet, in a word an earthlight in
opposition to the sunlight. The planet Yenus also
phosphoresces on that side not illuminated by the
sun, and Humboldt thinks it very probable that
planets and moons, besides the received and reflected

182 LIFE OF

light of the sun should discharge a self-generated
light*

While Humboldt v/as examining the magnetic
and luminous phenomena of the earth's interior,
he also observed the phenomena which the heat
of the earth had produced on the earth itself, and
on its formation. Here he arrived at his favourite
scheme of volcanic appearances. From the interior
heat he deduced the revolutions of the earth, the
former elevation of whole lands and mountains,
the formation of their strata and minerals, and of
the gaseous and fluid earths ; he recognised tins inte-
rior warmth as the cause of the local changes of the
earth by vibration and eruption, such as the gushing
forth of hot springs, the rising of oxygen or sulphur-
ous smoke, the ejection of volcanic matter, and the
eruption of volcanic mountains. In all these pheno-
mena, he sees only the reactionary activity of the in-
terior of the earth towards its crust and surface. From
the remains and petrifactions of antediluvian life, he
judges that this reaction was formerly more powerful
than it is now, that the oxygen must then have been
discharged into the atmosphere more abundantly than
at present ; that it must, by the imparting of oxy-
gen to plants, have produced a far more fertile vege-
tation ; and this is shown by the extinct traces of
former forests, the tremendous coal deposits, and
other buried, burning materials. The earthquake —
that perpendicular, horizontal, or circular vibration of
the earth's surface and crust, which science can now
measure in direction and force with tolerable accu-
racy, which is accompanied by dull noises and subter-
ranean thunder, while the springs often dry and great
desolation is caused — this became, for Humboldt, an
important means to the knowledge of the earth. His

* Besides this aurora borealis there are other forms of teiTes-
trial light. Humboldt includes among them the yet unexplained
weather lights, the dry luminous fog of 1783 and 1831, the steady
light of large clouds which Rozier and Beccaria observed, the
bright nights of autumn and winter, &c.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 183

experiences led him to the conclusion that earth-
quakes were always taking place every minute in
some portion of the earth ; that therefore the interior
of the earth was constantly reacting upon the exte-
rior, that probably the high degree of heat of the
earthy masses in their depth, where they exist in a
molten condition, is the cause; and that therefore
the agitation is not confined to certain species of
mountains, but may occur on any spot of the earth.
But from the observance of simultaneous distant agi-
tations, from the direction of these earthquakes and
waves which frequently cross each other, from the
subterraneous noise which is often heard at miles dis-
tant from the active volcano or the revolutionary por-
tion of the earth's surface, Humboldt recognised cer-
tain subterranean connected veins of volcanic activity,
having their safety valves in the eruptive volcanos,
and either discharging their explosive masses from
the crater, or, if these craters are choked, finding
another, and, for the inhabitants, a more dangerous
outbreak for their fluids expanded by heat. Some-^
times they are not ripe for eruption, and only pro-
duce earthquakes. Electric fluids, expanded by heat,
a,re, according to Humboldt, the cause of all volcanic
phenomena, from the faintest vibration to the most
terrible eruption. These expanded vapours of boiling
water, or melted metals and rocks, rising, roll along
the volcanic galleries in the earth's interior, often find
their outlets choked with crystallized or cooled masses,
and then the pressure of expansion raises the earth
or imparts the waving motion of the elastic fluids to
the more solid mass.

But Humboldt also recognised the chemical changes
in the earth's surface and in the atmosphere, as caused
by the inner vital heat of our earth. The vapours
exhaled the oxygen gas which the earth discharges
into the atmosphere itself almost free from nitrogen ;
many other peculiar gases which rise from various
clefts in the earth seemed to Humboldt the evident
proofs of a constant burning process existing in the

184 LIFE OF

centre of the globe. These fountains of air often pre-
cipitate the matter they contain, and are frequently
met with in such districts where volcanic traces are
not even visible on the surface of the earth. It has
been before mentioned, that Humboldt explains the
greater richness and luxuriance of antediluvian vege-
tation by the gToater quantity of oxygen it received,
and this rose principally from the oxygen springs, of
which many yet exist (mofettes) and which gave
abundant nourishment to the plants. What the
plants could not consume w^as absorbed by the chalk
mountains of the surface, and thus gradually drawn
from the air, which has thereby become respirable
for men and animals. Fluids, slime, and melted
earth, still rise from the centre of the earth, as well as
oxygen and other gases, and the depth of their origin
in our planet can be calculated by their heat. Hum-
boldt connected the places of equal mean tempera-
ture on the surface of the earth by isothermic lines,
and on the same system it was intended to draw cer-
tain lines showing the equal interior heat, to be called
isogeothermic lines, and these were to be determined
by the temperature of the waters which rise from the
centre of the earth and flow from the tojDS of the
mountains ; but this method gave very unsatisfactory
results compared to Humboldt's plan, as the tempe-
ratuie of these Avaters is very relative and depends on
many extraneous circumstances. Cold springs only
have a mean temperature when they, without coming
into contact with the deeper warm springs or the cold
ones from the mountains, have flowed for a consider-
able space in that strata where the permanent tem-
perature of the earth begins, where the warmth of
the air is not influenced by seasons or by day and night.
(This, in the temperate zone, is from forty to sixty
feet ; in the equinoctial regions only one foot below
the surface.) As regards the hot springs, Humboldt
declares, that all those which he and others have dis-
covered are situated at a distance from all volcanos ;
ihat; therefore, the heat of the interior earth gives

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 185

tliem tlieir permanent or occasional heat (sometimes
from ninety-five to ninety-seven degrees), that the
hottest are always the purest, and that the greater
heat of the springs must be occasioned by their rising
from a deeper, i.e., hotter source.

Humboldt has given some interesting explanations
of the slime which is ejected from some portions of
the earth, founded on his investigation of the American
and Caspian mud volcanos. He considers these erup-
tions, which are not caused by earthquakes or by fire,,
as a link of the chain of phenomena by which the
earth's centre acts on its surface, as something between
fire volcanos and hot springs ; they are the organs of
an uninterrupted but weaker action of the planet, by
which a communication between the centre and the
surface had formerly existed, but which have been
choked up, and where the cold slime now rises from
an inconsiderable depth, while the fire volcanos are
yet in direct communication with the glowing centre.
Humboldt has made considerable investigations into
their origin ; he considers them vaulted elevations of
the earth's surface, raised by elastic vapours, which
have broken through and separated the earth's strata.
This produced a basin, or kettle-shaped hollow, in
whose centre a crater and cone formed itself When
the connexion between this opening and the inner
earth is stopped, the volcano is extinct. In a similar
manner volcanos have risen from the bottom of the
sea, and have become inhabitable islands.

We have yet to mention another phenomenon in-
vestigated by Humboldt, namely, the volcanic storms,
so named by himself These are formed by the hot
vapours which rise in the air during the eruption of a
volcano, and which, in cooling, form a cloud which
surrounds the fire-pillar often many thousand feet
high, and from which lightning breaks forth and
thunders roll ; these are caused by the sudden con-
densation of vapour into clouds, which excites the
violent electric discharge.

Being unwilling to enter into the details of Hum-

186 LIFE OF

boldt's scientific acquirements, as they are collected by
him in " Kosmos/' we must omit his classification of
volcanos into central and connected ones, especially as
this system has been introduced into science by other
naturalists. We will return to Humboldt's peculiar field,
and treat of his results on the creative and destructive
volcanic power, in reference to mountains and rocks.

This brings us to the extensive field of mineralogic
geognosy, on which Humboldt always worked with
great predilection with his old friend Leopold von
Buch, and which treats of the formal composition
and arrangement of the earth's strata, and gradually
leads to the geographical form of its surface. The
strata of the earth were to him the pages of a large
book in which he read the events of the past ; the
kinds and forms of rocks he interpreted as the great
characters of a history of creation extending over
many thousands of years. He perceived the process
of the formation of mountains as fourfold. He calls
the matter which has once been projected from the
interior of the earth in fluid masses, and which has
now become more or less solid, eruption rock ; — that
matter which was contained in the fluid in small
particles, and has been gradually precipitated, he
calls sediment rock, and includes among it the greater
part of the horizontal strata of earth, the so-called
tertiary groups, which lie above the chalk formation,
and contain fossil remains of mammalia, Crustacea,
&c. The transformed rocks are those changed by
contact with volcanic or precipitated earth, or by
vaporous exhalation or absorption of matters from
below, while by conglomerates he means the sand and
rock formation composed of mechanically-separated
masses of the three other classes. All these four spe-
cies Humboldt describes as still progressing in their
formation, the action of fire and water, though not so
violent as formerly, is still exercising its influence.
Among the first class, the eruption rock, Humboldt
includes granite and Syenite,* the quartz porphyries,

* A mixture of feldspar and hornblend, called after the town
of Syene, in Upper Egypt.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 187

greenstone, hypersthene rock, Eupliotede and serpen-
tine, Melaphyr, Aiigit, Uralit and Oligoklas-porphyr,
Basalt, porphyr-slate, Trachyt and Dolomite. All
those which former science included among the tran-
sition, horizontal, secondary or tertiary formations,
Humboldt calls the sediment rocks, the precipitates
and deposits of stalactite fluids, such as limestone or
clayslate, whether the matter has been previously
chemically dissolved in water, or only mixed with it
in fine particles. To this class belong slate, coal de-
posits, limestone. Travertine (fresh water limestone,
flint guhr*), and the real infusoria deposits. — a kind
of earth, which, as Ehrenberg has proved, consists
entirely of the bodies of infusoria, and which covers
immense spots of the earth's surface. The sandstone
formations are those rocks which Humboldt calls con-
glomerates. Humboldt proved that rocks, formerly
diflerent, may have changed, and that modifications
are still continuing, and may be detected by compara-
tive observations on the slowly-progressing changes in
the great laboratory of nature, by direct chemical
experiments, which, imitating in miniature the great
processes in the laboratory of the earth, give the most
simple conclusions.

As regards the geographic distribution of the rocks
•over the earth, the most prevailing material is car-
bonated lime ; the next is the combinations of silicum
with clay, of kali and natron with limestone, mag-
nesia, or iron oxyde. As regards the age of the for-
mations, the eruptive mountains are the oldest, and if
remains of antediluvian animals and plants are found
in any earth, its later formation is thereby proved.
An extinct animal and vegetable life lies buried
in the upper and middle strata. Humboldt justly
says : " We ascend into past ages when we descend
from strata to strata, investigating the position of
deposits."'

Humboldt, with his mind's eye, surveys the surface
of the earth, explains the distribution of land and

* Formed almost exclusively of the silica of microscopic infusoria
of the primeval world.

188 LIFE OF

water from the other creative processes of the planet,
and ingeniously connects the geographic knowledge of
the earth with geology. He considers the present
form of the continent as an elevation above the level
of the sea, produced principally by the eruption of
quartz porphyry, which has broken through the pri-
meval terrestrial vegetation, as shown in the present
coal deposits. What we call lowlands, Humboldt de-
scribes as broad ridges of hills and mountains, whose
bases lie at the bottom of the sea — a table land, in
short. The horizontal form of the land of the planet,
— which is as 1 to 24- to the quantity of water, and
of which there is three times more on the northern
than on the southern oceanic hemisphere — has occu-
pied Humboldt's investigating mind, the m.ore as
even in the times of Grecian antiquity it had excited
great interest. The direction which the longitude
measurement of the old and new world takes, has led
Humboldt to new researches. Our old continent has
its greatest length from east to west, while America
has hers from north to south ; and while, in the north,
these two continents are abruptly cut off at their
greatest breadth, they terminate in the south in pyra-
midical points, which Humboldt thinks the more
characteristic because this southern pointed form is
repeated on all the smaller quarters and peninsulas ;
and it has been proved that, the more simple the
coast form and the divisions of a continent appear,
the more uniform has remained the education and
civilization of the inhabitants. He compares the
much divided Europe to the uniform Asia, Africa,
and South America. He acknowledges a subterranean
power as the operating cause of all continental forma-
tion which did not create the entire continent at once
and simultaneously, but at different epochs, by exten-
sion and elasticity of hot vapours and exhalations,
which have, at different times, raised the earth's sur-
face over the water, and by subsequent earthquakes
and eruptions, formed the details of hill and valley.
This elevation and revolution of the continent, Hum-

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 189

boldt, according to his own and his contemporaries*
researches, does not consider as completed, but as still
continuing. As there are yet portions of the earth's
surface which lie below the level of the ocean, — for
instance, the Caspian Sea,* the Dead Sea, the former
625, the latter 1230 feet below the level of the Medi-
terranean,— so whole territories rise still, though per-
haps scarcely perceptibly in the course of a human
life. Thus the eastern shore of Scandinavia has risen
320 feet during 8000 years ; and Humboldt calculates
that in 12,000 years, those portions of the sea near the
shore, which are now covered by fifty fathoms of water,
will be raised to the surface and become dry land.
Thus the growth of the continent is proved ! But if,
on the one side, land is rising above the sea, one may
also imagine a gradual sinking on the other ; and
Humboldt plainly foresees that some north-western
portions of Europe, by the gradual depression of the
surface, will sink below the water level and become
sea. There is an absence of any proof for a real in-
crease or decrease of the ocean, although in former
ages the level of the sea was undoubtedly a widely
different one to the present.

Over the mountains and the plains, and over the
unstable surface of the ocean, lies the earth-surround-
ing sea of air, to which the oceanic waters refuse to
impart their warmth, as the refrigerated particles of
water become heavier, and fall into the warmer depth.
But as the air ocean has its wind currents, which re-
turn according to regular laws (which Dowe especially
has investigated), so there are also oceanic currents,
which Humboldt has made the subject of interesting-
researches. Besides the well-known phenomena of
ebb and tide, the movement of the waves in obedience
to prevailing winds, and periodical air pressure, there

* Humboldt remarks that the periodical, irregular rising and falling
of the waters in the Caspian Sea, seems to be a proof that the soil is
yet capable of making weak oscillations, even without earthquakes,
which must have been more universal at the period when the earth's
cx'ust was less thick.

190 LIFE OF

are currents which cross the oceans like rivers, and
flow past the unaccompanying waves like quiet shores ;
these are the so-called oceanic currents, which Hum-
boldt has most attentively investigated. The principal
of these is the Atlantic Gulf stream. It rises south of
the Cape of Good Hope, runs across the Sea of Antilles
and the Bay of Mexico, through the Straits of Bahama,
proceeds in a north-western course from the United
States, receives an eastern direction near the Bank of
Newfoundland, — where one arm runs southward and
flows to the shores of Iceland and Norway, to which
it frequently brings, besides its warmth, various ob-
jects from the tropics. In the Southern Ocean there
is a similar current, which, however, has a low tempe-
rature, while the Gulf Stream has a high one. We
mentioned Humboldt's investigations on the nature
of the Gulf Stream when we were sketching his
American journey.

Humboldt adds to the sketch of nature which he has
composed according to his own scientific acquirements,
a sketch of the great ocean of air which surrounds our
planet. He has investigated it accurately in the
changes of its pressure, its climatic warmth, its hu-
midity and electricity, and its universal barometric
changes. The wonderful rotatory laws of the winds,
discovered by Dowe, occupied much of Humboldt's
attention, for they led back to universal laws which
Humboldt had discovered in other phenomena of
natural life. His arrangement of the frequently men-
tioned magnetic observatories which cover the earth
he has endeavoured to make subservient for experi-
ments on the laws of winds, and he anticipates im-
portant results on the regulation of winds from these
connected simultaneously-made observations.

When we were speaking of Humboldt's Asiatic
journey we mentioned the universal influence of the
]3revailing winds over climate, and as they have some
eftect in the distribution of heat, whose scientific
classification was Humboldt's special aim in the
isothermic lines instituted 1817, we enter here on a

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 191

new field of his pre-eminent activity, namely, that of
comparative climatology.

Humboldt has a much more comprehensive view of
climate than has hitherto been accepted ; all terres-
trial forces are combined in it in his acceptation of the
term, and his explanation of the varying climates and
their causes is based on general scientific laws. The
places he connects by the isothermic lines are far
from parallel with the equator, for the many causes
which modify the temperature influence their direc-
tion. The temperature is raised in the temperate
zone by vicinity to the western coast, to bays or lakes,
by the situation of the place in relation to large plains,
or oceans free from ice, by the prevalence of south or
west winds, by protecting mountain-ridges, by the
absence of marshes which would remain covered with
ice, by absence of forests on a sandy soil, by pure sky,
and by the vicinity of a warm ocean current. The
opposite of all these must make the temperature
cooler, but in general in the temperate zones, especially
in Europe, the eastern coasts are colder than the
western, because the east winds come over cold coun-
tries, the west winds come across the sea. Humboldt
says, that the studies of his friend George Forster
have especially led him to these results.

As the temperature, properly, grows colder with the
height of latitude, or the distance from the equator,
Humboldt paid especial attention to this on his in-
vestigation of meteorological precedents, his institution
of botanical geography, and other scientific plans, and
he says that on his many journeys in and out of the
tropics the comprehension of this law of the decrease
of temperature with increasing latitude, has always
been a prominent subject for investigation. To these
may be added his results on the snow boundary, the
humidity and the thawing power of the air, and on
electricity.

But from this view of our planet, which he seems
to have built before our eyes, Humboldt goes on to
the organic life of plants and animals ; the animated

192 LIFE OF

surface of the earth became no less the object of his
investigation than the fiery fluid, or petrified form of
the planet and its outer form.

With the infusoria he begins his account of the
animal kingdom, and with the microscopic plants, as
an entire perfect plant, the circle of vegetable life.
Humboldt was assisted in his ofeneral investisrations of
this organic world by the most distinguished contem-
poraries, who revealed the secrets of the smallest space
by means of the microscope, and discovered life, mo-
tion, and repetition of the universal Cosmodian con-
ditions of existence in every vegetable or animal
organization invisible to common eyes. Organic life
is active everywhere on the surface of the earth, in its
precipices and its atmospheric altitudes ; the great
ocean contains minute microscopic life far into the
polar circles of the arctic ocean. It has been proved
by direct observation, that " in the eternal night of
oceanic depths,'' as Humboldt expresses himself, more
animal than vegetable life is developed, while on terra
firma, the vegetable principle prevails ; yet the bulk
of the latter far exceeds that of the former, although
there is less land than sea. Modern naturalists be-
lieve they have discovered infusoria in the air. Hum-
boldt considers this discovery still doubtful, but not
impossible ; he thinks that just as well as it has
been proved that pine pollen falls from the atmo-
sphere, it is possible that little infusoria may be raised
upwards in vapour, and be retained floating in the air
for some time.* Ehrenberg has eJso discovered that
the misty dust rain Avhicli clouds the atmosphere near
the Cape Verd islands, 380 leagues from the African
coast, consists of the remains of eighteen different
silicious, polygastric infusoria.

Humboldt classified plants and animals first, accord-
ing to their social or their isolated character. In his

* Even in portions of melted ice floating in round pieces in a
latitude of 78° 10' more than fifty kinds of silicious polygastria were
found, as well as coscinodisks with their green ovaries, beings there-
fore capable of supporting life in the extreme of cold.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 193

"Flora Friburgensis/' which was published in 1793,
he called those plants social, which always appear in
groups, and cover large surfaces uniformly, thus con-
tributing to give a physiognomic character to a land-
scape, which the moving, often travelling animals,
cannot do. But the interest of Humboldt's geographi-
cal conception of plants, lies in his classifying them
according to climate, whereby they are regularly
ranged one above the other, on mountains, as they
increase in height, and the belt of the mountains has
a warm, a temperate, or a cold climate. Humboldt,
in subsequent years, says of himself : " It was a fortu-
nate circumstance of my life, that at a time when I
employed myself almost exclusively with botany, my
studies, favoured by the view of a grand climatically
contrasted nature, could be directed to this subject,"
namely, to connect the geography of plants with the
theory of the distribution of warmth over the earth,
to regTilate plants according to their natural families,
and then distinguish them numerically.

Humboldt endeavoured to apply the principles
which he had founded, and which include especially
the direction of the isothermic lines, which he draws
over the earth, to connect all points of equal mean
temperature, and on which the botanical geography
naturally depends, to this subject ; he endeavoured to
apply these principles also for a geography of animals,
although these latter are more apt to change their
location at will, between the equator and the poles,
while the plants wander only in the egg (as floating
seeds), and once rooted, remain dependent on soil and
temperature.

But in a perfect sketch of nature, man cannot be
omitted. The human race was therefore also studied
in its physical degrees of races and tribes, and their
geographical distribution. This knowledge, Hum-
boldt endeavoured to obtain, by a more accurate inves-
tigation into the history of civilization, of race, of
common language, of modification in the original
tendencies of mind and feeling. He also arrived at

194 LIFE OF

the conclusion of the unity of the human family,
whose different races are but forms of the one only
kind, which opinion other naturalists had also already
established. Languages also seemed to him as the
intellectual creations of humanity, and being allied in
their development, they bore the stamp of nationality,
and have, therefore, become important, as means to
recognise the similarity and the variety of human
races. Language is to him a part of the science of the
mind ; a sphere surrounding humanity, as a spiritual
chain, but here with mankind, he fixes the boundaries
of his sketch of nature, which he will not exceed.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 195

CHAPTER XL

THE SENSE FOE THE ENJOYMENT OF NATURE IN OPPOSITION TO OB-
JECTIVE OBSERVATION — NATURE AS A MEANS OF IMPROVEMENT FOE
THE MIND AND HExVRT — HISTORY OF A PHYSICAL VIEW OP THE
WORLD.

We have given tlie chief features of Humboldt's
general views of the physical arrangement of the
world in a brief summary. But, as we had occasion
to remark in his short biography, an important feature
in Humboldt's character is, that he not only thinks
and observes, but that he also feels, and that he dis-
covers the beautiful in form and movement, as clearly
as he describes it. Natural science is to him, not a
matter of memory, but of life, not only mental acti-
vity, but mental improvement, not only the know-
ledge of the world beyond us, but a means for the
better development of ourselves.

Humboldt teaches us in a most attractive manner,
how natural studies can be a means of civilization,
how man may be thereby induced to perceive the
reflection of the outer world on his own imaginative
power, by the feeling of poetical enjoyment and repro-
duction, by the art of landscape painting, by the
■cultivation of plants and of exotic flowers, and finally,
by understanding the great natural laws, first in detail,
and then gradually in their entirety. This Humboldt
teaches us in a most attractive way. At the conclusion
of his picture of nature, he departs from the purely
physical contemplation of natural objects, — a contem-
plation which he has throughout purposely denuded
of everything approaching to an imaginative garb, —
and proceeds to investigate the subject with regard to
its influence on the feelings of the human mind.
o 2

196 LIFE OF

This produces that higher degree of natural appre-
ciation, of which Humboldt, on another occasion, says,
that it springs from ideas from a comprehension of
nature. The pictures of natural life received by the
perceptive faculties, are reflected on the feeliDg and
the imagination, and thus reveal an inner world in
man. This inner world must be studied by intelligent
men, for it teaches us to know the source of our
reasonings, of our mental activity, and our emotions.
By exciting the phantasy, which first is agreeably im-
pressed by the view of natural objects, and afterwards
endeavours to retain the fugitive picture, most men
are excited to a nearer acquaintance with objective
nature. The desire for distant, new, unknown forms
of nature is excited, with it the attempt at a poetical
treatment of natural scenes, at artistic representation
of the beauties of nature in landscape painting, or the
cultivation of graceful or noble plants and animals.
Humboldt wishes to make all these feelings more
universal, more intelligible, and more productive, and
therefore, at his advanced age, he begins to write on
it. The second part of " Kosmos'' treats exclusively
of this subject.

Starting with a description of nature, he endeavours
to describe the feeling for nature as it existed in
different ages and nations ; lie shows that in the
remotest antiquity, the time of the Hebrews and the
Indians, feeling for nature was not quite absent,
though less loud and evident ; that the Greek had
neither description nor poetry of nature, and only took
landscapes for no more than the background for
passions, heroisms, &c., delineated by human figures ;
that the Roman was still more sparing in his suscep-
tibility for the beauties of nature, and left this sense
undeveloped, spite of his country-life and tillage of
the fields, in the cold solemnity, sober prudence, and
exclusively practical direction of their popular life ;
how, with Christianity, the feehngs of the ancients,
till then dead, and directed only to action and to the
expression of human power, and not to external
objects, were inspked with new senses; how, with

ALEXANDER VON" HUMBOLDT. 197

the civil liberty of the human race, the view of the
great nature was extended, and with the love of soli-
tude, of solemn reflection, and self-examination, the
feeling of beauty and order in nature sought to admire
the goodness of the Creator; how Christianity in-
spired individuals of the Germanic and Celtic races,
more devoted to adoration of nature, to investigate
the preserving and destroying forces in nature, and
thus incurred the risk of falling a victim to the belief
in sorcery of the common people : but how, in the
middle ages, the unconcealed joy in the pleasures of
nature was developed, mixed, in the Indo-Germanic
races of Northern Europe, with romantic sentimental-
ism ; how, finally, in more modern centuries, depth
of feeling and vivacity in the appreciation and influ-
ence of nature prevail among nations. Humboldt
describes all this in an instructive and interesting
manner, and he then advocates that poetry of nature
where the poetical is born from the secretly-felt union
of the sensual with the intellectual, from the feeling
of universality and unity of natural life.

Landscape-painting has also, in Humboldt's opi-
nion, an influential effect as an incentive to natural
studies ; it increases a love for nature. On this sub-
ject, Humboldt enters into the gradual introduction of
landscape-painting, which, in its real development,
belongs to the latest period of the middle ages, aud
owes much to the brothers Eyck. The greatest era
in landscape-painting was the seventeenth century ;
at that time there lived Claude Lorraine, the idyllic
painter of light and of clear perspective ; Ruysdael,
grand in dark forests and threatening clouds ; Gaspard
and Nicholas Poussin, distinguished for their repre-
sentation of romantic scenes; Everdingen, Hobbems^,
and Cuyp, for their fidelity in copying nature. Theae
painters, says Humboldt, intelligently copied what the
vegetation of Northern Europe, of Southern Italy,
and of the Iberian peninsula, offered them. But he
recognises a higher grade of landscape-painting in the
representation of individual forms of nature, which
was not possible till the geographical knowledge of

198 LIFE OF

the world was extended by travel, and the sense of
beauty was developed by the investigation of bota-
nical forms. At the present time single individual
forms of exotic plants, single fruits, branches, or buds
(by Johann Breughel), the individual characteristic of
the torrid zone (by Franz Post, of Haarlem, and
Eckhout, who accompanied Prince Maurice of Nassau
to the Brazils), are made the subject of pictures ;
landscape painters have also commenced to represent
the simpler forms of our indigenous flora, with a fer-
tile and creative phantasy and a depth of feeling,
which nevertheless reflects the whole of nature,
because on every spot of the earth nature repeats
herself

We have only briefly sketched Humboldt's views-
on landscape-painting; he demands natural physi-
ognomy in a landscape ; the picture is to express the
dark feeling of a local natural character ; and to con-
ceive and adequately represent this feeling, Humboldt
considers as the task of a landscape painter.

But still he describes this impression of a picture
as less exciting and narrower than the direct sensual
perception of exotic plants in hothouses or parks, and
distinguishes the artistic impression from the con-
templative botanical interest ; and although planta-
tions and gardens have not the varied means of
landscape-painting — such as light and colouring, the
command over form and quantity, the mysterious
unbounded distance of perspective — that is quite
compensated by the impression which kealitt always
exercises over the senses. Humboldt is very partial
to such living garden-landscapes, and wishes to see his
descriptive botanical physiognomy applied as a means
in the art of landscape-gardening.

We must now follow the great man, whose portrait
we are endeavouring to dravv, on another intellectual
field, which he has made abundantly fruitful ; this is
the history of the physical contemplation of the
world, the knowledge of the gradual development

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 199

and extension of the conception of nature in its en-
tirety. For the desire of humanity to know heaven
and earth, and to comprehend the connexion of the great
natural forces in both fields, has existed since the
remotest ages, and among the oldest nations of an-
tiquity. A contemplative observation of the pheno-
mena and developments of nature, has, in all ages,
been indispensable to the intelligent, and the pro-
gTessive knowledge of nature, in its relation to the
universe, has always kept pace with the civilization of
mankind. Like all knowledge, this first contempla-
tion of nature begun with single objects, and the
presumed intimate connexion of these with entire
nature. With increasing civilization this supposition
became a knowledge of nature, and the prophetic
phantasy of a Plato, Columbus, and Kepler, dimly
pointed to the end which experimental science subse-
quently attained by other means.

The gradual development of the comprehensive
faculties of humanity, which produced the notion of
the unity of all natural phenomena, as a whole, inti-
mately connected in all its parts, is produced, accord-
ing to Humboldt : first, by the independent pursuit
of human reason of the knowledge of natural laws —
or a thoughtful observation of the phenomena of
nature ; secondly, by the great terrestrial events which
have suddenly extended the horizon for study ; thirdly,
by the invention of new means for the extension of
actual observation, (as telescopes, microscopes, and
other optical and scientific instruments) which has
brought us into nearer intercourse with the objects of
this earth, and with those of the most distant regions,
having thus strengthened and multiplied our capa-
bilities of perception.

Humboldt started from these three features of the
causes of progress in his studies on the history of
natural contemplations ; and on this field, also, his
universally developed mind was of great assistance to
him. He traced the gradually increasing knowledge
of nature, the consequence of a latent endeavour for

200 LIFE OF

improvement in man, from the oldest natural history
of the old Hellenes. He calls the great world events,
such as the voyage of Colaus from Samos, to beyond
the pillars of Hercules, the expedition of Alexander
to India, the dominion of the Romans, the spread of
the Arabian religion, and the discovery of America,
sudden means of increasing the knowledge of nature,
especially in the life of those nations which once
inhabited the shores of the Mediterranean. And, at
this point, Humboldt refers to languages which each
operate as a means of communication between sepa-
rated nationalities, and which, by comparison with
each other, by an investigation into their constitution,
and the similarity of their character, assist in the
study of the human races.

Humboldt likes always to build his investigation
on some object, in all his observations which lead him
to universal subjects, and, thus, in his description of
the world in general, which is represented principally
by natural, philosophical, and rarely by perceptive
illustrations, he seeks some point of earth u]3on which
he can advance contemplatively and experimentally.
He takes, for this purpose, the Mediterranean Sea as
the circumscribed space, round which those nations
lived who prepared the foundation for our subsequent
western civilization. From these shores of the Medi-
terranean he explores the course of civilization, and
finds the history of the knowledge of nature advance
progressively with civilization, but not proceeding
from one, but from several primitive nations. In the
remotest antiquity, at the extreme horizon of past
historic ages, we see, contemporaneously, several
bright stars from which the rays of civilization, crossing
each other, have flowed on, as in Egjrpt, Babylon,
Nineveh, Cashmere, Iran, and China. Humboldt
says, on this occasion, "these central stars remind one,
involuntarily, of the greater among the dazzling stars
of the firmament, of the eternal suns, in space, of
which we perceive the brilliancy of their light, but
do not know, except of a very few, their distance
from our planet/'

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 201

Humboldt, following his usual metliod, takes the
Mediterranean as the point where he begins his
physical history of the world; he divides the Medi-
terranean into three parts; the Egean, the Ionian,
and the Tyrrhenian seas, and recognises these forms
of the thrice divided Mediterranean as exercising a
great influence on the earliest boundary, and earliest
extension of Phoenician and Grecian voyages of dis-
covery; he shows how important is the physical form
of the coasts in the course of events, the direction of
naval expeditions, and the change of government, also
as a mode of developing ideas. From thence he traces
the paths of the early civilization of the Hellenes, as
shown in their voyages in a north-eastern direction,
by their argonautic expedition to Colchis, towards the
south by the Ophir expeditions, and westwards by
Colaus of Samos, and as evinced also by the campaigns
of Alexander the Great, which opened nevf roads of
civilization, and for the advancement of ideas, as new
portions of the earth were included in the circle of
universal knowledge by conquest, language or litera-
ture. The Greek spirit encouraged the intermingling
of nations, from the Nile to the Euphrates, from the
Jaxartes to the Indus. The extension of the know-
ledge of the world was a sudden one, both by indi-
vidual study of nature, and by intercourse with other
ancient civilized and commercial nations.

Humboldt pursues the increasing knowledge under
the Ptolemeans, after the dissolution of the Mace-
donian empire, and sees in the commerce of Egypt
with distant countries, in exploratory voyages to Ethi-
opia, in the long ostrich and elephant hunts, in the
menageries of the royal palaces of Bruchium, &c.,
stimulants to the study of natural history, and to the
increasing store of observations which were made at
this era of the Ptolemean, and of the Alexandrine
school, less by observations of individuals, than by
order, comparison, and explanation of formerly ac-
quired facts. He then points to the foundation of the
Alexandrine Museum, and of two libraries, as the
results of the practical sense, the comparative obser-

202 LIFE OF

vations, and the imiversalising of the natural science
of that age. It was, as Humboldt expresses himself,
the age of encyclopedic learning; a connexion of the
knowledge of heaven and earth — ^where astronomical
and geographical progress was made — where the move-
ments of the planets were more accurately ascertained,
but where, at the same time, all knowledge of the
absolute size, form, mass, and physical constitution of
the world remained on its old footing.

In the Roman world dominion, Humboldt sees the
first signs of an union of the three above-named
divisions of the Mediterranean into one confederation,
connected with other great continents; he sufficiently
appreciates the influence of a great confederation on
natural science ; he sees the different previously in-
dividually progressing streams of civilization united
here; Rome had become the centre of this great new
circle. Geology was advanced by tillage ; Strabo and
Ptolemaus rose up as the supporters of geographico-
physical and mathematical science; mathematical
optics and chemical science commenced ; and Pliny
made his first attempt at a physical geography.

And now Christianity appeared. In it, Humboldt
perceives the origin of the gradually progressing
feeling of the unity of the human race — the great
fountain of benevolence, of the humanising of nations
in their morals and manners. He has thus recognised
four great eras in the progress of knowledge in the
universe. 1. The attempts to advance from the shores
of the Mediterranean eastward towards Pontus and
Phasis; southward, to Ophir, and tropical auriferous
countries; and westward, towards the pillars of Her-
cules, in the ocean. 2. The Macedonian campaign
under Alexander. 3. Period of the Lagides; and
4. Roman dominion: but, he acknowledges besides,
the immense influence of the Arabian invasion, which
introduced a foreign element into European civilization,
and of the discoveries of the Portuguese and Spaniards
in the six or seven centuries subsequently occurring.
Both these events considerably advanced and extended

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 20S

physical and mathematical science, and the knowledge
of astronomy and geography. Henceforward, says
Humboldt, the advancement of cosmical knowledge
was no longer dependent on single political events,
but on the events occurring in space. The Arabians,
a Semitic, primitive race, not only opposed barbarism,
but went back to the sources of Greek philosophy, and
opened new paths to natural observation; therefore
Humboldt, who has so well proved that the life of
nations is influenced, besides their intellectual quali-
fications, by many objective conditions, of soil, climate,
and vicinity of the ocean, perceives in the irregular
form of the Arabian peninsula, an important reason
for the great intercourse this nation had with the
world, and their consequent influence on the study of
natural sciences, which was particularly favoured by
their native love for nature and her powers. They
cultivated pre-eminently medical science and che-
mistry, and founded a new scientific era in the latter.
Humboldt pronounces the importance of chemistry to
consist in this, that through it the first knowledge of
the difference of matter, and of the influence of its
powers not visible by movement, was obtained, and
that thus the admixture of matter became a branch
of knowledge, as well as the form. But the know-
ledge of the earth in the heart of the continent was
also cultivated by the Arab intellect as well as astro-
nomy, and mathematic science in general.

And now came the era of oceanic discoveries ; the
fifteenth century impelled all intellectual labour to-
wards one goal ; the views of the middle ages were
gone, and a new age was preparing.

The western hemisphere was discovered — ^the first
ineffectual discovery of America in the eleventh cen-
tury became, through Columbus, a new discovery of
civilization. The partiality which Humboldt shows for
this event, and its consequences, in all his descriptions,
is explained in the biographical account of his life. He
was, in contrast to Columbus, the geographical dis-
coverer of the American tropics, the scientific dis-

204 LIFE OF

coverer of those districts ; his great work was directly
allied to the results of the physical knowledge of the world
acquired by these oceanic discoveries, which extended
the horizon by a new world. Humboldt's name, there-
fore, ranks with those of Albertus Magnus, Roger
Bacon, Vincent de Beauvais, Columbus, and Gama.
The two last named men are the conquerors of the
space on which Humboldt cleared away obscurity, and
opened the land to science. But the Pacific was also
opened to the comprehension of men ; not only the
form of the western coast of the world, but the form
of the eastern coast of the old world, was ascertained,
for, as Humboldt shows, the knowledge of the numeric
relation of the bulk of water and land on our planet
was freed from erroneous results, and the condition of
many other phenomena, such as tlie degree of mois-
ture in the atmosphere, the varying atmospheric pres-
sure, the vegetative power of plants, the greater or
lesser distribution of certain families of animals, was
explained. The western nations of Europe had, there-
fore, the richest store of material for a study of phy-
sical geography at their command in a very excited
age, where a numerous European population were in
the most direct intercourse with a great, new, and
magnificent tropical nature in the American plains and
mountains.*

Vega says that man, on his journeys to distant
regions, sees land and stars change at the same time,
and it therefore follows in the development of natural
knowledge that important discoveries on the earth
must increase our knowledge of the world, or, more
accurately, of the firmament. By the employment of
perflected telescopes new regions of the heavens were
revealed, and a new world of ideas born. Columbus
gained a large space of earth for humanity ; Coperni-
cus, almost at the same time, made similar discoveries
in the universe, and the telescope enlarged the circle

* Compare Humboldt's critical investigations into the historical
development of a geographical knowledge of the new world and of
nautical astronomy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 205

of this human knowledge to infinity. Kepler dis-
covered the great forces of the movement of world-
bodies, which Copernicus had surmised ; and the
great theory of gravitation which Newton introduced
changed physical astronomy into the mechanics of the
sky.

We do not follow Humboldt in his illustrations of
the history of the development of astronomy from
Galileo to Kepler, and of the mathematical epoch
from Newton to Leibnitz, because he has only collected
the results of his predecessors in his own manner, and
it does not include his own special researches. But
•with the discoveries of his contemporaries, Humboldt
is intimately connected, for he had a direct or indirect
share in all the advances made in natural sciences.
Therefore his assistance in the sciences of the heavens
and of the earth is gloriously pre-eminent in the great
branches of study on warmth, light, magnetism, and
all great forces, whose better explanation is the intel-
lectual triumph of the present age.

We have thus endeavoured to give another intellec-
tual portrait of Humboldt, by a general sketch of his
"Kosmos," which we have made with all possible
fidelity. But the great work is not yet completed ; a
third and last volume will give us the results of the
discoveries on which the present condition of science
is principally founded. And as " Kosmos,'" the great
legacy to the German nation, is still incomplete, the life
of Humboldt is also incomplete, and we take leave of
him with the ardent wish that he may yet dwell for
many years on this earth, with w^hose mysteries he is
so familiar, and from which he has culled such abun-
dant fruits of knowledge.

206 LIFE OF

CHAPTEE XII.

GLEANINGS OF HUMBOLDT S LIFE — ILLUSTKATIONS OF TEAVEL
AND OF NATUEE.

The life of Alexander von Humboldt is so fertile in
objective and subjective events, that it was impossible
to represent the various scenes of his adventures,
scientific and social, in former chapters. We often
hurried over events, views, and landscapes, in order
not to fall from the field of the biographer into that
of the writer of travel ; but we often wished to tarry
longer, and give the dangers and impressions of new,
bold discoveries, or try the effect of many a beauti-
ful natural scene upon the mind of our reader. As
we wish, however, to satisfy the readers of this bio-
graphy in this respect also, and bring Humboldt be-
fore the people in the various circumstances of his
glorious activity, and in order once more to follow
him in his thoughtful contemplation, clear explana-
tion, and instructive tuition of nature, we have
gleaned some stray sheaves on the paths traversed
in the previous chapters. We append, therefore,
some scenes of travel, natural phenomena, and views,
extracted from Humboldt's writings, as a gallery of
sketches which will fill up the crude outline, and the
gaps in our portrait of Humboldt.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 207

ASCENT OF THE PEAK OF TENERIFFE.

The real ascent of the mountain begins at Orotava.
Early in the morning of the 21st June, Humboldt
and his companions were on the road which leads to
the summit of the mountain. It was not an agreeable
day, and, from sunrise until ten o'clock in the morning,
clouds covered the point of the mountain, which, with
a clear sky, would have been visible from Orotava.
(Humboldt says: — The journey to the peak of Teneriffe
is the same as the journeys to the vale of Chamouni
in Switzerland, and to the summit of Mount Etna in
Sicily, where the traveller is obliged to follow his
guides, and sees only what other travellers have before
seen and described). A narrow stony path led from
the town of Orotava through a fine chesnut grove
into a district covered with bushes, and with several
varieties of laurel and tree heath ; the stems of these
heath-plants have a considerable thickness, and flower
nearly the whole year.

Arrived at the station Pino del Dornajito, Hum-
boldt had a splendid view of the sea and the
northern portion of Teneriffe. A very voluminous
gushing spring found here showed a temperature of
fifteen degrees warmth, which was very surprising to
Humboldt, because the temperature of sprino-s is
generally the same as the mean temperature of the
locality, and the barometric altitude measurement
coincided accurately with the thermometric measure-
ments, whence it must be presumed that the tempe-
rature of this spring is lower than the mean atmo-
spheric temperature, especially as the spring had its
source on a higher point of the peak. From this
point Humboldt ascended constantly without passino-
a single valley, and crossing only the little clefts, like
folds in^ a mantle, surrounding the volcano. The
points which, from the island, seem separate volcanic
mountains, such as Chahorra, La Urea, &c., Humboldt
found to be little hills leaning against the peak, and

208 LIFE OF

hiding its pyramidical form. Through the heath dis-
trict Humboldt ascended into the region of ferns,
where the root of one very plentiful kind serves as
food to the inhabitants of Palma and Zomera ; then
he came to a wood- of juniper and fir trees, and at last
to a plain, like a large green sea, covered with ferns,
and which it took the travellers two hours and a half
to cross. In addition to this they suffered from the
very great heat, which was reflected from the soil.
The plain, formed of pumice-stone, is covered with
the beautiful, odorous, flowering Ketema plant,
sometimes nine feet high, with which the passing
hunters decorate themselves, and which serves the goats
of the peak as nourishment. These goats live here
wild, have a dark brown skin, and are eaten as a
delicacy. As soon as Humboldt arrived on this
pumice-stone plain, he saw that the character of the
landscape, which had been so fertile hitherto, was
entirely changed ; at every step he came upon im-
mense volcanic productions ; everything announced a
quiet, deep solitude of a deserted district, which
extended over ten square miles of desolation. From
here the island seemed like a colossal heap of burnt
matter, round which the vegetable world had formed
a small border. Through narrow and deep clefts,
hollowed out by the former mountain-streams of
olden times, Humboldt came to a mountain level, El
monton de Frigo, and from there, at a height of 9312
feet, to a station, Estancia de los Inglesos, where he
and his companions had to pass the first night.

Humboldt's dwelling for the night was a cavern,
which protected him from wind and weather ; the
guides lighted a fire of dried branches, and lay down,
without tents or cloaks, upon a heap of burnt stones,
where the fire, smoke, and wind, were very trouble-
some. They tried to make a screen of handkerchiefs
tied together, but the fire caught and consumed a por-
tion of it before the travellers perceived it. Hum-
boldt had never passed a night at such an elevation
above the sea, and did not then imagine that he would

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 209

some day visit towns on the ridge of the Cordilleras,
higher than the peak of Teneriffe, which he hoped to
reach next day.

As the cold increased, clouds lowered round the
peak, and, although the north wind drove them furi-
ously away, new ones were always gathering, and the
moon, with a peculiarly blue disk, sometimes peeped
through clouds and mist. Gradually the point of the
volcano shrouded itself in thick mist, which suddenly
again separating, showed the large pyramid of the
peak in threatening vicinity, casting its tremendous
shadow on the lower clouds.

At three o'clock in the morning Humboldt and his
companions started on the way to Piton, the guides
faintly lighting the road with dim pine torches. In
two hours they reached a plain called the station of
the natives, where the people rest who fetch ice and
snow to sell in the neighbouring towns. There is a
so-called ice cave here 1732 toises (10,392 feet) hio-h,
so situated that the rays of the sun cannot enter it to
melt the ice and snow Avhich accumulates during the
winter. Humboldt and his companions left this ice
cave with the morning twilight, and struggled on
through the broken lava, having often to use their
hands for climbing. Here an atmospheric joheno-
menon surprised them — they seemed to see rockets
rising in the east, the guides had never seen this
before, and anticipated an approaching eruption of the
volcano, when Humboldt perceived that the appar-
ently floating sparks were the reflections of stars
which mirrored themselves in the moving mist. The
journey was now continued through the so-called
Malpay, and became extremely fatiguing and difficult,
for the lava has not only very sharp edges and forms
caves of several feet deep, but also frequently breaks
off and rolls down. The indolence and ill-will of the
guides made the ascent more cHfficult still, for they
did not wish to go any further, sat down every teii
minutes to rest, secretly threw away the minerals
which Humboldt and Bonpland had carefully col-

210 LIFE OF

lected, and it even appeared that none of them had
ever been on the summit of the volcano. In spite of
these disadvantages, Humboldt perseveringly followed
the path for three hours, when they arrived at a little
plain in whose centre the Piton or Sugarloaf rises,,
and where the outlets of the peak are, which the
natives call nostrils, and from which vapours some-
times rise which have no smell and seem to consist of
pure water.

The steepest part of the mountain had to be climbed
now, and the ascent could only be achieved by
following the remains of an old stream of lava which
formed a kind of rocky wall in the midst of the rolling
ashes. After climbing with hands and feet up the
sharp pointed lava mass, they ascended the Sugar-
loaf In about half an hour they had surmounted
the cone, about ninety toises high, and the way
would have been more dangerous still had the so-
called Sugarloaf been covered with snow. Hum-
boldt was shown the spot on which Captain Baudin
had once nearly lost his life.*

At eight o'clock in the morning, in a freezing tem-
perature, Humboldt reached the top of the cone,
which scarcely afforded sufficient room for the whole
party to sit down to rest. They could not see the
crater itself, because lava and "Brimstone had formed
a kind of wall round it. An opening on the western
side, probably formed by a stream of lava, afforded
an entrance into the kettle of the volcano ; Humboldt,
followed by his companions, descended to the bottom
of the funnel, whose eggshaped mouth must be 300
feet in length, and 200 broad. The warmth they
perceived here proceeded from some slits from which
watery vapours flowed, accompanied by a peculiar
rushing sound, and the interior of this crater afforded
the picture of a volcano which has for millenniums

* Captain Baudin had been bold enougb to ascend to the summit
during the snowtime in 1797. When he had got about halfway, he
slipped, and rolled down to the next plain, where, fortunately for
him, his fall was broken by a heap of lava covered with snow.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 211

ejected fire only from its sides. Without further
danger Humboldt and his companions reached the
bottom of the funnel-shaped crater, whose depth may
be about 110 feet, and which, like all extinct vol-
canoes, seems to have changed little for centuries.
Indeed, the majestic effect of the deep ravine seemed
to Humboldt to consist more in its heis^ht above the
level of the sea, in the desolation of this elevated spot,
which must be 11,500 feet high, and in the extensive
prospect which the summit of the mountain affords.
Humboldt says, " experience has taught us that the
tops of the highest mountains rarely offer such fine
prospects as the less high summits of Vesuvius, the
Rigi, and the Puy de Dome. But the peak of
Teneriffe unites by its slender form and its locality all
the advantages which less high mountains possess ;
from its summit is seen not only an immense expanse
of ocean, but also the forests of Teneriffe, and the
inhabited portion of the coast, in such vicinity as is
adapted to produce the finest contrasts of form and
colour. As we were sitting on the extreme edge
of the crater v/e directed our attention to the north-
west, where the coast is studded with villages and
hamlets. Below us the mass of exhalations driven
by the wind formed the most varied pictures. A
monotonous layer of clouds had been se23arated on
several points, by currents of air which the heated
earth sent up from below. The town and port of
Orotava, with its gardens, vineyards and ships, lay
before us. From the height of these solitary regions
our eyes fell on an inhabited world ; we had the
contrast between the smiling appearance of cultivated
plains and the barren sides of the peak, the steep
precipices covered with loose stones, and the plains
without a trace of vegetation. We saw the plants
ranged in zones, according as the warmth of the
atmosphere decreases with the ascent.''

The extreme transparency of the atmosphere per-
mitted the travellers not only to distinguish villages,
vineyards and gardens, from the top of the peak, but
P 2

212 LIFE OF

even single houses, tlie sails of ships, and the trunks
of trees; but the stay at this considerable height had
nevertheless become very unpleasant, in consequence
of the cold, which was severe in spite of the season,
(June), for the thermometer had fallen to two degrees
(Celsius), and a violent west wind forced the travellers
to seek shelter at the foot of the Sugar-loaf. Face
and hands were numbed with the cold, Avhile their
boots were burnt by the hot soil on which they stood.
They commenced the retreat; the Sugar-loaf, climbed
with such difficulty, was deserted in a few minutes,
although the descent had to be cautiously made, on ac-
count of the moveable lava and slippery ground. They
first reached the plain of the retema plants, at a
temperature of 22^ degrees, which seemed a suffo-
cating heat after the cold of the summit, and then
entered gradually the refreshing temperature of ferns
and bushy heaths.

Tovv^ards evening they arrived again in Orotava.

THE LLANOS.

It has been mentioned in former chapters that
Alexander von Humboldt suffered great hardships in
traversing the " Llanos" (the treeless, immense plains
of southern America). In order to give our readers
an idea of these expeditions, we append a sketch,
made by Humboldt of the nature of these steppes.

"Solitary huts, made of moss and branches, and
covered with bulls' hides, lie at a day's journey from
each other. Innumerable herds of wild bulls, horses,
and mules, roam about the steppes. Primeval forests
and impenetrable darkness, prevail on the narrow
damp boundary which surrounds the desert, mighty
granite rocks narrow the bed of the foaming rivers.
The wood resounds with the thunder of the rushing
waters, with the roaring of the jaguar and the dull
howling of the monkeys. Where the shallow stream
has left a sand-bank, there the heavy bulk of the

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 213

crocodile lies with open jaws, immovable like a rock,
sometimes perched on by birds. With its tail coiled
round the stem of a tree, the tiger-spotted boa lies
watching on the shore, sure of its prey. Darting
suddenly forward, it seizes at a bound the young bull
or the weaker game, and forces its prey, coated with
slime, down its swelling throat. But when, beneath
the horizontal rays of the never-clouded sun, the
burnt-up grass has fallen into dust, then the parched
soil gapes as if it were agitated by tremendous earth-
quakes. Like roaring waterspouts, contrary gusts of
dust-clouds rise eddying funnel-shaped; a dull straw-
coloured demilight shines over the desolated ground
from the apparently lowering sky; the horizon dimi-
nishes, the steppe shrinks, like the traveller's courage.
The hot dust which floats in the misty veiled atmo-
sphere increases the oppressive, ill-odonred heat.

While the animals in the icy north are frozen by
the cold, the crocodile and the boa slumber here
motionless, buried deep in the soil. The drought
brings death to all, and the deceitful mirage of the
waving water pursues the thirsting. Enveloped in
thick clouds of dust, and tormented by a burning
thirst, the horses and bulls wander about, the latter
roaring loudly in their anguish, the former snuffing
the wind with outstretched nostrils, to discover the
vicinity of a not entirely-evaporated ditch in the
moisture of the breeze. And, even when the coolness
of the long night succeeds the burning heat of the
day, the horses and herds cannot enjoy a moment of
repose. Immense bats, vampire-like, suck their blood
while they sleep, and claw themselves on to their backs,
where they produce festering sores, in which a host of
stinging insects house. When, after the long drought,
the beneficent rainy season commences, the scene is
suddenly changed ; the deep blue of the unclouded
sky grows paler, and at night one scarcely perceives
the faint space in the sign of the southern cross. The
gentle phosphorescent glimmer of the Magellan clouds
is extinguished, and even the signs of the Eagle and

214 LIFE OF

the Serpent-bearer wliicli stand over head, shine with
a tremulous lisfht. Like distant mountains, sing^le
clouds appear in the south, the mists spread like fogs
over the zenith, and distant thunder announces the

refreshing rain Scarcely has the surface

of the earth been moistened, when the fragrant steppe
is covered with the most varied grasses. Attracted
by the light, low plants unfold their slumbering leaves
and greet the rising sun, together with the song of
birds, and the opening buds of the water-plants.
Horses and cattle graze in the full enjoyment of life.
The beautifully-spotted jaguar hides in the high grass,
and, cat-like, springs to catch the passing animals.
. . . . Sometimes one sees the damp clay on the
shores of the morasses rise slowly and by pieces, with
a violent noise like the eruption of little slime vol-
canoes, the earth is thrown high in the air ; . . they
who are familiar with this phenomenon fly from the
spot, for a gigantic water-serpent, or a thick-skinned
crocodile rises from the cavity, awaked from the
simulated death by the showers of rain. As the
rivers gradually swell, nature forces the same animals
which were perishing with thirst for the first half of
the year on the waterless dusty soil, to live now as
amphibious animals; a portion of the steppes seems
like a vast inland sea. The mares retire with their
foals to the higher banks, which project like islands
from the surface of the water. The dry space
decreases day by day. The crowded animals swim
about for hours in search of pasture, and find a
sparing subsistence from the rich gi^ass which rises
above the brown-coloured fermenting water. Many
foals are drowned, many are caught by the crocodiles,
killed by a blow from their jagged tails, and then
devoured ; one often sees horses and cattle which have
escaped the claws of these voracious animals, and
bear the traces of their sharp teeth in their thighs.

But as crocodiles and tigers here fight against
horses and cattle, we also see man opposed to man in
various parts of these deserts. "With unnatural blood-

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 215

thirstiness, they drink the blood of their enemy, or
murder him when apparently unarmed, with a poi-
soned thumbnail. The weaker tribes of men carefully
conceal with their hands the trace of their timid foot-
paths from their stronger enemies. Thus man, on
the lowest stage of savage barbarism, as in the appa-
rent splendour of civilization, always makes his life
wearisome ; and the same desolating picture of the
hostilely-divided human race pursues the wanderer
over land and sea, and the historian through all
centuries. Therefore, he who longs for mental repose
in the endless quarrel of nations, directs his attention
to the calm life of plants, and the secret workings of
holy nature ; or, confiding in the inborn instinct which
for centuries has glowed in the heart of man, he looks
hopefully up to the high stars, which pursue their
old eternal course in undisturbed harmony.''

ASCENT OF THE SILLA OF CARACAS.

It was difficult to find a guide to the mountain ;
the hunters do not go so high, and Humboldt's inten-
tion of collecting plants, breaking off stones, and insti-
tuting barometric and thermometric observations,
were things unknown here. By the intervention, of
the governor, some negroes were appointed to guide
him. As it was the season in which two fine days
rarely succeed each other, Humboldt determined
to start on his journey on a day when the clouds
would have lowered, and an approaching clearer at-
mosphere might be anticipated. The mountain ascent
was commenced on the 22nd January by a company
of eighteen persons, who rested for the night in a
coffee plantation near a precipice. The night was
very clear, and they made use of it for astronomic
observations. At five o'clock in the morning, the
company started again on the narrow pathway, fol-
lowed by slaves who carried the instruments. They
reached the promontory of Silla, called by the shep-

216 LIFE OF

lierds, Paerta de Silla, at about seven o'clock. The
morning was fine and cool, the sky seemed to favour the
undertaking, and the view was most picturesque. The
guides hoped to reach the Silla heights in six hours.
The noise of the waterfalls was heard, but the moun-
tain stream could not be seen, for it was concealed
beneath the thick shadows of the erythrias, clusias,
and Indian fig-trees. Nothing could be more beau-
tiful on a spot where there are so many plants with
large, bright, and tough leaves, as the view down on
the tops of the trees, illuminated by nearly perpen-
dicular rays of the sun.

The way became steeper and more fatiguing ; the
ground was covered with short grass, which afforded
no firm footing, and it was impossible to leave any
footmarks in the grass. Thin vapours rose from the
forests, and announced an approaching mist. They
accumulated and ranged themselves as cloudy curls
round the two tops of the Silla, as the forerunners of
a still denser mist. Humboldt's companions lost
courage, and showed some signs of beating a retreat,
and the intimate garrulity of the accompanying negro
Creoles contrasted strongly with the solemnity of the
Indians, who had been Humboldt's guides in the
missions of Caripe. They mocked the discouraged
guides, and made themselves merry especially at a
young Capucin friar, who was, at the same time, pro-
fessor of mathematics. When the travellers started,
he thought, as all Europeans do, that he would sur-
pass all the Americans in boldness, strength, and fore-
sight ; he had even taken bits of white paper with him,
that he, as the foremost of the climbers, might throw
them down from time to time to show the way to the
less agile. He had boasted much of his boldness and
perseverance, and had promised the monks of his
order to fire some rockets from the top of the moun-
tain, in order to announce to the inhabitants of Caracas
an event the importance of which he alone could ap-
preciate. But this boaster lost courage long before
the Creoles did, and remained all day in a neighbour^

ALEXANDEK YON HUMBOLDT. 217

ing plantation, whence lie watched with a telescope
how far Humboldt and the others would be able to
climb.

The expedition moved on towards the eastern
highest points of the Silla, which terminates in two
round points. From the foot of the waterfall Cha-
caike to a height of 6000 feet, they found only cow-
pastures, with two small lily-like plants with yellow
flowers, and some brambles. Humboldt searched in
vain for a wild rose, of which, indeed, he could only
find one specimen in South America. Their journey
now became very arduous on account of the fog, and
because in climbing the steep and slippery ascent they
had to make use of their hands as well as their feet.
At a height of more than 5500 feet, the sight of a
palm forest in a mountain pass formed a surprising
contrast to the pastures in the valley ; nowhere did
Humboldt find such a variety of plants on so com-
paratively small a space, as in this palm forest of
Pejoal, whose most interesting feature was a bush from
10 to 15 feet high, of the family of the umbelliferous
flowers, which the Creoles called incense (incienso).
While Humboldt was examining the flowers, the sky
grew darker and darker, the thermometer sank below
eleven degrees, which, in the torrid zone, causes an
unpleasant degree of cold. Through groups of Alpine
plants — so called by Humboldt — they again came to
a pasture-field (savannah), and climbed over a portion
of the western point, to descend into a cleft between
the two summits, called the saddle. The luxiu-ious
vegetation here made it extremely difiicult to find a
path, which had to be hewn with knives and axes.
From time to time the clouds separated, and the tra-
vellers then saw the eastern point of the mountain,
but then a dense mist suddenly again obscured the
view. At every step the danger was incurred of
coming upon the ledge of the tremendous precipice,
and falling down 6000 feet into the sea. A halt was
made, the negroes soon arrived with victuals, but the
meal was very sparing, as they had only olives and a

218 LIFE OF

little bread. Even the guides had lost all courage,
and Humboldt had great trouble to prevent their
returning.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and Humboldt
was in hopes of reaching the eastern point before sun-
set, and returning early enough to rest the night in
the valley between the two points. He had sent back
half of his attendants, with the order to meet him on
the following day, with salt meat and refreshing
victuals, instead of olives. Scarcely had these
preparations been made, when the east wind arose,
and dispersed the clouds in less than two minutes.
The two points of the Silla covered only with grass
and low Befaria buslies, seemed astonishingly near.
Humboldt explains the absence of high trees on the
two points of the Silla, (the tree boundary in this zone
being really 2400 feet higher), by the barrenness of the
soil, the violence of the sea winds, and the frequent
spontaneous conflagrations in this region.

In order to reach the highest eastern point, they
had to approach the extremely steep precipice hang-
ing over the sea, and the obstacles which the luxurious
vegetation had hitherto opposed to their progress
decreased as the travellers approached the point. In
three quarters of an hour they had reached the point
of the eastern pyramid, and stood 8100 feet above the
sea. The prospect to the north over the ocean, to the
south over the fertile plain of Caracas in a circum-
ference of nearly thirty miles, was surprisingly beau-
tiful. But the open view from this steep precipice,
whence one can see, (though not the town of Caracas,
which was concealed by the western pyramid,) a
beautiful group of villages, coffee plantations, and the
course of the river Rio Guayra, did not last long.
Mists again obscured it, and a, swarm of bee-like ani-
mals attacked the travellers. It would have been rash
to have tarried near the deep precipice in this dense
fog, and the retreat was commenced to the saddle, the
space which divides the two points. At half-past four,
Humboldt had finished his scientific observations,

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 219

and, pleased with the fortunate result of this ascent,
the idea of spending the night in the saddle valley
was given up. Having found the path they had
hewn at the ascent, they soon descended into the
palm forest of Pejoal. The night, which quickly suc-
ceeded the short twilight, overtook Humboldt and
Bonpland botanizing ; the moon, sometimes obscured
by clouds, shone in the sky ; the guides who carried
the instruments, went away, one by one, to seek a
sleeping place between the rocks, and Humboldt and
Bonpland, overwhelmed with weariness and thirst,
arrived at ten o'clock in the lower valley, by a
wearisome path. After a descent of six hours, the
company again arrived at the farm at the foot of the
mountain. They had been watched on the summit
by telescopes in the town.

THE COMBAT WITH ELECTRIC EELS.

The marshes and standing waters near Calabozo
are filled with electric eels. Humboldt and Bonpland
wished to make experiments in their own house with
these animals, but for three days they could meet with
no specimen, on account of the exaggerated fears of
the people for the electric effects of these animals.
Tired of waiting, and as the eel which was at last
brought to them offered no satisfactory results to their
experiments, Humboldt determined to go himself to
this dreaded and dangerous capture. The Indians
thereupon took him and Bonpland to a large reservoir
of slimy water, surrounded by odorous plants, near the
village of Bastro de Abazo ; but it was difficult to
catch the electric eels with common fishing nets, as
they bury themselves with great agility in the slime.
They did not wish to make use of the Barbasco root,
which, thrown into the water, would have stupified all
the fish in it.

The Indians now declared they would fish with
horses, and not until the guides had caught a quantity
of wild horses and mules, and forced them to enter

220 LIFE OF

the ditch, could Humboldt and his friends form any
idea of this mode of fishing. The noise occasioned by
the stamping of the horses, drives the eels out of the
slime, and irritates them ; they swim on the surface
of the water, and press themselves against the belly
of the mules and horses. A strange combat now
begins ; the Indians, provided with long thin bamboo
canes, encircle the ditch: some climb the trees, whose
branches extend horizontally over the water. By wild
screams and threats with their long canes, they pre-
vent the horses coming ashore and escaping. The
eels, terrified by the noise, defend themselves by the
repeated discharge of their electric forces. It seems,
for a time, as if they would carry off the victory over
the horses, for many of the latter succumb to the force
of the invisible electric blows, which the eels give on
the belly, the most sensitive part, and they sink below
the surface, overcome by the quantity and violence of
the shocks. With bristling mane, snorting, with wild
terror in their sparkling eyes, some horses rise again,
and endeavour to escape, but the Indians drive them
back, and but few escape the eyes of the watchful
guards. If such an one, escaping from the shocks of
the electric eels, reaches the land, it falls at every
step, and sinks down on the sand, faint and exhausted.

In the first five minutes two horses were already
drowned. The eel, which is five feet long, presses
against the belly of the horses, and discharges its elec-
tricity along its whole length, which stuns the abdo-
men, entrails, and heart of the horse. The horse
sinks down exhausted, and is drowned, because the
continuing struggle of the eels with the other horses
prevents its rising again.

Humboldt was already anticipating that this fishing
would end in the death of all the horses, when the
violence of the unequal struggle gradually abated,
and the exhausted electric eels dispersed ; for they
require long rest and abimdant nourishment to regain
the strength spent by the frequent discharge of their elec-
tric organs. The horses and mules recovered from their

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 22 J

terror, their manes no longer bristled, and their eyes
no longer glared so fearfully. The Indians maintained
that if the horses were driven into the water of electric
eels on two consecutive days, none would die the
second day. The eels now timidly approached the
shore, where they were caught with little harpoons
attached to long ropes. If the ropes were perfectly
dry, no electricity was felt while hauling out the fish,
but it was communicated through the wet ropes. In
a few minutes j&ve large eels were caught which were
only slightly wounded, and others were caught in the
evening in a similar manner. This was the wonderful
combat of the fishes and the horses : and Humboldt
adds : that power which is the invisible living defence
of these water inhabitants ; which is developed by the
motion of moist or unequal parts ; which circulates in
all organs of animals and plants ; which thunderingly
inflames the expanse of heaven ; which unites iron to
iron, and guides the calm, revolving course of the
needle ; all this, like the colour of the prismatic ray,
flows from one source — all is resolved into one eternal
universal force.

TROPIC STORMS.

The impression which a tropic storm makes upon
a European, a stranger to this zone, is very imposing ;
the phenomena of the atmosphere are not accidental,
but succeed each other in the equinoctial regions with
a wonderful uniformity.

Nothing can equal the pureness of the atmosphere
from December to February. The sky is always
cloudless ; and if a cloud appears, it is a remarkable
phenomenon. The eastern and east -north -eastern
breeze blows violently, and as the atmosphere it
brings is of a uniform temperature, the mist cannot
become visible by refrigeration.

Towards the end of February, or the beginning of
March, the sky is coloured of a darker blue, the

222 LIFE OF

hygTometer shows a gradually increasing moisture,
the stars are sometimes veiled by a slight mist, their
light is not steady, and they are occasionally seen to
sparkle about twenty degrees above the horizon. The
breeze blows less violently, and there is often a total
wind calmness. South-south-east of the horizon the
clouds gather, they seem like distant mountains with
inaccurately defined outlines ; they are sometimes
seen to quit the horizon, and scud through the sky
with a speed quite inconsistent with the weakness of
the wind in the lower atmosphere.

Towards the end of March, the southern region of
the atmosphere is lighted by small electric explosions ;
they are phosphorescent sparks, limited to a single
group of mist. Now, from time to time, south-west
winds occur, lasting some hours, and are the sure
signs of the approach of the rainy season, which
begins towards the end of April in the Orinocco
district.

The sky then begins to be clouded, the clear blue
disappears, and a uniform grey colour takes its place.
At the same time, the warmth of the atmosphere in-
creases, and not only clouds, but dense mists, cover
the vault of heaven. The howling monkeys make
themselves heard several hours before break of
day ; the atmospheric electricity, which, during the
dry season from December to March, had nearly
always averaged 1"72 lines of the voltaic electrometer
during the day, becomes extremely variable, being
sometimes 0, sometimes 3.4 lines.

The rainy season is also the season of thunder-
storms. The storm commences two hours after the
passage of the sun through the meridian, a short time
after the period when the heat has reached its maxi-
mum. The thunder is rarely heard in the night or
in the morning ; but these thunder-storms are alto-
gether only confined to certain river districts having a
peculiar climate.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 22S

VOYAGE ON" THE APURE.

On account of the monotony of the steppes, Hum-
boldt preferred to sail into the Orinocco on the river
Apure. He hired for the purpose a broad vessel called
a piroge, which was navigated by a steersman and
four Indians. The Apure harbours many fish, sea
cows, and tortoises, and its shores swarm with birds ;
the river grows gradually broader, the shore on one
side is sandy and barren, on the other grown with high
stemmed trees. Humboldt was now in a territory
little known by man, and exclusively inhabited by
tigers, crocodiles, and chiguires. Sometimes the
stream was bordered by woods on both sides ; these
woods commenced with bushes of sanso, which forms
a hedge four feet high, and behind them grew- a kind
of paternoster or Nicaragua wood. Tigers, tapirs, and
pecaris had broken passages through the hedge to
come to water at the stream. Where the flat shore
is rather broader, and the sanso hedges grow a little
farther from the water, the space between serves as
a resting-place for the crocodiles, and eight or ten were
frequently seen lying immovably on the sand, with
their open jaws extended. The journey had scarcely
begun, and Humboldt knew that many hundreds more
would lie in the slime of the savannahs ! Besides
this, the Indian rowers assured him that a year rarely
elapsed in which two or three grown up people,
generally women, coming to draw water at the stream,
did not fall a sacrifice to the crocodiles. In these
deserts, says Humboldt, where man lives in constant
strife with nature, the conversation turns much on
the means by which one can escape the pursuit of a
tiger, a boa or a crocodile ; every one prepares to meet
the threatening dangers. The crocodile lets loose its
prey if one presses its eyes with the fingers, and a
young girl had lately escaped from the grasp of the
animal at San Fernando by this means, Avith the loss
only of the forearm, which it had bitten off. The

224) LIFE OF

crocodile of the Apure is quick and sudden in attack,
and makes a curious noise as it runs, which seems to
proceed from its scales beating against each other.
They run straightforwards, but they can turn very
well; Humboldt often sa^v young ones biting their
own tail. Only when swimming against the stream it
finds a difficulty in turning, and the large dog which
accompanied Humboldt escaped from a crocodile by
quickly turning round against the stream.

Near Joval, where the country grows more and
more wild, Humboldt saw a large tiger lying in the
shadow of a zamang, one of its paws resting on a just
caught chiguire (about the size of our pigs). The
zamures (a kind of vulture) had approached to share
the remnants of the feast, and came to within two
feet of the tiger, but the least movement sent them
terrified away. When the boat of the travellers
approached, the animal hid behind the sanso bushes,
and the vultures tried to seize the opportunity to
devour the chiguire, but the tiger, in spite of the
vicinity of the boat, leaped among them and carried
his prey off into the wood.

Lower down the stream they saw a whole herd of
chiguires from which the tiger had probably taken his
victim ; they did not seem to fear human beings,
but ran av/ay and dispersed at sight of the large dog
which accompanied the travellers ; so slowly did they
run, however, tha.t two of them were caught.

Humboldt and his companions spent the night, as
usual, in the open air. The next morning, on the 1st
April, they passed a flat island below Joval which w^as
inhabited by innumerable flamingoes, spoonbills, fish-
bills, and waterfowl. The next night the travellers
spent on the barren shores below Vuelto del Cochino,
and the thick forest was so impenetrable, that there
was scarcely sufficient dry wood to be obtained for the
Indians to make a fire as a protection against the
tigers. The night was calm, clear, and moonlight,
the crocodiles were lying on the shore looking towards
the fire, whose brilliancy seems to attract them as

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 225

much as fishes and crabs. The Indians found the
traces of three tigers in the sand, of which two seemed
to have been very young ; Humboldt supposed that it
was a female tiger who had brought her young to
water.

For want of trees the oars were fastened in the
ground, and the hammocks swung to them. All was
quiet until eleven o'clock in the night, but then such
a fearful noise arose in the neighbouring wood that
sleep was impossible. Of the number of voices of
wild animals which sounded at the same time, the
Indians, who were with Humboldt, distinguished only
those separately audible, such as the low flute-like
tones of the sapajo, the sighs of the alonates, the
scream of the tiger, the conguar, the niuskrat, the
sloth, the hocco, the parragua, and some other fowls.
As soon as the jaguars approached the boundaries of
the forest, Humboldt's dog howled and crept beneath
the hammocks. Sometimes, after a long pause, the
tiger's voice was heard from the trees, followed by the
sharp continuous scream of the monkeys escaping
from the danger.

The security which the Indians seemed to feel
inspired Humboldt and his friend Bonpland with
courage. They listened to the accounts how all tigers
dread fire, and never attack a man lying on his ham-
mock, and the case is indeed very rare. The noise
which the animals make, seems to arise from a quarrel
among them. The jaguars pursue the pekaris and
tapirs, who fly in crowded herds. The monkeys,
startled by the noise, respond to the cry from their
trees, and thus the , inhabitants of the forest are
awakened one after the other, and the whole mena-
gerie is in an uproar.

The next morning (April 2nd) Humboldt went on
board his ship again, the river being crowded by
quantities of porpoises. At noon the travellers halted
in a desolate spot. Humboldt relates : — " While the
boat was dragged ashore, I had separated from the
company, and was walking along the banks to watch

226 LIFE OF

a group of crocodiles. The animals slept in the sun,
and were so lying that their broad scaly tails rested
against each other. Little snow-white herons perched
on their heads and backs, as if they had been trunks
of trees. I had been looking only towards the shore,
when, on lifting up some scales of mica, abounding
in the sand here, I perceived the fresh footprints of a
tiger, and, at eighty paces distant, saw an immensely
large jaguar lying beneath the foliage of a ceiba tree.
There are circumstances in life when it is impossible
to reason. I was much alarmed, but had self-posses-
sion enough to proceed onwards without running, and
to avoid any movement of the arms. I perceived
that the jaguar was fixing its attention exclusively on
a swimming herd of capybaras, I therefore commenced
my retreat in a long round towards the shore, gra-
dualty hastening my steps. How often was I tempted
to look back to see if I was pursued ! Fortunately I
did not do so till late, and then saw that the animal
had remained immovable. The wild beasts here are
so well fed that they rarely attack men. I arrived
breathless at the vessel, but the Indians to whom I
told my adventure treated it with great indifference.
However, when they had loaded their guns, they
accompanied me and Bonpland to the spot where I
had seen the tiger. We did not find him there, and
did not deem it advisable to pursue him into the
wood.''

The next night, Humboldt and his companions
again spent on the shore, opposite the island Conserva.
The lighted fires again attracted the crocodiles, and a
female jaguar approached the riyer to water its young.
The 4th April was the last day spent on the Apure.
The insects began to torment dreadfully, especially
the zancudos, whose proboscis is so long that it pene-
trates through hammock and garments. The next
day Humboldt's vessel, after safely avoiding the shal-
lows caused by the long drought, gaily entered the
lono; desired Orinocco.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 227

SCENES FROM THE ORINOCCO VOYAGE.

Humboldt landed upon an island which is cele-
brated in the country for its turtle fisheries, and which
the mission Uruana considers as its property. There
was a company of above three hundred persons of
several Indian tribes congregated here, who slept be-
neath huts of palm leaves, each tribe on separate
encampments. There were also some white people,
merchants from Angostura, who came to purchase the
oil of the tortoise eggs from the natives.

Humboldt and his companions seemed suspicious
characters to the missionary, and the object of their
journey very mysterious.

" Who will believe,'' he said, " that you have left
your country to be consumed here by mosquitoes,
merely to measure lands which do not belong to you.''

Humboldt could only satisfy his doubts by the
recommendation of a father guardian of a Franciscan
convent, and by the presence of the brother-in-law of
the Statthalter of Varinas, who had accompanied
him on the journey on the Orinocco.

Here Humboldt saw the manner of the tortoise
catching. The great Arran tortoise lays its eggs at
the time of the lowest ■ water, always beginning at
night, immediately after sunset. The animal digs a
pit two feet deep and three feet broad, v/hose sides it
is said to cement with its urine. The impulse to lay
its eggs is so urgent, that some tortoises make use of
the holes which others have dug but not filled up
again, and lay a second layer of eggs over the first.
The number of the tortoises labouring on the shore is
so great, that morning sometimes surprises them at
their incompleted work. But although they move
away quickly, they can easily be caught by hand.
The egg gatherers investigate the situation and extent
of the egg deposits with a long pole. When the
pole is pressed perpendicularly into the soil, the sud-
denly ceasing resistance reveals the soft soil on which
the eggs lie. The eggs are gathered with a metho-
Q 2^

228 LIFE OF

dical regularity. According to tlie number of Indian
tribes, the soil is divided into certain districts, for the
deposits of eggs are found three feet deep, 120 feet
from the shore. When they have sounded with the
poles, the Indians dig up the soil with their hands,
and break the eggs into wooden troughs filled with
■\vater, and expose them to the rays of the sun until
the yellow, upper, oily part thickens. This oil is
then boiled separately, and if none of the eggs con-
tained embryo tortoises, it is very pure and of an
agreeable flavour. A space on the shore 120 feet
long and thirty feet broad, gives 100 ships' jars full
of oil (from 1000 to 1200 cubic inches) and 5000 eggs
are required to make one jar full. But as one tor-
toise lays at the utmost from 100 to 116 eggs, and
about one-third are destroyed before they can be col-
lected, 330,000 tortoises are required to produce the
thirty-three millions of eggs which afford the above
quantity of oil.

Where the Orinocco suddenly turns northward near
San Fernando, it breaks through a portion of the
mountain ridge. Here are situated the great water-
falls of Atures and Maypuros, and here the bed of
the river is narrowed in by immense masses of rock.
The stream surges along the eastern precipices ; an
extensive grass plain extends between the two hills,
the rocks Kari and Oco, which rise like mountain-
fastnesses from the old river bed of the bay, which
was once filled by the Orinocco like a sea, and pre-
sented a magnificent prospect. The northern end of
the waterfalls is characteristically called the sun and
the moon in the language of the aborigines. The
rock Kari has its name from a luminous white spot, in
which the Indians j)erceive a remarkable similarity to
the moon. Humboldt was not able to climb the
steep rock, but supposed the white spot to be an im-
mense piece of quartz in the dark granite. Opposite
the Kari rock, on the basaltic twin rock of the island
of Quivitari, the Indians show -with secret admiration
a similar disk, Camosi, which they worship as the

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 22^

image of the sun. The geographical situation of the
rocks may have contributed to their naming, for the
Kari stands westward, the Camosi eastward. The
waterfalls of Maypuros do not consist, like the cata-
ract of Niagara, in the single fall of an immense
volume of water, nor of narrow passes through which
the stream flows with increased velocity, like the
Pongo of Manseriche in the Amazon, but it presents
a countless number of small cascades which rise, lad-
der like, above each other, and are formed of a real
archipelago of little islands and rocks, which often lie
so thickly together on the eight thousand feet broad
bed of the river, that scarcely twenty feet of navigable
water is left Every rock or step is from 2 to 3 feet high,
the most notoriously dangerous, called Purimaximi
and Manimi, are nine feet high, and yet the Indians
venture to ride down the stream through the water-
falls in a slight boat, and when they go up the stream
they swim in advance, throw a rope with infinite dex-
terity round a rock projecting from the surge, and
then draw up the vessel, which is generally filled with
water or turned over. The boat is often dashed to
pieces on the rocks, and the boatmen then endeavour
to save their bleeding bodies from the waves by reach-
ing the nearest shore. As the real fall of water,
according to Humboldt's measurement, is only from
28 to 30 feet, the dreadful noise and wild tossing of the
waves is not the consequence of the fall, but of the
counter- current, which is caused by the form and
position of the rocks.

As Humboldt was descending to the bed of the
river over the rock Manimi, he enjoyed a splendid
view over a foaming surface miles long, from which
black rocks projected. Every rock, every islet rising
above the water's surface, was ornamented with luxu-
rious high forest trees, and a dense mist floats eter-
nally over the falls. Through the cloud of foam the
point of the palm trees is seen, and when the ardent
evening sun was reflected in the moist mist, it pre-
sented an optical painting like an ethereal picture, in

230 LIFE OF

the splendidly-coloured rainbows which were formed
and vanished again in varying succession. The water
during the long rainy season, has washed earth on to
the bare rocks which project, and on which now vari-
ous plants, especially silver-leaved mimosa and dro-
sera grow. In the distance the eye rests on the long
mountain chain Cunarami, which terminates suddenly
in a blunt cone shining with a red light in the setting
sun.

It surprised Humboldt that the noise of the cur-
rent was three times stronger in the night than by
day, a feature, by the way, peculiar to all European
waterfalls. But in a desert, where the quietness of
day is never interrupted, and is equal to that of night,
another reason than this contrast must be discovered,
and Humboldt believes that the warm air of the day
does not conduct the waves of sound so well as the
nocturnal cold air, on account of the unequal elas-
ticity.

Humboldt, and his friend Bonpland, ventured to
pass the last half of the waterfall of Atures, also,
with the laden boat. The two bold travellers first
landed several times on the rocks which connect the
single islands in the current-like dykes ; sometimes
the waves dashed over these dykes, sometimes they
fell with a dull sound into their basin, and found an
outlet through subterranean canals, while the golden
rock hen nestled on the dry rocks. The two travellers
crept into one of these caves, lying under the rocky
dykes ; its damp walls were covered with confervas
and luminous bissuth, and over their heads the torrent
rushed with a fearful noise. As the Indians had left
them in the middle of the waterfall to circumnavigate
a small island in their boat, and were to take them
up again at the lower point of the island, they were
obliged to spend an hour and a half on this rock in
a dreadful storm. The night had already commenced
to set in, and they in vain sought shelter from the
rain under the cleft granite. The little monkeys,
which they had carried on their wanderings for

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 231

months in wicker baskets, attracted the crocodiles by
their screams, and thereby refuted the assertion of
the Indians that crocodiles had never been seen in the
cataracts, confiding in which assertion Humboldt
and Bonpland had even several times ventured to
bathe.

The storm increased ; wet through and stunned by
the thunders of the cataract, they waited anxiously
for the arrival of the Indians with the boat. At last,
they came, having sought for navigable water for a
long time.

Humboldt now visited the notorious cave of Ata-
ruipe, situated at the southern entrance of the water-
fall of Atures. Not without risk of falling, did
Humboldt and his friend climb the steep wall of
granite, and they would not have found a footing on
the smooth surface, if large crystals of feldspar had
not projected from the rock. But they were rewarded
with a splendid view at the summit ; before them
was the shining water, from which fertile hillocks
projected, and westwards, beyond the river, immeasu-
rable fields of verdure. But in the immediate neigh-
bourhood everything was bare and narrow, and the
vulture and the screeching goat-sucker soared solitary
over the deep valley. The back ground of this rocky
valley is overgrown with close bushes, and in this
shaded part lies the notorious cave, the grave of an
extinct nation. The travellers counted above 600
well-preserved skeletons, which were lying in square
baskets, made of the stalks of palm leaves, and of
which, neither rib, hand, nor foot-bone was missing.
Near the skeletons stood urns about 3 feet high and
5| broad, made of half-burnt clay, with crocodile or
serpent-shaped handles, and these iirns seemed to
contain bones of entire families. Most of the skeletons
did not seem above 100 years old, and the tradition
in this neighbourhood is, that the brave Aturians,
pursued by the cannibal Caraibes, had fled to the
rocks of these waterfalls, and had perished here. . .
Humboldt left this cave at night, taking Avith liim

232 LIFE OF

several skulls and one complete skeleton.* They
parted in solemn silence from this mysterious ceme-
tery ; it was a fine and cool night, the moon, sur-
rounded by coloured rings, stood high in the air, and
illuminated the mist which, cloud-like covered the
surging river. Innumerable insects radiated a reddish
phos2)horescent light over the plants, which glowed
with living fire. Climbing bignonias, odorous vanillas,
and golden banistorias, ornamented the entrance to
the cave, — over the dead the summits of the palm
trees rustled.

The catholic missionary of San Fernando had
brought his Indians to the shores of the Guaviare, on a
hostile expedition, Avhich was, in reality, a chase of
human beings, equally opposed to the laws of religion
and humanity, and to those of the Spanish govern-
ment. On this unchristian expedition, a mother with
three children, of which two were yet infants, were
found in an Indian hut. They were occupied in the
preparation of Manioke flour; the father was fishing,
and could, therefore, not defend his family from the
hostile man-hunters and Christian oppressors. The
mother endeavoured to escape with her children, but
had scarcely reached the savannah when she was
overtaken by the man-hunters of the mission, she and
her children pinioned and dragged to the shore. The
missionary was watching the success of the enterprise
from his boat. If the mother had made a violent
resistance, she would have been cut down by the kid-
nappers, for everything is permitted in the missions,
when they go out "soul catching.'' They always
prefer to take children and rear them as slaves to the
Christians.

The mother was brought to S?m Fernando with her
children ; they hoped she would not be able to find

* Blumenbach subsequently cast one of these skulls, but the skele-
ton was lost in the before mentioned shipwreck.

ALEXANDER VOX HO-MBOLDT 233

her way back to her home by land. But her mater-
nal heart longed for those children, who had accom-
panied the father on the day she was carried off. In
despair she, with her children, made several attempts
at flight, but was overtaken, mercilessly whipped, and,
at last, separated from her two infants. Shu was
taken up the river Atabo into the missions of Rio
Negro. Loosely bound, and not knowing what fate
awaited her, she sat in the forepart of the vessel.
She succeeded in breaking her bonds, sprang into the
water, and swam towards the left shore : the current
drove her against a rock where she hid among the
bushes. But the missionary landed his Indian ser-
vants, the miserable woman was brought back, cruelly
scourged, her hands bound fast behind her back, and
thus she was dragged to the Christian mission of
Gavita. It was the rainy season, and the nights
were dark ; on account of the impassability of the
forests, the rivers are the only means of communi-
cation between village and village. Maternal love
urged the chained woman to attempt the apparently
impossible, for she felt but the one desire to liberate
her children, and take them back to the others at
home.

She was unwatched — as her arms were bleeding,
the Indian servants of the Christian missionary had
from pity, secretly loosened her thongs; with her
teeth she separated them entirely. The next morning
she had disappeared, and was seen four days after,
near San Fernando, where her children were im-
prisoned in the mission. She had passed through the
woods at a season when the sky is always covered
with clouds, and the rivers overflowing ; she had often
been obliged to swim, often to make her way, bleeding,
through the prickly bushes, and had lived only on
large black ants. The Christian missionary rewarded
her unheard of courage by imprisoning her in a
mission on the Orinocco, where, despairing of seeing
her beloved children again, she refused all food, and
died.

234 LIFE OF

Humboldt could not look without emotion on tlie
rock, on tlie western shores of the Atabo, Y/here the
woman had endeavoured to escape ; it is called the
" rock of the mother'' to this day. Humboldt ex-
claims : "if man scarcely leaves a trace of his exist-
ence in these deserts, the name of this rock, an
imperishable monument of nature, will remain as a
memorial of the moral perversity of our age, of the
contrast between the virtue of the savage, and barbarism
of civilized men. This is to the memory of a victim
of the bigotry and savageness of miserable wretches,
who called themselves servants of a religion whose first
command is love of one's neighbour.'"'

ASCENT OF THE CHIMBORAZO.

When Humboldt and Bonpland had arrived at
Quito on the Magdalen stream on the 9th January,
1802, they devoted themselves for nearly nine months
to geological and botanical investigations of this dis-
trict. They wished also very much to ascend Chim-
borazo, considered to be the highest mountain on the
earth, and for this purpose excursions were made to
the snow covered tops of the Andes, especially to the
points of A.ntisano, Cotopaxi, Tumguragua, Pichincha,
and Chimborazo.

Two unsuccessful attempts to reach the crater of
the volcano Pichincha had been already made, when
they at last twice succeeded in making experiments
and observations here. Humboldt did not find the
crater cooled and filled with snow as a former traveller
had done, but inflamed and preparing for a volcanic
eruption. When Humboldt subsequently brought this
information to Quito, which is only four or five thou-
sand toises distant from the crater, it excited universal
lamentation in the town, from fear that an approach-
ing eruption of the Pichincha would be dangerous for
the inhabitants of Quito.

But this visit to the volcano had nearly cost Hum-

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 235

boldt his life. When he arrived at the top, he joro-
ceeded onwards over the snow to cross a deep chasm,
not imagining that the bridge over this chasm con-
sisted only of a fragile layer of frozen snow. At the
first step he sank, and would have been lost had not
adequate assistance been at hand. Higher still than
Pichincha, in the cordilleras of the Andes, lies an-
other crater called Cotopaxi, which interested Hum-
boldt all the more because it is the highest active
volcano of the modern world. It is 17,892 feet (2952
toises) high, therefore, if the Brenner of Tyrol were
placed on the top of the peak of Teneriffe, the two
together would only be the absolute height of the
Cotopaxi. The whole district fears this volcano as a
most dangerous enemy, for its eruptions have always
been extremely desolating in their effects. In the year
1738 the flames rose 462 toises in circumference above
the brim of the crater ; in 1740 its roaring was heard
at a distance of 200 miles, at Honda, on the Magdalen
stream ; in the year 1768 it ejected so many ashes that
the air was darkened, and the nocturnal darkness lasted
till three o'clock in the afternoon, so that the inhabi-
tants of Hambata and Tacunga were obliged to go on
the streets with lanterns ; and in 1803, after Hum-
boldt had been there, it spread great alarm by one of
the phenomena preceding the eruption, namely, that
all the snow suddenly melted, evidencing a dreadful
heat of the crater.

In order to reach this dangerous volcano, Humboldt
took the way south-east of the town of Quito, in the
Andes. It was a journey of twelve (German) miles.
The form of the mountain was majestic, colossal, and
very regular in its cone. The tops, covered with a
brilliant mantle of snow, shone in the setting sun in
beautiful colours, and no irregularity of the soil, no
rock or stone intercepts the radiance of the white sur-
face. Humboldt only remarked some single dark
pieces on the extreme verge of the crater, which, like
those on the peak of Teneriffe, resembled a wall or
rampart.

236 LIFE OF

The weariest part of the ascent was the entourage
of the mountain, which consists of rocks and chasms
continuing up to the snow boundary. This boundary
begins already at an elevation of 2-i60 toises, and is
533 toises broad to the crater. It was not possible
for Humboldt to reach the brim of the crater. On
the south-western side the regularity of the cone is
broken by a mass of rock half buried in the snow,
which the natives call the head of the Inca. It is
said to have been originally the real point of the Coto-
paxi, but to have been blasted and thrown down at its
first eruption.

As he coidd go no further on this side, Humboldt
went to the volcano of Antisano, to reach the utmost
practicable height of the extreme point of the Chim-
borazo. He and his companions had already ascended to
a height which before them no one had reached, when,
on the 23rd June, 1802, he arrived on the Chimborazo,
and succeeded in bringing the instruments so high.
He was then 3036 toises above the level of the sea,
and suffered the consequences of the gxeat rarefica-
tion of the air. The thermometer stood still, as the
mercury in it had frozen, and as mercury only freezes
at 32 degrees Eeaumur, or 40 degrees Celsius, the
reader may form an idea of the cold to which Hum-
boldt and his companions were exposed. The rarefied
air made respiration very difficult ; and as the circu-
lation of the blood in the human body requires a
pressure of air from without, to impart a certain de-
gree of imperviousness to all the fibres and veins, the
bold travellers soon felt the want of this pressure by
the blood flowing from their eyes, lips, and gums.

But in sight of the extreme point of Chimborazo,
only 224 toises higher, the difiiculty of respiration and
the flow of blood could not deter Humboldt from con-
tinuing his journey. Nature, however, drew a boun-
dary to oppose the progress of the courageous man.
A broad, insurpassable chasm gaped before him, and
separated him physically from the top of the Chim-
borazo, towering proudly above him.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 237

When they were already far away, the Cotopaxi
sent a thundering adieu after them. We have already
mentioned that Humboldt found this crater, which
had been dead since 1768, and had since then not
even ejected smoke or a visible vapour, quite hot, and
had by this news excited great depression and terror
in the town of Quito. He had already departed, and
was in the port of Guayaquil, distant fifty-two miles
in a straight line from the mountain, when he heard
the roaring of the Cotopaxi, like a cannonading, night
and day, and was even pursued by this fearful noise
of the crater near which he had lately been, as far as
the south sea, south-west of the island de la Puna..
He afterwards heard that the subterranean fire in this
mountain had been so violently developed in a single
night, that the thick snow covering, 533 toises in
breadth, had suddenly disappeared, and that at sun-
rise the usually snowy portion of this immense peak
was covered with glazed lava, which towered threaten-
ingly over the terrified population of the district.

VEGETABLE LIFE.

The carpet which a fertile flora spreads over the
naked surface of the earth is unequally woven ; it is
closer where the sun rises higher in the never-clouded
sky, and looser towards the sluggish poles, where the
returning frost nips the budding blossom or the ripen-
ing fruit. But the plants necessary for the food of
man are found everyAvhere.

If a volcano divides the boiling tide at the bottom
of the sea, and suddenly projects a lava rock, the
peaceful lithophytes build their cellular dwellings upon
it, and after thousands of years they raise it to the
surface of the sea, die, and leave a flat coral reef The
organic forces are now immediately at hand to vivify
the dead rock. Whether migratory birds, or mnds,
or waves of the sea suddenly bring the seeds, is diffi-
cult to ascertain, from the great distance of the coast.

238 LIFE OF

But in the northern regions, as soon as the naked
rock comes into contact with the air, a tissue of velvety-
fibres is formed upon it, like a coloured spot, darken-
ing gradually, and affording the foundation for a new-
stratum of the organic tissue. Where high forest
trees now stand, frail lichens once covered the earth-
less rock. The history of vegetable life, and its gra-
dual distribution over the bare earth, has its epochs,
like the history of the subsequent human race. But
although the plenitude of life is everywhere developed,
although organization is ceaselessly working to reunite
the elements, released by death, into new forms, this
plenitude of life and its renewal differs according to
the difference of the zones.

Nature is suddenly torpified in the frigid zone, for
fluidity is the condition of life. Animals and plants
are here buried for months in their winter torpor
(except mosses and other cryptogamia). On a large
surface of the earth only such organic creations liave
developed themselves as are capable of withstanding
a considerable absence of caloric, or a long inter-
ruption of the organic functions. But the nearer we
approach the tropics, the more the variety and grace
of form and colouring, the freshness and force of
organic life increase. This may be doubted by those
who have never left our quarter of the world, or have
neglected the study of geography. If we descend
from our thick oak forest over the Alps or Pyrenees
to Italy or Spain, or cast a glance at the African
coasts of the Mediterranean, we should easily form
the erroneous opinion that absence of trees is a
characteristic of hot climates. But then we forget
that southern Europe bore a different aspect when
the Pelasgian or Carthaginian colonies first settled
there.; we forget that the early civilization of the
human race dislodges the forests, and that the revolu-
tionary spirit of nations gradually robs the earth of
those ornaments which gladden us in the north, and
which, more than any history, proves the infancy of
our civilization.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 239

But besides this, in all countries bounded by the
Mediterranean, a great portion of the earth's surface
is bare rock. The picturesque character of Italian
landscapes consists principally in the lovely contrast
between the infertile bare rock and the luxurious
vegetation which rises island-like upon it. But
where this rock is less split, and retains the water on ,
its surface, which is then covered with earth, as the
lovely shores of the lake of Albano, there Italy has
its oak forests as shady and green as the denizen of
the north could desire. But if a district has once
lost its vegetable covering by inundation or volcanic
revolutions, if the sand lies undisturbed and without
springs, if the hot air rising perpendicularl}^ hinders
the fall of the clouds, then ages elapse before from
the green shores a new organic life penetrates into
this desolation. He, therefore, v/ho can survey nature
at a glance, and deduct the consequences of local
conditions, sees how organic force and richness
increase with the increase of the vivifying warmth
from the poles to the equator, Ptud how yet every
zone has its peculiar beauties. The tropics have
variety and size of the botanical formations, and the
north has the sight of fields, and the periodic revival
of nature at the first spring -breezes.

Although the character of a district depends on all
its visible phenomena, although the form of moun-
tains, the physiognomy of plants and animals, the
blueness of the sky, the form of clouds and
transparency of the atmosphere, complete the total
impression, the vegetable covering always remains
the chief feature in this impression. The animal
organization wants mass, and the mutability of the
individual often withdraws them entirely from the
scene ; but the vegetable world impresses by its im-
movable grandeur, its masses show its age, and in
plants alone are age and ever-renewing youth co-
existing. The finite life of the animal world, although
it more affects our feelings of goodwill or aversion,
always remains foreign to the physiognomy of a

240 LIFE OF

district: this is produced solely by its vegetable
development. The agricultural nations artificially
increase the j)revalence of social plants, but with it,
in many parts of the temperate and northern zones,
the monotony of nature ; they also destroy wild grow-
ing plants and cultivate others, which always follow
men on distant pilgrimages. The luxurious tropics,
however, successfully withstand all these violent revo-
lutions of creation.

TEOPICAL SKETCH.

In the mountainous districts near the equator, the
diversified character of nature has attained its climax.
In the deeply indented Andes of New Granada and
Quito, we can see all formations of plants, and all
stars of the heavens, co-equally. One glance takes
in heliconias, high -topped palms, and above these
tropical creations, oak forests, mespilia, and umbel-
lifera, as in our native land. One glance takes in
the Southern Cross, the Magellan clouds, and the
principal stars of the Bear, which revolve round the
north pole. There the earth and the two hemispheres
of heaven display the entire abundance of their various
forms; there the climates, and the botanical zones in-
duced by them, are ranged above each other; there
the laws of heat become clearly intelligible to the
attentive observer, for they are gi'aven in indelible
characters on the rocky walls of the Andes, on the pre-
cipices of the mountains ; and if the tropical countries
are more impressive by the richness and luxuriance of
nature, they are also especially calculated to show the
regulated order of spa,ce, as it is reflected on the earth
by the uniform regularity of the meteoric processes of
the atmosphere, and by the distinct classification of
natural forms, with a perpendicular elevation of the
soil.

In the hot plains, which do not rise high above the
level of the South Sea, abundance of pisang plants, of

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 241

€ycadaceous and palm-like formations flourish ; then
follow the tree ferns, shaded by the high valley walls ;
and then come the cinchonias, in luxurious strength,
being constantly watered and refreshed by the cool
cloud-mist; they give the long mis-appreciated, now
so useful Peruvian bark. Where the high tree-forma-
tion ceases, there azalias, thibaudias, and myrtle-
leaved andromedas grow in close groups. The Alpine
rose of the Cordilleras, the resinous befaria, forms a
purple belt above them. Then, in the region of storms,
the higher bushes and large-leaved plants disappear
entirely, and panicled monocotyledons uniformly
cover the ground, forming an immense field, shining
with its yellow light. Here the camel-goat, and the
cattle introduced by Europeans, graze in solitude.
Where the naked rocks of trachyte project from the
grassy plain, there, in the absence of clayey soil, only
plants of the lowest organization can grow, such as
the host of lichens, which the rarefied atmosphere
sparely nourishes, parmelias, lecideas, and the many-
coloured perisperm of the Leprarias. Islands of newly
fallen snow hide the last developments of vegetable
life, to where the boundary of eternal snow is sharply
defined. The subterranean forces endeavour, but
generally in vain, to break through the white, pro-
bably hollow, bell-shaped summits. Wherever they
have succeeded in coming in contact with the atmo-
sphere by round kettle-shaped craters, or long, narrow
chasms, they scarcely ever eject lava, but only oxygen,
sulphurous vapour, or hot water vapour.

"When I indulge in personal recollections of

^reat natural scenery, I think of the ocean, when in
the mildness of tropical nights the firmament pours its
planetary mild starlight over the gently undulating-
surface; or of the wooded valleys of the Cordilleras,
where high palm stems break through the dark roof
of foliage, and stand as a gallery of pillars — a forest
above a forest; or of the peak of Teneriffe, when
horizontally floating clouds separate the top from the
lower earth, and, suddenly torn by a rising current of

R

242 LIFE OF

air, the eye from the edge of the crater rests on the
vine-covered hills of Orotava, and the Hesperidean
gardens of the coast. In these scenes lies the calm,
creative life of nature, its quiet working; in them is
shown the individual character of the scenery — a ming-
ling of the outlines of clouds, sea, and coast, in the vir-
gin form of islands ; there is beauty of vegetable form
and grouping. For the irregular, the terrible, even in
nature, everything which exceeds our power of compre-
hension becomes a source of enjoyment in a romantic
scenery. Imagination has full scope for its creations in
that which cannot be perceived by the senses ; its influ-
ence is different at every change in the temper of the
observer. We erroneously believe we take from the
outer world what we ourselves have put into it.''

THE SEA.

, . . "Whoever is roused to intellectual indepen-
dence, and builds his own world within himself, must
be excited by the view of the free, open sea, the majes-
tic picture of boundlessness. His eye is enchained by
the distant horizon, where dimly, like a mist, water
and land unite, where stars descend and reflect them-
selves in the waters. A shade of melancholy longing
mingles with enjoyment of this eternal change, as it
always does with human pleasures. ... A pecu-
liar partiality for the sea, a grateful recollection of the
impressions which the mutable element made upon
me betv/een the tropics in calm nocturnal repose, or
when excited by the struggle of nature, determine me
to speak of the individual enjoyment of the prospect,
before mentioning the beneficial influence which con-
tact with the ocean undoubtedly exercises over the
development of the intelligence and the character of
many nations ; over the multiplication of the ties
which unite the whole human family ; over the possi-
bility of attaining to a knowledge of the formation of
earth ; and over the progress of astronomy, and of all
mathematical and physical sciences. Since Columbus

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 243

was sent to unchain the ocean, man has been able to
move more freely m intellectual regions/'

EARTHQUAKES.

. . . "The impression which the first earthquake,
even if it is unaccompanied by subterranean noise,
makes upon us, is an inexpressibly powerful and quite
peculiar one. This impression is not, I believe, the
consequence of our recurrence to pictures of desola-
tion which are present to our imagination from tra-
dition and history. What moves us so powerfully is,
the disappointment of our inherent faith in the repose
and immutability of the firm, solid earth. From our
childhood we are accustomed to contrast the moveable
element of water with the quiescence of the soil on
which we stand. All the evidences of our senses have
confirmed us in this faith. When now the soil sud-
denly quakes, a secret power of nature appears myste-
riously, as an active force, moving the immovable.
A moment destroys the illusions of a life. We are
undeceived as to the repose of earth, and feel trans-
ported within the sphere of destroying, unknown
powers. Every sound, the least agitation in the air,
excites our attention. We scarcely trust the ground
on which we stand. The strangeness of the occurrence
produces the same anxious uneasiness in animals.
Pigs and dogs especially are overpowered by it ; the
crocodiles of the Orinoco, generally as dumb as our
little lizards, leave the agitated bed of the river, and
rush howling into the forests. To man, an earthquake
appears as something omnipresent, imbounded. We
can escape from an active eruption, or from a lava-
stream flowing towards our dwelling ; but during an
earthquake, wherever one flies seems the hearth of
destruction. This condition of the mind is, however,
not of long duration. If a series of faint eiirthquakes
follow upon each other, the inhabitants no longer feel
any trace of fear. On the coasts of Peru, where it
R 2

244 LIFE OF

never rains, tlie inhabitants know neither hail nor the
rolling thunder and flashing lightning of the atmo-
sphere. The atmospheric thunder is there replaced
by the subterranean sounds which accompany the
earthquakes. Long custom, and the universal opinion
that dangerous earthquakes occur only two or three
times in a century, have had such an influence that
slight agitations of the earth cause no more alarm
in Lima than a hailstorm would in the temperate
zones.

The subterranean sounds, if unaccompanied by any
sensible earthquake, make a peculiarly deep impres-
sion, even on those who have for some time inhabited
a volcanic soil. They wait anxiously for what is to
succeed the subterranean thunder. The most curious
and quite singular example of uninterrupted sub-
terrestrial sounds, v/ithout any trace of earthquake, is
afforded in the phenomenon w^hich is known in the
Mexican highlands, by the name of the roaring or sub-
terranean thunder of Guanamato. This celebrated
and rich mining town, lies far from any active volcano.
The noise had been heard for more than a month since
midnight, the 9th January, 1784. It seemed as if
heavythunder clouds were lying beneath the feet of
the inhabitants, and in which, slowly rolhng thunder
alternated with short thunderclaps. It was confined
to a small space a few miles distant ; on a basaltic
soil nothing was heard. Thus the chasms open and
close deep in the bowels of the earth.''

AURORA BOREALIS.

" Deep in the horizon, in the region

where it is crossed by the magnetic meridian, the clear
blue sky is obscured. An apparently tliick fogbank
is formed, which gradually rises to a height of eight
or ten degrees. The colour of this dark segment
plays into brown or violet. Stars are visible in this
region of the firmament, seemingly obscured by a

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 245

dense smoke. A broad, but brightly luminous arch
of light, first white, then yellow, bounds the dark
segment. But as this luminous arch rises subse-
quently to the smoky-grey portion of the horizon, it
is not merely a contrast with the brighter portion.
In the extreme north, very near the magnetic pole,
the smoky portion of the sky is less dark, and some-
times does not appear at ail.

"The unsteady and scintillating luminous arch, some-
times stands for hours in the horizon, before any rays
or groups of sparks separate from it, and rise to the
zenith. The more violent the discharges of the aurora
borealis are, the more actively do the colours play
from violet and bluish-white, through all the shades,
to green and purple. Magnetic columns of fire rise
from the luminous arch, sometimes alone, and min-
gled with black rays, like dense smoke ; sometimes
simultaneously from opposite points of the horizon,
uniting in a scintillating sea of fire, whose splendour
no description can portray, as its waves of light
change and vary in form and colour every moment.
This motion increases the brilliancy of the pheno-
menon. The rays at last unite in that point of the
firmament, answering to the direction of the magnetic
needle, and form what is called the crown of the
aurora borealis. But this crown is rarely perfect,
and always immediately precedes the termination of
the northern light. The rays then grow shorter, rarer,
and more colourless, the crown and the arches of light
fade, and soon after, the sky is only covered by irre-
gularly grouped, broad, pale, almost ash-grey, im-
movable spots. They also vanish, before the trace of
the dark smoke-like circle standing deep in the
horizon is lost. At last nothing remains of the whole
scene but a white thin cloud, feathered at the edge,
or separated into small round divisions."

LIFE

OP

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT.

LIFE

OF

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT

TRANSLATED AND ABRIDGED FROM THE GERMAN

OF

SCHLESIER,

By JULIETTE BAUER

LONDON:
INGRAM, COOKE, & CO, 227, STRAND.

MDCCCLII.

LIFE

OP

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT.

CHAPTER I.

William von Humboldt was born in Potsdam, on
the 22nd of June, 1767, his father being at the time
chamberlain to the Princess Elizabeth of Prussia,
The genealogy of the family, the childhood of the
gifted brothers, which was spent in Tegel, the family
estate, situated near Berlin, and the sketch of their
boyish studies, have been detailed in the biography of
the younger brother, which precedes this life, and it
will suffice, therefore, if we pass quickly over these
years, and commence our account from the period
Avhen the paths of William and Alexander diverge.
Their first tutor was Campe, who left them to preside
over an educational establishment in Hamburg, and
whose place was then filled by Kunth, who remained
the friend of his pupils through life. He entirely
superintended their education after the death of their
father, and developed their extraordinary talents by
the assistance of the first professors in every branch
of knowledge, then resident in Berlin. It is inte-
resting to our purpose to know Avho first introduced
William to a knowledge of the ancient languages and
literature, as the love for classical antiquity formed

250 LIFE OF

4

the basis of all liis subsequent studies, and characterized
him through life. The foundation of his profound
Greek studies was laid by Loffler, the author of a very-
free work on the new platonism of the Fathers of the
Church, who w^as at that time field-chaplain to a regi-
ment of gensdarmes, and who was subsequently-
appointed chief councillor of a consistory, in Gotha.
The brothers spent the period before their departure
for the university, principally in Berlin, and not in
Tegel, as the capital afforded opportunities for hearing
private lectures from the most distinguished men,
and for other studies, which might suitably prepare
them for academic life. At this period, when the
studies of the brothers were all in common, and their
peculiar talents had not yet become prominent, Wil-
liam was distinguished by a sentimental ideality of
character, which accompanied him through life, al-
though it was generally, in subsequent years, governed
and overshadowed by the mightier qualities of his
genius. At the period of his youth, sentimentality of
feeling, and an exalted enthusiasm were the order of
the day, and Goethe's Werther, and Schiller's " Don
Carlos," had only increased that tendency. It cannot,
therefore, be a matter of surprise, that Humboldt was
at this time, excessively sentimental. He literally
revelled in feelings, wished to improve himself and
others, and joined associations, which, for that pur-
pose, entered into self-examining and explaining
correspondence, conducted in a secret cypher, or in
Hebrew characters. The years of his youth were
influenced by this harmless, searching sentimentality,
which united in its sphere the charms of friendship and
tender affection, with those of scientific investigation.
This tendency followed him to the university, and
nearly all his friends, such as Steiglitz, the Count
Dohna-Schlobitten, even Kunth the tutor, took part
in these sentimental friendships and mutual improve-
ment alliances ; the love of association, and of secret
societies, being as prevalent at this period, as senti-
mentalism.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 251

#

Female society also tended to strengthen this
quality in William von Humboldt ; by accidental
meetings, he became connected with the most dis-
tinguished women of the age, such as Mdile. de Briest,
afterwards Madame de Eochow, and then de Fouque,
under which name she has published many novels ;
Rahel, celebrated for her letters, and of Henriette
Herz, the still surviving widow of Professor Marcus Herz,
who was as celebrated for her beauty as for her mental
attainments. With her, Humboldt entered into the most
intimate friendship and confidential correspondence.

But qualities diametrically opposed to this senti-
mentality, were at the same time developed in Hum-
boldt's character, namely, a calm and cold reason,
cutting satire and irony, quiet humour, a most culti-
vated dialectic power, a universal love of research, of
investigation, of argument, and of discussion, in short,
everything which subsequently so characterized his
being, that the sentimental feature of his character
remained unsuspected by many. We shall even find
that he frequently, in social intercourse, purposely
concealed his feelings, and even adopted an entirely
opposite character.

But such momentary coldness was, therefore, by no
means intentional or deceptive. An incident in his
university life gives us a remarkable example of this fine
feeling concealing itselfbehind humour or self-negation
and united to an admirable strength of soul. He was
bathing one evening, with his friend Steiglitz, in the
Leine, near Gottingen, and was carried away by a
current ; after resisting for some time in vain, he
thought himself lost, and called out : " Steiglitz, I am
drowning, but it does not matter.'' His friend, how-
over, at once leaped into the water, and saved him.
Humboldt subsequently describes his sensations ; they
were those of the tenderest and noblest friendship for
Steiglitz, and of affectionate remembrance of distant
beloved ones ; but nothing of this appeared in his
immediate expressions ; he joked and laughed as he
walked home in the light of the moon, with the friend

252 LIFE OF

*
who had saved his life. In later years, also, when he
counted the most distinguished men among his friends,
the personal expression of his esteem remained ever
cold and measured, although in lettrrs he is frequently
affectionate and enthusiastic enough. This is quite
right. Love and esteem were established as unal-
terable facts, which were proved by his whole life, but
which he preferred to avoid expressing verbally.

The calm investigating spirit formed an essential
feature in his character, and was probably confirmed
by constant intercourse with such men as Engel,
Blester, David Friedlander, &c., who were all clear-
headed, free-minded thinkers. With such friends,
Humboldt could cultivate his natural talents, and if
he excites admiration by the precocious boldness of
his thoughts, he probably ascribed his own early de-
velopment, partly to his friendship with these men,
whose aesthetic narrowness has, fortunately, however,
not influenced his nature.

Besides the advantages of a beautiful family estate,
of the care of an excellent and gifted mother, and of
opportunities for enjoying the best education in one of
the most lively capitals of Germany, we must not omit
to mention the state and the man under Avhose protec-
tion the brothers Humboldt entered on their course of
life. Frederic the Great still lived ; he inspired all
his subjects with heroism and patriotism, and was ever
present to the youthful imagination of William and
Alexander as the highest ideal of a hero and a king.
He died in 1786, as they were on the point of quitting
Berlin for the university. With the death of the
great king a period of decadence and internal corrup-
tion comn^enced in the Prussian state, and it was
therefore a fortunate circumstance for the brothers
Humboldt that they left Berlin at that time, and che-
rished the untarnished noble impressions of their
youth ever present to their souls. They were thus
qualified to become the models of a better generation
on their return, and when the fatherland required
men with energy and power to pull down and rebuild.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 253

then the name of Humboldt \vas foremost am.ong
those summoned to the arduous task.

The brothers entered on their university life toge-
ther, and proceeded to Frankfort-on-the-Oder, where
they devoted themselves principally to the special
studies for their intended future courses. William
heard lectures on jurisprudence, and Alexander at-
tended those on political economy. Among the men
with whom William von Humboldt formed a lasting
friendship in Frankfort, we may mention especially
the Count Alexander of Dohna-Schlobitten, who was
subsequently associated with Humboldt in an endea-
vour to revive the educational establishments in Prus-
sia. Count Dohna met the brothers Humboldt asfain
in the university of Gottingen, whither he proceeded
in 1788.

William and Alexander seem to have left Frank-
fort for Gottingen in the spring of 1788, and to have
remained in this latter place about two years. Got-
tingen was at that time acknowledged the first of the
German universities, for Leipzic and Halle had already
sunk in public favour, and Jena only rose to fame
between 1790 and 1800. No place could have been
more advantageous for Humboldt's studies than Got-
tingen, for it has always been the seat of historical
and archijeological science, and is so to this day. Here
Heyne taught — a man who has done much for the
restoration of archaeology, and who maybe termed the
immediate forerunner of its most brilliant epoch.
The brothers enjoyed his hospitality, and appreciated
it, and, beside the influence which he doubtless exer-
cised over their studies, they owe principally to him
their friendship with his son-in-law, George Forster,
which probably arose in the course of this summer.

The ardent spirit of Humboldt found abundant
means for improvement in Gottingen, and what was
not attainable by lectures was furnished by the splen-
did library of the university. He devoted himself
with especial ardour to archaeology, and to the study
of the Kantian philosophy. While pursuing these

254? LIFE OF

studies lie still took part in those of liis brother, and
thus extended his love for universality of knowledge
more and more, without detriment to the profundity
of his learning, which was as great as its universality.
His studies embraced languages and art, nature and
life.

Among his university friends ranks the medical
student already mentioned as having saved his life,
Johann Steiglitz, who subsequently attained to great
eminence in his profession, and as a critical author ;
also the well-known associate of Count Schlabrendorf,
Oelsner, who spent the principal part of his life in
Paris, and A. W. Schlegel, famed in Germany as the
translator of Shakspeare. Humboldt remained in Got-
tingen for some time after his studies there had been
concluded, and con^esponded with some of the most
distinguished men in literature ; he also made it
the central station on several shorter and longer jour-
neys, which he undertook to extend his knowledge
and his connexions. But Gottingen was the last
stage of his youthful education, and the starting-point
of his virile activity. What a list of great and dis-
tinguished men have proceeded from the Giorgia-
Augusta school ! The name of Humboldt will cer-
tainly not be the least important among them, and
both brothers have often in after life gratefully ac-
knov/ledged that they received the noblest part of
their education in this celebrated high school.

As we have now arrived at the period when the
youth Humboldt grows into the man, and takes his
place among the intellectual rulers of the world, we
will cast a glance at the unusually favourable exterior
circumstances under which he was born, and which
accompanied him through life. A lucky star seems
to have presided at his birth, to have granted all his
wishes, and fulfilled all his desires. The great talents
he possessed Avere adequately developed by the most
favourable worldly circumstances, and whatever could
conduce to the im^Drovement of such high natural
abilities, was procured mth the most discriminating

WILLIAM VON" HUMBOLDT. 255

care. But Humboldt would probably have been as
great without this care, for the love of self-improve-
ment was one of the strongest impulses of his soul.
His mind was open to all impressions, and the only
requkement of such a mind was to begin and end his
life in a period of progTess and of great events, and
this also fell to Humboldt's lot.

Having formed his taste and judgment by the study
of the ancients, he became the intimate friend and
adviser of the two great pillars of German literature,
Schiller and Goethe, and although he never produced
such brilliant works, his name must be intimately
blended with theirs, from the influence he exercised on
the opinions and the productions of these two great
German poets.

The revival of philosophical science by Kant also
took place during the youthful years of Humboldt's
life. This new system made a great impression upon
him at a very early period, and he adopted it in the
strictest sense of the word. It remained the basis of
his thought, and served him as a guide, even when he
went beyond it. He is justly counted among those
who extended the boundaries of this system of philo-
sophy, partly by the aesthetic researches which he pro-
secuted in conjunction with Schiller, partly by the
establishment of a philosophy of language which we
owe to his studies in this direction. In political life,
also, his star did not desert him, but permitted him
to take part in the so urgently required re-organization
of the fatherland, in conjunction with the most
honoured names of the age, and to quit this sphere
at the right moment, when nothing more could be
expected but loss of the achieved honour and reputa-
tion. And in the leisure moments of his old age he
devoted himself to linguistic and comparative re-
searches, and became as great and important on this
field a,s his brother is on the field of natural history.

Humboldt's character is mirrored in the choice of
his friends and in his friendships ; the highest, greatest,
and noblest minds were intimately allied with him.

S56 LIFE OF

He was formed for love and friendsliip, spent a great
pa.rt of liis life in confidential intercourse with
chosen spirits, and remained throughout life true to
those on whom he had once bestowed his affection,
his esteem, or his confidence. He was the same in
happiness as in misfortune ; and above all, he kept
holy the impressions of his youthful years. The
names of G. Forster, F. A. Wolf, Schiller, Goethe,
recur frequently in Humboldt's life. They illustrate
and exalt his glorious personality, and his name shines
as constantly in the annals of their life.

But above every feeling of friendship rose that of
fraternal love. In it the tenderest and most affec-
tionate sensations were blended on both sides, and
the noblest confidence, the purest esteem charac-
terised the brothers throughout the long course of their
lives, when united or separated. Only two feelings
were perhaps higher still than this sentiment, that
which subsequently united William to his wife, and his
love for Schiller. To meet these two again was the
thought which alone occupied his mind in his last hours.

We must now resume our account of Humboldt's
life, and return to his stay at Gottingen. In the
autumn of 1788 he made a journey on the Rhine,
and spent four days in the company of Forster, who
had some time before taken up his residence in May-
ence, as councillor and librarian to the university
there„ He describes these four days as the happiest
of the whole journey, and felt as gratified as surprised
by the affectionate kindness he met with. Forster's
wife, afterwards the wife of the author Huber, took a
lively interest in the discussions of the men ; Hum-
boldt calls her one of the fet of women, and re-
mained her friend until his death. Forster himself
gave the talented youth a letter to F. Jacobi, the
philosopher, whom Humboldt did not neglect to visit.

Such a celebrated personage was important and
instructive for our young Humboldt, who could not
fail to be interested, for a time at least, by a man
who constituted himself the opponent of Kant, and

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 257

the subsequent systems of German philosophy, and
who, although unable to create an equally important
philosophic system, was, as a feeling thinker, so pro-
lific in hints and warnings against the logic and scho-
lastic errors of the systematisers. Opposed to Jacobi,
Humboldt did not now show himself an exclusive
Kantist, for he placed the thinking individual higher
than the system, and much in Jacobi's manner pleased
him, especially the harmony which pervaded his
thoughts and appearance, and his peculiar mode of
introducing his ideas by artistic illustrations.

On the 31st October, Humboldt arrived in Pem-
pelfort, the well-known hospitable village near Diis-
seldorf, where Jacobi used to spend the summer
months of the year, and on the 8th September he
was at Gottingen again. Immediately on his return
he writes to Forster, thanking him, first, for the kind
reception which had made his stay in Mayence so
agreeable. He says in his letter ; "It is a great
and noble pleasure to receive attention from men
whose head and heart command our esteem, and in
how high a degree you afforded me this gratification I
I cannot tell you how deeply and gratefully I was
affected by the kind manner in which you received
me on my first introduction to you, and by the confi-
dence which you afterwards reposed in me. Be
assured, dear friend, that it will never be forgotten,
and that the wish will ever live within me to be able
one day to show you that I am ever striving to be
more worthy of such kind and friendly sentiments."
He then relates the impressions of his journey, or
rather only those which Jacobi made upon him.
From Mayence he went down the Rhine to Aix-la-
Chapelle and Diisseldorf In Aix he remained ten
days, because Dohm, who was formerly his teacher,
would not let him leave sooner, fearing that he would
not see him for some years. Humboldt, however,
met him in the following year, but afterwards not
again for twenty-five years. He then continues : —
"Jacobi received me with the greatest and most

258 MFE OF

unexpected kindness, with a friendliness of whicli I
might have been proud had I not known that I owed
it solely to your recommendation. I lived with him,
but without your interposition he would hardly have
taken such interest in a Berlin man, as I am, with a
friend of Engel, Herz, Blester, and so many anti-
Jacobites. I. am deeply grateful to you for the con-
nexion, for his society was highly interesting to me.
He is a remarkable thinker, rich in nev/, great, and
profound ideas, which he expresses in a spirited and
eloquent manner ; his character seems to be so noble
that I cannot discriminate y/hether he has won my
heart or my head/'

This is the oldest letter of Humboldt's which we
possess, and his subsequent letters to Forster show
the same admiration for Jacobi's character and learn-
ing, although he frequently combats his assertions in
his correspondence with him. In a letter written to
Forster about this time, he criticises an essay which
Forster had written on English literature. He says :
"Essays on literature have their difficulties. If the
supply of materials is scanty, they are meagre and
unsatisfactory ; if it is great, as I think yours was, it
is difficult to make a right selection, and the writer
runs the risk of producing a mere catalogue of names.
Therefore your essay seems to me to be masterly. It
seems to run so smoothly in an artfully spun thread,
and yet the reader does not anywhere detect the art
which has been necessary to spin it. I was especially
pleased by the manner in which you show the influ-
ence of the British national spirit on the literature.
A knowledge of the most modern authors of a country
and of their writings, is certainly very interesting, but
the reflecting reader desires more ; he will know
why the authors in this country write in such a spirit
and in no other, why certain branches of literature
flourish and others are neglected. And this, I think,
you have shown excellently. The account of the reli-
gious condition of England is written in a spirit in
which I would like to see much more written."

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 259

After the summer of 1789, Humboldt was rarely
in Gottingen, but spent his time in longer and shorter
journeys in and out of Germany. He visited Hano-
ver, where he was personally known, principally with
the intention of meeting with Friedrich Jacobi, and
spent five days here very pleasantly, visiting few
families, and passing the principal portion of his time
with Jacobi and other eminent men residing in
Hanover.

In such consideration and intimate relation stood
the youth of twenty-two, with men who at that time
were foremost in the ranks of literature and science.
His letters contain an inexhaustible treasure of cha-
racteristic sketches and of unfailing judgment, of
which, however, our space forbids an extended inser-
tion, and it must suffice if we merely point to them
as the best evidences of the greatness of the man.

Very soon greater events than literary debates in
the lively circles of a small German town were to
occupy our hero. The political crisis in France had
arrived, and the revolution commenced. The victory
of the people was decided by the taking of the
Bastille.

Few in Germany had anticipated and watched the
state of things in France with greater enthusiasm than
Campe, the first tutor of William and Alexander von
Humboldt. He had been living for some time in'
Brunswick, where he had an agreeable official post,
and, at the same time, presided over a bookselling
establishment, and gained an increasing popularity
as author of many juvenile books and accounts of
travels. He frequently travelled for the benefit of Jiis
health, and now determined to proceed to Paris, to be
present at the funeral of French despotism. He was
soon ready, and found a travelling companion in
William von Humboldt, for whom it was of great
interest to see Paris at this period, especially under
such favourable auspices.

Campe has published an account of this jouruej* in
letters to his daughter, from which we shall quote.
s 2

260 LIFE OF

Two friends, lie states, wished to accompany him, and
the three met in Holzminden on the 18th July. The
next morning they started in the best possible humour.
Their first night was passed in the bathing place of
Driburg. It was past midnight when they arrived,
and they went out with lanterns to see the country.
Campe congratulated himself on the choice of his
companions, and sa.ys : " One should always travel
thus — young with old, and old with young peopla
The old ones would gain in good humour and merri-
ment, the young ones would be protected against ex-
cesses. You cannot think how merry we three are
even in such situations where others would hang their
heads. Wherever we arrive we communicate our sfood
temper to the whole household, and even to the beg-
gars in the streets. Laughing we arrive, laughing we
transact our affairs, laughing we mount our carriage
again, and every one laughs with us.''

They travelled through the uninteresting districts
of Westphalia, and crossed the Rhine at Uerdingen,
and before they arrived at the boundaries of Brabant
they received the news of the terribly great events of
the 12th, 13th, and 14th July. The decisive blow
had been struck. The intelligence, which reached
them at Aix-la-Chapelle filled them with delight at
the brave Parisians, but with disappointment that the
■ drama at whose commencement they wished to be
present had already begun. French fugitives' crossed
the boundaries ; in Liege the news came that dis-
turbances had broken out in Brabant, through which
province they were to travel, and that at Brussels the
excitement was only subdued by the presence of the
military. This sounded very dangerous, but not to
them. Their desire to watch the nation's struggle for
liberty, and its manly endeavour to regain its rights^
was too strong not to outweigh all considerations of
personal inconvenience.

On the 3rd August they aixived in Paris and took
up their residence in the Faubourg St. Germain, rue
des petits Augustins, and the next day entered at once

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 261

into the excitement of the city. Their stay has been
accurately detailed by Campe in his works, and we
shall therefore merely mention the principal incidents.
They spent their days in seeing what was remarkable
in Paris, mixed with the people, and listened to the
speeches and debates held in the public streets, re-
turning to their dwelling late at night, tired and ex-
hausted. On the 12th August they proceeded to
Versailles, and succeeded in obtaining a place in the
crowded galleries of the National Assembly, through
the intervention of the great Mirabeau, at whose
special invitation Campe had gone to Paris. The
uproar was so tremendous that it was some time be-
fore they could hear the speeches ; when the session
was over they spent the remainder of the day in see-
ing the splendours of Versailles.

Provided with an introduction to the officer of the
National Guard on duty, they were shown to a good
place again on the following day. Towards noon the
Assembly were to present an address to the king, and
our travellers succeeded in joining the procession of
deputies, and thus being present at all the ceremonies.
In the evening they returned to Paris by way of
Marly. A few days later they went on a pilgrimage
to Rousseau's grave. They saw his room, in which
the furniture was still arranged as when he lived, but
found his grave and his favourite resting places very
much neglected.

It cannot be doubted that Humboldt made many
new acquaintances among the literary men of the day
even during this excited time, and we see from his
letters that " the honest Mercier," Herr von Meister
and Berguin, the author of several books for children,
received them with especial attention. Of other learned
men whom he met with, he names the great astronomer
Lalande, the academician Marmontel, and the philolo-
gian Villoison, the best French archeologist, with the
exception perhaps of Barthelemy. But the period
appointed for their visit to Paris had now elapsed, and
they quitted it reluctantly on the 27th August, re-

262 LIFE OF

turning homewards by way of Champagne, Metz, and
Mayence.

Humboldt's enthusiasm was not so great as that of
Campe, and he left France with far less glowing ex-
pectations for the future. Forster writes to Jacobi
some day6 after the return of the travellers ; " The
wanderer William Humboldt is here still, and although
he speaks no longer of Parisian — not Paradisaical —
freedom, still he helps us to season life, which without
such seasoning would indeed be very insipid/'

Humboldt intended to spend the remainder of the
summer in a journey to the Upper Ehine, Suabia and
Switzerland, as he wished to neutrahze and temper
the effect of the political excitement and super-civili-
zation of Parisian life on his mind by intercourse with
his intellectual friends, and in the enjoyment of nature.
Before he could leave Mayence, however, he was
partly drawn into the paper war at that time existing
between the Berlin philosophers and Forster, Jacobi,
and others, on account of supposed secret Jesuitical
societies, which had ostensibly been discovered, and were
the occasion of the display of much liberal intolerance.
Humboldt exerted his influence to temper the acerbity
of party animosity, and induced Forster to modify
many of his tirades.

His journey through Switzerland was beautifully
recorded in his letters to Forster. Men and scenes
are graphically and poetically described, and every
letter is a splendid specimen of his philosophy.

From Mayence Humboldt travelled over Mannheim
to Heidelberg, remaining two days in Mannheim.
Iffland, the hero and ornament of the stage there, was
absent, and Humboldt regretted his absence the more
as he wished to make his personal acquaintance. The
theatre was not good, although Emfiilia Galotti was
performed. The ladies, who were tolerably good per-
formers, failed, to his idea, to give the noble simplicity
of Emilia and the great mind and deep feeling of
Orsina. In the picture gallery few pieces attracted

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 263

his admiration, among tliese principally a head by
Carlo Dolce.

From Heidelberg, probably on the 28th of Septem-
ber, he wrote to Forster, " Do you think sometimes of
the fortnight I spent with you ? It was perhaps the
happiest period in my life, and the remembrance of
it even yet affords me great enjoyment. I harmonize
with no one as I do with you ; and it is my great
pride that all this came of itself without exterior aid,
that I owe your friendship only to yourself; for it
shows me that you deem me worthy of you, and you
can indeed not feel how much that thought is to me.
For you cannot know how I admire the fruitful pro-
fusion of ideas which occur to you on every occasion,
the lively clearness with which you express them ; how
I honour your zeal for the good and the true, and your
consideration for what others esteem good and true ;
and how tenderly I love the heart which so readily
opens itself, and gladdens others by love. And yet
you should know all this, in order to feel fully what
you are to me.''

In Heidelberg he remained some days, and made
some new friends, and proceeded thence to Tubingen,
whence he writes, on the 28th September, of the im-
pression which the scenery of Heidelberg made on
him, in words which may rank with the best descrip-
tions which poets have made of this singularly beau-
tiful spot, in prose or verse. "The view from the
castle of Heidelberg pleased me more than any other
I had seen in these districts. The shores of the Rhine
below Mayence, even where they are most beautiful,
near Bingen and St. Gear, have always a certain uni-
formity, always vinebergs or naked rocks ; and the
neighbourhood of Mayence is pleasing enough, and
varied, but does not form a whole. But at Heidel-
berg, the neighbouring high mountains on the shores
of the Neckar, with the town at their base, form a
great and beautiful group. There is true character
in this view, and the impression it leaves on the soul
is profound and enduring.''

264 LIFE OF

From here, he went by the extremely beautiful path
along the windings of the Neckar to Heilbronn, on the
way to Stuttgart. Here he visited Professor Abel, one
of the clearest heads in the philosophical world, who
held an appointment at the academy there. He
also made the acquaintance of Reuss, the professor of
political economy ; of Schwab, the father of the poet ;
of the librarian Driick, and of the poet Schubart.
With Schwab and Abel he seemed much pleased, but
says little of the others.

From Stuttgart, Humboldt went by way of Tubin-
gen to Constance, and arrived in Zurich in the com-
mencement of October. He wrote to Forster about
one person only he met with here, but it is such an
interesting description that we cannot refrain from in-
serting it. " Doubtless,'' he writes to Forster, " La-
vater interests you most of all my acquaintance here.
I spent several hours daily with him ; and as he did
not interrupt his usual occupations on my account, I
saw him in so many characteristic situations, that I
had full opportunity for observing him. My expec-
tations were great, in consequence of what Jacobi had
told me of him, and from several of his productions,
which seemed to me to bear traces of deep and
original genius. I anticipated a profusion of new,
great, suggestive — even if only half- true or dreamy —
ideas. But I was disappointed ; and not only disap-
pointed because I had expected so much, but because
I found so little. I could have numbered the interest-
ing ideas which I heard from him during the fort-
night, and I would be ashamed of comparing to it a
single day spent with Jacobi or yourself. Here and
there he shows a free and acute perception ; but his
mind is too narrow, and has neither the restless acti-
vity with which real geniuses seek the undiscovered
but supposed truth, nor the fertile eagerness with
which they seize it when found. Constant allusion to
himself, vanity, the expression of stupid and insipid
sentiment, playing on words, waste his strength. This
would probably all be different if he possessed real

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 265

erudition, if he liad only thought more of the ideas of
others, or if he still read more. But he lives only in
his own ideas ; and his occupations, which I have now
had frequent opportunities of observing, are principally
trifling, such as the regulating his physiognomic
charts, his judgments expressed in single, generally
lame hexameters, correspondence, the execution of an
infinite number of trifling commissions for all kinds of
people, occasional poems, &c.'' It seems, indeed, sur-
prising how much he thought of the exterior form.
Humboldt describes and details the pedantic arrange-
ments of Lavater's room, the number of cases with
letters, superscriptions, &c. On several of them names
were pasted. " I found many of my friends there,
principally females. In these cases he puts such of
his works which may interest the person. He gave
me the portfolio bearing the name of one of his lady
friends, with whom I am also intimately acquainted,
to read. What did it contain ? Nothing but
partly pietistic, partly sentimental poems, all utterly
devoid of ideas, neatly copied on fine paper, with an
engraved border/' Humboldt could not perceive why
he spent so much time on mere form. His most
interesting conversations with him were upon physi-
ognomy, on German authors, and on the standard by
which intellectual productions are measured.

But if Humboldt was disappointed with the pro-
phet of Zurich, he was all the more delighted with
the splendid views on the Zurich lake. He proceeded
from there to Zug and Luzern, and then made pedes-
trian excursions into the Oberland of Bern. The
weather was beautifully clear, and not a cloud ob-
scured the highest mountains. He went through the
well-known valleys and passes to Spital, in the valley
of the upper-bar, with the intention of ascending the
Gothard, but a snowstorm forced him to return. He
writes to Forster : " I spent very happy days in these
wild districts. Never was my soul so filled with such
great images of in-esistible, all-annihilating force, such
obstinate, unconquerable strength ; the feeling of a

266 LIFE OF

countless course of past centuries never was so present
to my soul, and never had such a view of eternally-
distant, destroying and re-creating futures dawned
upon me. When I sometimes looked upwards from
a narrow enclosed valley, to the highest unascendable
summits of the mountains round me, my soul was
overpowered by ideas of solitude, of loneliness, by
glances into the far distance from those giddy heights,
by anxious expectation of what might be beyond
those mountain summits ; and then the present, the
tangible, the certain, vanished from my soul, and only
the past, the future, the distant, and the uncertain,
floated before my excited, dreamy phantasy. My
dear Forster, we must, some time, make a real moun-
tain journey together. It is less expensive and less
tedious than a journey to England, and must be
equally important to you as naturalist.''

From Spital Humboldt went to Bern, thence to
Geneva and Lasanne, where he was hospitably
received by the councillor de Rougemont, and pro-
ceeded from there to Basle. There are unfortunately
no accounts existing of this no less interesting part of
his journey. From Carlsruhe he wrote on the 29th
November to Forster, whose family had been
increased by the birth of a little girl : — " I rejoice that
the sight of the new-born maiden has induced you to
choose the softer name of Clarchen, instead of the
barbaric boy's name you intended to adopt from the
Anglo-Saxons and Northmen." Humboldt seems to
have been averse to the real northern element. This
element in Shakespeare, and a certain roughness con-
nected with it, may have been the reason that he was
less intimate with his works than with those of the
ancients and of his native poets. He speaks with
great delight of Ariosto in his sesthetical essays, while
he rarely mentions Shakespeare.

In the beginning of December our traveller returned
to Mayence. Forster accompanied him to Frankfurt,
where they separated, and never met again in life.
While Humboldt, in his love for liberty, always

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 267

maintained a dignified calmness, and held the greatest
merit to consist, not in immediate action, but rather in
personal and individual development, Forster was
carried away by political agitation and was destroyed
in its currents.

268 LIFE OF

CHAPTER 11.

Other scenes are now presented before us. The
various connexions of our youth of twenty-two are
increased by new and more important ones, and love
springs up in the heart so long devoted only to
friendsliip.

In the winter 1789 — 1790, Humboldt spent some
time in Erfurt and Weimar, and this stay was impor-
tant in its results on his whole future life, for here
he made the acquaintance of the coadjutor Von
Dalberg, of his future wife, and of Schiller. Of the
coadjutor Von Dalberg, Humboldt had the highest
opinion, and said of him : — " The longer I have the
opportunity of associating with Dalberg, the more I
feel convinced of the purity of his intentions, and the
excellence of his moral character."" But another house
in Erfurt formed at that time a centre of hospitality
and good society, and became a great attraction to
Humboldt, namely, that of the Chamber president
C. F. von Dacheroden. This family belongs to the
old Saxon and Thuringian nobility, and have their
estate, which bears their name, a mile beyond Miihl-
hausen on the river Unstrut. The Herr von
Dacheroden in question, a relative of Von Dalberg,
had formerly been vice president of the Prussian
chamber at Halberstadt, and was married to a
Baroness Posadowsky, heiress of Burgorner, a large
estate in the Prussian part of the Duchy of Mansfeldt.
One daughter was the fruit of this marriage, and the
most careful education had been bestowed upon her.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 269

Daclieroden liad, at the period referred to, retired from
his office, and his house in Erfurt was the resort of
the best society of the place, and of all the eminent
men who visited the town.

Caroline von Daclieroden, the daughter, was the
future wife of William von Humboldt. She could not
be esteemed perfectly beautiful, for her figure was
even slightly deformed, but her head was truly fasci-
nating, and her eyes of an admirable brilliancy and
expression. She was, however, more distinguished
for her intellect, which was of an order rarely met
with in women, and formed to be understood and
appreciated by a William von Humboldt. She seemed
made for him. The sentimental and feminine part of
his nature, which in outward life he suppressed, here
found its right focus, and the tenderest devotedness
on his part was amply repaid. To a rich and tender
heart she united such a masculine education that she
was afterwards able to read the ancient Greek poets
with her husband in the original. She seemed at the
same time born to be the life of society, so that where-
ever she went the best and highest natures crowded
around her, and her house was always the seat of the
highest intellectual life. Over Humboldt her influence
from the first moment during her life and beyond it
was irresistible ; when she was dead his days were
devoted to her memory. To her he dedicated a whole
collection of sentimental sonnets, in which the emo
tions and thoughts of the latter years of his life have
been preserved to us.

Owing to her, Humboldt formed several new con-
nexions, and, above all, the lasting one with Schiller.
Caroline von Daclieroden was intimately acquainted
with two sisters, the Mesdemoiselles von Lengfeldt in
Eudolstadt, of whom one was married to a Herr
von Beulwitz and afterwards to the Freiherr von
Wolzogen, while the other had shortly before been
betrothed to Schiller ; these formed a circle of friends
who remained true to each other through life.
Schiller, who had been appointed to an extraordinary

270 LIFE OF

professorship in Jena, which he hoped would enable
him to marry in the course of the following year, fre-
quently visited Weimar, where his betrothed was then
living with her sister, Fran von Beulwitz, and it was
in Weimar where he and Humboldt first met. Their
first meeting soon ripened into a more intimate
acquaintance, which ended in one of the noblest friend-
ships, exercising a beneficial influence on both. Two
natures, such as Schiller and Humboldt, could not
fail soon to understand each other, and the desire for
a fruitful intellectual life subsequently induced Hum-
boldt to live several years in Jena. When he left
that place he remained in constant correspondence
with Schiller.

After his betrothal, Humboldt did not remain long
in Weimar and Erfurt, as he intended to pass through
a probationary course in Berlin, and then procure an
appointment in the government, after which he pur-
posed celebrating his marriage.

Among the other important acquaintances which
Humboldt must have made this winter, is that of
F. A. Wolff. The latter was at this time a newly-
risen star of archgeology in the university of Halle,
and passed through Erfurt at the period of Humboldt's
stay there.

We find it nowhere recorded whether Humboldt
visited Gottingen this winter, or how long he remained
there. In the summer of 1790 we find him in Berlin,
whither he returned after the completion of his studies
and of his first travels, with the intention of entering
into the lists of public life. His brother Alexander
was at the same time travelling through the Nether-
lands, France, and Germany, in the company of
Forster.

William could not have been pleased by this stay
in Berlin, as Frederic the Great had been succeeded
by a regent, who by no means followed in the foot-
steps of his predecessor. Immorality, wastefulness, a
reactionary, childish policy, and a hjrpocritical pietism,
were the order of the day. Society was demoralized

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 271

to the lowest ranks, and much suffering had to be en-
dured before real enthusiasm could again be revived
among the people. It may easily be imagined what
Humboldt's feelings were when he returned to Berlin
under such circumstances, with the intention of enter-
ing upon a public career. But he found his beloved
mother and many old friends and acquaintances, in
whose society he cultivated his talents, and made his
first attempts at authorship in Blester s Monthly
Journal, to which such men as Herz, Engel, Fried-
lander, &c., contributed. Among the women who at
that time exercised an influence over the intellectual
world of Berlin, and in whose society William von
Humboldt took a prominent position, were Henriette
Herz, the wife of the above-named Marcus Herz, and
the reflecting, truth-seeking Rahel Levin, who, by her
remarkable letters, has become for us the representa-
tive of the great intellectual revolution of that period.
In their saloons Humboldt made the acquaintance
of all the great men then in Berlin, — among them,
Schleiermacher, the most unbending thinker of the
romantic epoch, Gentz, who, spite of the great differ-
ence in their o|)inions, became a friend of Humboldt,
and of many others.

But his entrance into the business of life occupied
Humboldt's time principally in this and a portion of
the next year, so that he could devote but little of it
to correspondence with distant friends. Forster writes
to Jacobi (26th Dec, 1790): "The Humboldts are
both well, but both in a different manner. The eldest
is councillor of legation, and at the same time attache
to the high court of Berlin, where he is making his
trial session. When his year is past, he will take
oflice in Halberstadt, and probably marry. The
younger one is in Hamburg, studying the practical
part of bookkeeping, he philosophizes there, has
visited Christian Stolberg and is full of his praise,
goes out to collect mosses which grow in winter, and
writes amusing letters full of wit, good nature, and
sentiment. The eldest is still the excellent man he

272 LIFE OF

always was/' And on the 6th August, 1791, he again
writes to Jacobi about these brothers, when WilHam
had determined to give up official life and devote
himself exclusively to his own higher studies : —
" Alexander Humboldt is in Freiberg and begins to
die off for me. William is dead to me long ago ; he
intends to marry Caroline von Dacheroden, in Erfurt,
and is, in his present humour, going to retire from all
public activity, which, mth his talents, is much to be
regretted. Alexander wants to do all the more, but
has not physical strength enough for it.''

Humboldt indeed began at this period to be lost
to his more distant friends, although he never quite
dropped these relations so dear to him, and resumed
them again when his retirement from public life left
him more at leisure to follow the requirements of his
head and heart. His correspondence with his
betrothed was probably uninterrupted during the
whole time of his absence, but his acquaintance with
Schiller was as yet superficial, and seems not to have
become more intimate till after 1791, when they lived
at less distance from each other. Alexander left
Hamburg in the spring of 1791, visited his mother,
brother, and friends in Berlin, and then proceeded to
Freiberg in July of the same year, where he studied
geognosy and mining operations until March of the
following year.

But the elder brother was also anxious to quit
Berlin as soon as possible, for he could not feel at ease
in his office under the rulers of the day, although he
is wisely silent on this subject in his letters. He could
not hope to be able to prevent much evil or to effect
much good, and although his friends wished him to
remain at his post to be ready if affairs should take a
different turn, he could not determine upon such a
course. He wished to marry and live in his family
circle, and also to give more time to his studies of life
and men. Philosophy did not seem sufficient to him
for this purpose, and his former philological studies
had cojivinced him that for his views completeness of

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 273

scientific cultivation could only be found in a thorough
and fundamental comprehension of the old, and espe-
cially of the Greek, world and literature. For this,
several years of perfect leisure from business were
requisite, and where better could he find this than in
the stillness of country life, sufficiently retired from
the excitements and dangers of the capital, on one of
the large estates of his father-in-law which were
already almost his, surrounded only by the happiness
which the love and the society of a congenial wife
affords. It was principally the longing for such a
complete self-education which induced the young man
to quit for the present the important public sphere
opened for him. He resigned his appointment, and
left Berlin in the summer of 1791, and only kept the
title of a Prussian councillor of legation. Ten years
— longer probably than he at first anticipated — he
spent in scientific and literary activity and in travels.
This was perhaps the happiest period of his life, and
most important in its fruits ! The whole richness of
his fertile genius was developed in undisturbed and
observing retirement ; the most eminent representa-
tives of science and literature visited liim in his soli-
tude and influenced his future labours, and he was
able, from his secure retreat, to watch the increasing
misery of political life, and the unfortunate issue of the
French revolutionary struggle. His happy destiny
preserved his activity for a better period.

Humboldt was married to Caroline von Dacheroden,
in July, 1791. The happiness of this alliance was an
important element in Humboldt's fortunate life, but
the merit of this happiness is owing in no small
degree to himself. All the force of will and good
intentions, of which Humboldt was capable, centred
in this point. When he had attained the certainty
that Caroline von Dacheroden was to be his wife, he
immediately made the vow to make her happy under
any circumstances. He never forgot this vow during
his whole life, and fulfilled it faithfully to the best of
his ability. But it needed not the compulsion of a.

T

274 LIFE OF

VOW, every day lie would anew and voluntarily have
entered into the engagement, which never ceased to
be his only bliss. When the beloved wife was dan-
gerously ill in her first childbed, and the medical men
were fearful of the consequences, Humboldt believed
that he would not be able to endure life after the
terrible loss, and in his anguish, gave as a reason for
his suicidal purpose, that he could not know whether
the beloved one might not stand in need of him in
the future life. During the long years that his wife
lived v/ith him on earth, and constituted his greatest
happiness, this zeal continued in every circumstance
of life, to the complete negation and forgetfulness of
self, sacrificing even privileges v^^hich would seem in-
separable from such an excess of love. But he en-
joyed the happiness of knowing the tenderness of his
heart to be reciprocated, and the tenderness of his
own heart beamed upon him clothed in feminine
grace. Judging from some letters of Madame von
Humboldt, which have been published, we should
call her a romantic genius, as opposed to him whose
mind was imbued by the spirit of the Ancients. Her
education, nay, her erudition, not even her partiality
for intellectual pleasures and for art, could outweigh
the eminently feminine qualities of her soul. She
had a particular partiality for paintings and for music,
while Humboldt, in other respects so varied and
artistic in his mental acquirements, had no taste for
the peculiarly feminine art element, that of tone — in
which he resembles the great critic Lessing. The
feminine feature of his mind is always concealed by
the strength of his reason, so that it bears a manly
character. His wife speaks of her eldest daughter
once in a letter to Rahel Levin, and concludes with
the very characteristic words : " She has something
harsh and tender, at the same time, in her character,
and, in this, resembles her father.'" But the senti-
mentally tender element in Madame von Humboldt's
character appears in an appropriate feminine form,
still sufiiciently modified to bear the stamp of sense

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 275

and reason. This romantic feature was combined
with the most peaceful cheerfulness, and her truly
feminine gentleness was joined to a real strength of
soul. When Humboldt lost his eldest son in Rome,
Schiller at once felt convinced that the afflicted
mother would rise above this heavy grief He wrote
to his friend at the time : " A strong soul with a fine,
tender sensibility, is certainly the happiest gift of
Providence, it has been granted to her, and so she
will be able to bear the unalterable.'' Humboldt
thought the description very apt, and replied : " Her
nature has remained true to itself, even in this crisis.
There is nothing sullen or darkly melancholy in her :
as you justly observe, dear Schiller, she is a strong
soul, with the finest, tenderest sensibility.'' And,
from all letters and other testimonies which we have,
she always appears as a loving, tender mother, and as
an affectionate and anxious nurse.

In society she occupied a no less prominent position.
She possessed all the qualities of mind, grace, amia-
bihty, and conversational power, which could make
her the central attraction of an extensive circle, and
possessed them in such a high degree that she com-
pensated for any wants of her husband in this respect.
Humboldt was master in the art of social intercourse,
but practised this quality, in its attracting or repellant
form, so arbitrarily and so consciously, that one in-
voluntarily approached him very warily, and would
have frequently, without this caution, been much
disappointed. Humboldt only gave himself, frankly
and freely, to a few favourite friends, and esteemed
fellow-students. Indifferent persons had frequently
to feel his superiority, or his temporary aversion, in
supercilious sarcasm or veiled irony, without being in
the least able to oppose the skilful master in the art.
But his wife was, on the contrary, a thoroughly social
character, born to shed love and friendship in the
richest profusion. In the early portion of their mar-
ried life, when Humboldt lived only for science, litera-
ture, and a very select circle of congenial friends, she
T 2

276 LIFE OF

had not mucli opportunity of showing these quahties,
which appeared more fully when her husband again
entered on public life, and the most extended circle
had access to their hospitable house. There she ap-
peared always as the reigning spirit, while he, whose
sphere was more the public and universal interest,
followed his own inclinations and purposes in social
life. This was an important part she had to play, for
she thereby also smoothed the path on which her hus-
band laboured. In Jena, already, and to a greater
extent subsequently in Paris, Eome, Vienna, Berlin,
and Tegel, the house of Humboldt was universally
known as the centre of intellectual and social life, as
the " point de ralliemeoit," as she herself calls it, for
natives and foreigners. Her house was open to every
man of mind and talent, even without a recommenda-
tion. If Madame de Stael and Madame de Recamier
are named as those who, in the most social country in
Europe, were the point of union for the intellectual
life in modern times, we may mention as their equals,
among German ladies, Madame von Humboldt and
Rahel Levin, who, in the absence of qualities which
made a Stael shine, have other advantages which
perhaps only German women of such eminence pos-
sess. Yarnhagen von Ense says, in his " Gallery of
Pictures, '' " The amiability of mind and character,
the high degree of social cheerfulness, and the great
and noble activity which distinguished this charming
woman during a highly-fortunate life, are still too fresh
and too highly cherished in the memory of all who
knew her to make any mention of it necessary.'" It
would certainly have been a great acquisition for us, if
the varied life of Madame von Humboldt had been
recorded in letters such as those of Rahel. Such a
memento would have cast a still brighter light on
Humboldt's character, and might have enabled us to
give to those recollections of William von Humboldt
more biographical completeness ; but we hope they will
nevertheless be considered as characteristic of his life
and tendencies, and enable the reader to form an esti-
mate of one of Germany's greatest men in modern days.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 277

CHAPTEE III.

The first period of his happy matrimonial existence,
Humboldt spent on the beautiful estate of Burgorner,
which, with the adjoining spot, Siersleben, had been
the property of Caroline von Humboldt's mother.
It is situated in the duchy of Mansfeldt, halfway
between Ascherelsben and Eisleben.

Humboldt's first care was to renew his interrupted
intercourse with his old friends, and he stated to most
of them the reasons which had induced him to retire
from all public life. We give an extract from one of
his letters, as it will give the best description of his
life at this period. It is to G. Forster, and is dated
the 16th August. After apologizing for his long
silence, he says :

" I have now absolved myself from all business, left
Berlin, married, and live, in the country, an inde-
pendent, freely chosen, infinitely happy life. I feel
this doubly in telling it you, for I know your warm
affectionate heart, and your tender sympathy. I do
not fear from you such disapprobation of my step as
I met with from many others. You esteem liberty
and independent activity too highly to expect much
utility from a man only dependent on his official
position, and I hope you know that I should never
choose any other than one in which I can expect to
cultivate my own attainments and character. Indeed,
dear friend, the impossibility of doing this was the
principal persuasive which told me to choose another
course. The axiom that nothing on earth is so im-
portant as the highest power, and most varied culti-
vation of the individual, and that, therefore, the

278 LIFE OF

primary law of true morality is, educate yourself, and
only the second, influence others by what you are;
these axioms are so firmly impressed upon my mind
that nothing can change them. And how, cherishing
such opinions, could I tolerate a position in which I
could scarcely hope slowly to approach the ideal which
filled my mind and heart ? how could even the good
I certainly effected, compensate for that which I
shall in future be able to effect to a much higher
degree? I, therefore, preferred the most modest des-
tiny, a quiet domestic life, and a smaller sphere of
action. In it I can live for myself, create a cheerful
contented life for those nearest to me, and, perhaps,
if my good genius grants me some fortunate hours,
add something to the enriching or cultivation of the
sphere of ideas to which all action in the world,
voluntarily or involuntarily, only tends. Thus much
of myself and my situation,''

He concludes by recurring to the happy days for-
merly spent in Forster's society, and thanks him for
the improvement his society had always been to him.

Although Humboldt's resolution to abandon a
lucrative ofiicial position, and live with more exclu-
siveness for his own intellectual and spiritual culture,
be highly praiseworthy, and has led to the ha^ppiest
results for science and literature by perfecting his
great talents, still it required such an entirely inde-
pendent worldly position as the one in which he was
fortunately placed to be enabled to follow the bent of
his tendencies in hfe. The considerable family estates
left by his father were only divided between the two
brothers. The estate of Ringewalde fell to Alexan-
der's share, who sold it, and undertook his great
journey to America with the proceeds. William kept
Tegel and the estate of Hadersleben near Magdeburg.
By his marriage, his possessions were considerably
increased. Madame von Humboldt was heiress of
Burgorner and Auleben ; the revenue alone amounted
to 10,000 thalers (1500^.), which was at that time con-
sidered a much gTeater income than it would be at
present.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. ^7$

Humboldt's principal study during the first years
of his retirement was archseology, and the political
speculations in which he sometimes indulged were
merely accessory. But few of the results of his
studies of this period appeared in print ; partly because
he did not think of it, and only communicated the
most considerable of his works to such of his friends
with whom he could enter into improving discussions
upon them. Among these the most useful to him in
these studies was F. A. Wolf, the great archseologian
of Halle, and the friendship cemented by these
mutual studies proved an enduring one through hfe.

But Humboldt met with the most beneficial sym-
pathy in his archgeological studies from his highly
educated wife, who was capable of following him even
here. She joined his studies, read with him in
Homer, Pindar, Herodotus, &c., and, when Wolf
visited them in their retirement, she joined in their
conversations " illustrating the scientific earnestness of
the men with the grace of a feminine understanding
of ancient art and poetry."' The happy couple spent
no day without studying Greek, and therefore Hum-
boldt subsequently dedicated to her his published
translation of Agamemnon, that ripe fruit of his Hel-
lenistic studies, in memory of those years spent in
common in intellectual enjoyment.

In the February of 1792, Humboldt removed to
Erfurt to await the confinement of his wife, near his
father-in-law, and within reach of better medical
assistance. Caroline von Beulwitz spent some time in
their house, and took part in the intellectual occupa-
tions, which suffered no interruption from the change
of residence, as Humboldt, on the contrary, here com-
menced the translation of some of Pindar's odes, some
of which were subsequently published.

In the middle of May, 1792, Humboldt was grati-
fied by the birth of his first child, a girl, which was
called Caroline, after her mother. On this occasion he
wrote to Forster (June 1) : — " My little girl is a lovely
httle creature, larger and stronger than so young a child
generally is, full of life and merriment, and has very

280 LIFE OF

large blue eyes, which constantly turn from side ta
side. My wife nurses the child herself; I, in my
total freedom from business, am constantly with her,
and so the child is scarcely ever in other hands than
ours. Only you, my dear friend, whose heart is so
open to these joys, and who know me more intimately,,
can feel with me how delightful these occupations are,
and what a rich profusion of new joys is granted me
in my already enviable position." The rest of the
letter treats of a political work, which he had under-
taken at the request of Dalberg, and which he sent
to Forster for his opinion and judgment, before giving
it to the public through the medium of the press.
This is the last letter from Humboldt to Forster
which has reached us, and we may presume that few
more were written. The French entered Mayence on
the 21st October, and Forster, in his enthusiasm for
the French revolution and for freedom, was sent to
Paris by his fellow-citizens, who wished to be incor-
porated with France. While there, Mayence was
again taken by the allied army, and Forster was
obliged to remain in Paris, a witness of the Reign of
Terror, and died there, of want and grief, in 1794.
His widow married the author Huber.

Humboldt and his family left Erfurt in the summer
of 1792, and went to reside on theh beautiful estate
of Auleben, on the banks of the golden Aue, where
they remained till the spring of 1793, continuing
their studies in retirement and happiness.

The political work, after Schiller had, with some
difficulty, found a publisher willing to take it, was
however not published, as Humboldt wished to modify
and remodel it entirely ; it was, indeed, never pub-
lished as an entire work, probably because Humboldt
never felt the inclination to re-write it.

Before the end of the winter, 1793, Humboldt
again visited Erfurt. The following spring brought
him another child — a son, to whom he gave his own
name, and who, during his short life, was the father s.
favourite.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 281

In the summer, he went to Berhn for the first time
with his wife ; but the political and social circumstances
there were still not of a nature to induce him to re-
main, and he left it after a short visit. After several
years spent in retirement, he now felt the want of
communicating and exchanging his ideas, and, to
satisfy this desire, he and his family removed to Jena
in the spring of 1794, in order to live in the imme-
diate vicinity of the great poet Schiller.

We will now enumerate the works of William von
Humboldt, published from 1791 to 1794, beginning
with those on political philosophy. The first of these is
"Ideas on Constitutions, suggested by the new French
constitution.'' This was contained in a letter to a friend,
in August, 1791, and was published in the " Berlin
Monthly Journal,'' edited by Blester. The second,
" Ideas for an attempt to determine the boundaries of
the State," in which this question is investigated from
all points, especially in reference to home policy. It was
only published in fragments, and the most important
of these is superscribed, "How far may the care of the
State for the welfare of its subjects be carried?" But,
even this chapter is not perfect, as only the most im-
portant portions were printed. Besides this, three
smaller chapters were published : the fifth, " On the
care of the State for protection against foreign enemies ;"
the sixth: "On Public, National Education ;" and the
eighth : "On the improvement of Morality by National
Institutions." The first-mentioned work was published
anonymously; the fragments bore the name of the
author.

In these essays it appears plainly how profoundly
Humboldt understood the disadvantages of modern
civilization, and in what way he suggested their re-
moval. The study which he considered as best adapted
to form a highly cultivated nation, was that of anti-
quity, and especially of the Greeks. Humboldt took
a lively interest in old, even uncivilized nations,
especially of the southern ones, because they have a
bolder natural life than the more modern northern

282 ~ LIFE OF

nations. He therefore tarried with particular interest
among Italians and Spaniards, and he spent some
years in investigations of the traditions of the Basque
nations. When he had planned his first visit to Italy,
he anticipated greatly extending his knowledge of the
human races there. He \vrote to Schiller on this
subject, 12th of October, 1795: "As far I know the
nation now, it must reveal much original natural
humanity, besides all its civilization, although, perhaps,
not in a very high degree, as the sensual faculties
seem to be principally developed. It must be more
formless than any other natiou, and therefore parti-
cularly adapted to reveal certain interesting features
of human nature ; and in this I imagine it resembles
the ancients, and is, so to speak, their shadow.'" Kome
itself seemed to him the embodied conception of that
past which so mightily occupied him; and he con-
sidered that city best adapted for the study of
the history of the civilization of the human race.
He expresses himself more forcibly on this point in
his review of Goethe's Italian journey, which he wrote
in 1839. The modern civilization, he says, had to
raise itself on the spirit of antiquity, in order to com-
bine itself into a complete whole, and especially on
the spirit of the Greeks. It can on the whole be said
of Humboldt, who lived more in the sphere of ideas,
that he never entered exclusively into the consider-
ation of the present and nearest, but always kept in
view, at the same time, how these circumstances
would be if our existence were inspired by the
strength of the ancients — if the current which carries
events forward had arrived already at that issue to
which we look back with eternal longing.

When he had retired from the official position
he had entered upon, he at once devoted himself
zealously to the studies which he had chosen for the
attainment of his object. Thus years passed on, which
he devoted almost exclusively to, the Greek world.
But before these years^were passed, he had attained to
a fax more profound comprehension of antiquity than

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 283

even tlae greatest philologians of the day could boast
of, and we can therefore not be surprised when we
find that the comprehension of antiquity as a whole,
which had been only the accidental result of his
st,udies, now partly became the very purpose of these
studies. His reasons for this, and his views, are best
shown in a letter which he wrote to his friend Wolf,
in 1792, "It is probable," he says, "that I shall have
the wisdom not to change my present condition, and
in that case, antiquity, especially Greek antiquity,
will form my exclusive occupation. I cannot study
as a philologian du onetier, my education prevents that ;
for if I were now to endeavour with all my power, and
with all the resources at my command, to acquire ac-
curate knowledge, even of grammatical details, I should
never — ^beginning so late — advance far enough. It
seems to me, however, that my individuality has led me
to a less common view of the study of the ancients. I
find it difficult to explain my meaning briefly, but the
sum of it is about this. There is, besides all studies and
developments of mankind, a peculiar one, which, so to
say, braces together the whole man, and makes him
not only more capable, better, and stronger in one or
the other point, but makes of him a greater and
nobler man; and this requires, at the same time,
strength of the intellectual, goodness of the moral, and
sensibility and susceptibility of the aesthetic faculties.
This kind of education has gradually fallen into dis-
use, while it prevailed to a high degree among the
Greeks. Now I think it cannot be revived better than
by the study of great, and in this respect, admirable
men, in a word, by the study of the Greeks. No other
nation possesses such simplicity and nature, with such a
high degree of civilization ; and none combined so much
persevering energy, with susceptibility for every im-
pression. The study of the Greeks, in this respect,
and the description of their political, religious and
domestic situations, in its strictest fidelity, will occupy
me until my attention be forcibly du-ected to some-
thing else, or until I shall have perfectly fathomed

284 LIFE OF

my subject, for which, according to my requirements,
a life would scarcely suffice/' Although Humboldt
speaks so modestly, in the commencement of this letter,
of his philological knowledge, we may justly assume
that he had advanced very far in this branch
before this time ; for it cannot be supposed that he
who had attained to such eminence in the field of
languages, should not have very early mastered the
Greek tongue. Indeed, we shall soon see that the
philosophy of language began to occupy his attention
already at this period. We can, indeed, see in the
words quoted above, nothing but the honourable
modesty which would not permit him to address Wolf,
on his exclusive field, as an equal. In a letter to
Schiller, written about the same period, he does not
conceal that he feels himself sufficiently master of the
Greek language to translate the most difficult Greek
poet, who has hitherto been mastered by no one, in the
rhythm of the original. It is, however, natural, that
Humboldt should never have considered actual philo-
logical knowledge as his chief purpose, although he
considered that nothing in science could be trifling or
unimportant. This he says, in a critical essay on
Wolfs translation of the " Odyssey,'' in the following
words : —

"It is difficult to say what a trifle means. For him
who is accustomed to study any branch of science in a
philosophic spirit, no portion of it has a particular im-
portance, but each has its value by its relation to the
whole. By an exact view of the whole, not by casual
suppression of the apparently unimportant, does a
clever, spirited treatment of any subject differ from a
pedantic one. In science, also, everything is inter-
connected, and if the critic has to study the language
to its full extent, it is difficult to understand why he
should neglect accentuation and orthography, or only
study it to a certain arbitrary extent." Thus Hum-
boldt entered into all studies, and pursued each one
which he found requisite for his purpose, as if it were,
for the time, the chief purpose and task of his life.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 285

In the beginning of 1793 he sent Wolf from Aule-
ben an essay on the study of the ancients, and espe-
cially of the Greeks, in which he recommends their
study to every individual by all possible arguments.
This essay was dedicated to Wolf, although it was
also submitted for perusal and criticism to Schiller
and Dalberg ; but we nowhere find it printed, and a
few fragments only have been collected, which have
enabled us to gather the spirit of the work. He gives
a sketch of the gradual stages of Greek culture, its
peculiar characteristics, and his reasons for recom-
mending it as the best civilizer of the present age, and,
in conclusion, advises the learner not to devote himself
exclusively to the period of the highest Greek civiliza-
tion, but on the contrary to dwell more on the earlier
periods, for in them, he says, are contained the germs
of the really fine character of the Greeks, and it is
more instructive to watch how it was gradually modi-
fied, and finally corrupted.

It was at this period Humboldt's intention to pro-
duce " a description of the Greek character illustrated
with detailed historical proofs,'' but he soon gave up
the plan on account of the great extent of the work ;
the materials he had collected for the purpose, loom,
however, through all his other works, and make us
regret the non-fulfilment of the great plan.

Among the Greek poets, Pindar and Eschylus occu-
pied his attention principally, and he has translated
several of the works of the former. There is no surer
way of penetrating the spirit or the language of a
nation than by a constantly continued attempt to re-
produce its authors, and especially its poets, with the
utmost possible fidelity in the mother tongue. Hum-
boldt devoted much time to this occupation, and suc-
ceeded in his efforts better than any known Greek
translator. His translations from the Greek are the
only ones in German which combine fidelity in form and
matter with clearness and ease of expression. It had
once been his wish to translate the whole of Pindar,
but in 1795 he gave up all hopes of the realization

286 LIFE OF

of this plan. He continued to liis latest years, liow-
ever, in producing fragments of the finest and most
characteristic works. Fifteen are included in the
second volume of his collected works, and several of
these must have been written, or at least commenced,
between 1792 and 1795. Humboldt is ackuowledged
to be one of the best translators, and his works on this
field of literature, especially his " Agamemnon,'' rank
with those of the first. If they occasionally seem
heavy, or un-German, the fault lies more in the rigidity
of his principles in respect to metre and rhythm, and in
the extreme difiiculty of the works he had selected.

He was, however, not exclusively employed in
studying the character of Greek art, but also that of
modern, especially of German poetry. The more the
ancient poets cultivated his agsthetical perceptions,
the less did he overlook the great works of his fellow-
countrymen. And now, at the time when he had
been so strengthened by his studies, fate introduced
him to those poets who, on the point of approaching
the ideal of art in emulation of the ancients, and of
perfecting their natural capabilities by theoretical cri-
ticism, could scarcely work without a fellow-labourer
who had thoroughly mastered the knowledge of the
ancients, and whose judgment was not warped by
modern prejudices. How often Humboldt regretted
a modern or superficial comprehension of the Greeks
in other cotemporaries — in Herder, Woltmann, even
in Schlegel ! Schiller and Goethe needed a mind who
possessed as much knowledge of that former world as
sympathy for modern art, as much independent know-
ledge as interest in the labours of others. As Lessing
was dead, none could have sufficed but Humboldt.
He alone could fully enter into the plans of these
great men, and assist them by criticism and specula-
tion. By the friendship of these three, the modern
philosophy of art was founded, partly by a more pro-
found study of the nature of the human imagination,
but principally by comparative criticism of ancient
and modern poetry.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 287

It was principally in order to live in the same town
with Schiller, that Humboldt, with his family, re-
moved to Jena, in the spring of 1794. Schiller did
not arrive in Jena till some weeks later, having paid
a visit of some months to his native province. But
it was not only Schiller's society which he found in
Jena, for it was also at that time the permanent and
occasional residence of several other eminent men.
Those belonging to the philosophical school were, of
course, most congenial to Humboldt, and they be-
longed all to the Kantian school, or followed in its
steps. Most eminent among them stands Fichte;
besides him, Niethammer taught there, also councillor
Schiitz, the philologian, and the doctor of law, Hufe-
land, — all Kantists. But there were other illustrious
men also here. The historian Woltmann, who en-
deavoured to shine in the most varied branches ; the
philologian and archseologian, Ilgen, — the theologians,
Paulus and Griesbach, — not forgetting the naturalists
and medical men with whom Humboldt came in con-
tact, partly by his own studies, partly through the
medium of his brother and Goethe ; among them
Batsch, Loder, and others. Stark and Hufeland, the
eminent physicians, had, as such, access to Humboldt's
house ; so that from the driest branches of sciences,
to the most cheerful enjojrments of art, all degrees
were represented in Jena, and were received by Hum-
boldt in his hospitable house. The universal and
versatile mind of a Humboldt could take part in all ;
he sought to instruct himself in all branches ; and
while he, a man of six-and-twenty, associated with
the pillars of science, and was on terms of equality
with the oldest and most advanced, he was youthful
enough to enter into cheerful and confidential conver-
sation with the humblest of the youths who thronged
in masses from all parts of Germany to the celebrated
seat of the Muses, if he found in them mind or talent.
The admiration for Eschylus made Humboldt inti-
mate with Schiitz, who was editing the works of that
Greek author, which Humboldt attempted to trans-

288 LIFE OF

late. He also contributed to tlie " Allgemeine Litera-
tur Zeitung'' of Jena, which was at that time the first
critical paper in Germany. The young Woltmann,
too, was talented enough to interest Humboldt, but
he treated him always with a certain irony, and did
not regard him as perfect in any of the numerous
branches in which he pretended to excel. It was
soon discovered that he was, in history, an imitator of
Schiller, though by no means an unskilful one. As
an sesthetician, Humboldt considers him weak ; as a
critic, insufficient, affected, and poor in ideas ; as a
poet, intolerable ; and in his chair as lecturer on the
sources of history, he spoke of the ancients with
modern self-sufficiency.

Humboldt's acquaintance with Fichte and Nie-
thammer was more satisfactory, and they invited
Humboldt to contribute to their philosophical jour-
nal, though it does not appear that he did so. Both
Schiller and Humboldt seem to have cultivated
Fichte's acquaintance, although Humboldt seems to
have had more respect for the great thinker, and to
have been on better terms with him than Schiller.
It would seem, from all contemporary testimony, that
Fichte, this noble and great man, was extremely
quarrelsome and obstinate, and self-willed to eccen-
tricity.

A more intimate friendship seems to have sub-
sisted between Humboldt and Ilgen, the subsequently
celebrated rector of Schulpforte. With him he con-
versed on languages and antiquity, and on the philo-
sophy of language. Ilgen was also an agreeable com-
panion, and liked to see his friends in his house ; from
his wife we know something of the exterior appear-
ance of the great minds of that day. The outward
elegance of these great men was, with the exception
of Woltmann and Goethe, very questionable. Hum-
boldt was, however, very careful of his dress, and
whenever the men, after dinner, left the room to take
coftee and to smoke, he retired to change his coat, be-
cause he wished to save his dress-coat from Ilgen's

WILLIAM VON" HUMBOLDT 289

smoke, for Humboldt hated smoking. The dress-coat
itself was very simple, but he returned to the clouds
of smoke in a coat which " a respectable barber of the
present day would despise/' This is characteristic
of a period in which so much intellectual food was
afforded and enjoyed, that other matters were of no
moment, and the mental worth weighed more than
the exterior appearance.

Schiller returned to Jena in May, 1794, and hence-
forward the most intimate friendship connected the
two families through life, especially as the two ladies
found in each other old and dear friends. Humboldt
had taken a house on the market-place, immediately
opposite Schiller's house. " We met twice daily," he
says, "were principally alone in the evening, and
generally together till late at night." They spent
these hours in philosophical and eesthetical conversa-
tions, of whose extent and importance we can now
form some idea from the correspondence of the two
men. By these conversations Schiller formed him-
self for his intimacy \nth Goethe, which was soon
afterwards to commence.

What a loss for society that an Eckermann was not
present, who could have reported these conversations
to us ! How the little we know of it makes us long
for a more detailed account ! A friend of Humboldt's,
William von Burgsdorf, wrote to Babel from Jena at
this time : " Humboldt goes to Schiller's regularly
every evening from eight until after ten o'clock. The
second evening of my stay here I went with him,
and always since then. I am delighted to see Schiller
thus. He lives only in his ideas, in constant mental
activity ; thinking and poetising is his only want,
and he esteems everything else only in so far as it
conduces to this, his real life. Humboldt, therefore,
is very much to him : he considers these hours as his
hours of recreation, but only in his own way. I
speak little, but not too little, and if the conversation
becomes too abstract for me I play with the bricks ;
in short, everything here has fortunately an entirely

u

290 LIFE OF

domestic aspect. Humboldt is entirely at liome, and
more amiable tlian ever. With Schiller he is quite
unconstrained, and sometimes as witty and comical as
we have ever seen him. You may think, also, how
interesting it is, when, instead of cutting short and
trivializing everything, he has always the desire to
express himself ; when he, instead of combating his
opponent in something not to the point, always
keeps to the subject, when he esteems truth itself as
much in words as in thought ; I mean, when he does
not too soon break off his opinions, or maintain them
too long, from contempt for the opinions of the
other/'

Very soon afterwards Goethe joined the friendly
union subsisting between Humboldt and Schiller.
The inducement and occasion was the origination
of a journal, "Die Horen,'' an undertaking which
Schiller had projected with the young publisher,
Cotta, in Tubingen, and which was carried into exe-
cution in Jena.

" Die Horen'' were to enlist the co-operation of the
principal writers and thinkers of Germany, and by an
uninterrupted series of valuable contributions from
them in prose and verse, were to form a never-
before seen testimony of the literary advancement of
the age, and the means for its further development.
Schiller was well qualified for directing such an under-
taking, but the time was not appropriate, the public
too apathetic, and the real members, and their regular
contributions, too few, to support the journal for more
than a few years. Besides, only the numbers issued
in the first, and part of the second year, fulfil the high
promise of its commencement.

Humboldt's interest in this journal was a very con-
siderable one, and Schiller valued him as one of his
most able coadjutors. In his application to Goethe
to join their undertaking, dated 18th June, 1794, he
speaks in the name of those already associated, and
says that in Jena, Humboldt, Fichte, and Woltmann
had undertaken to superintend the publication of the

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 291

journal, and that it was their wish that Goethe should
join this select association, of which one or two were
always to read over and judge the contributions sent
in. Goethe willingly accepted the invitation ; and
the first few numbers of the paper contained, besides
two long essays by Humboldt, contributions from the
editor — Schiller, Goethe, Herder, Fichte, A. W.
Schlegel, Engel, and Professor Meyer.

Goethe came to Jena soon after this, in consequence
of his association with the journal, and then the basis
of that friendship between the two poets was laid, in
which Humboldt participated to so eminent a degree,
and which is an honour to German literature.

After Goethe's departure from Jena, from whence
his correspondence with Schiller dates, we find in
every letter " Remember me kindly to Humboldt and
the ladies ;'' and when, a few months later, he invited
Schiller to visit him in Weimar, he requested Hum-
boldt to accompany his friend, which he did, although
only for a few hours. No other stood in such near
relation to the two German poets ; and a correspond-
ence between Humboldt and Goethe was soon after-
wards commenced, which was carried on for nearly
forty years ; as it has, however, not yet been pub-
lished, we possess only the indications of it which,
from time to time, appear in Humboldt's letters to
Schiller.

Goethe now visited his Jena friends from time to
time, and Humboldt returned his visits to Weimar.
In November, Humboldt accompanied his brother
Alexander, who had been in Jena and was going to
Frankfort, as far as Weimar ; and Goethe writes to
Schiller — ''Humboldt arrived to join an aesthetic-
critical session; I do not know how it entertained
him :'' and Schiller replies — " Humboldt, who would
be warmly commended to you, is still full of the im-
pression which your method of reading Homer has
made upon him ; and he has excited in us all such a
desire for it, that when you come again for a few
days, we shall not rest until you hold such a session
u 2

292 LIFE OF

with us." In January, Goethe visits Jena again, and
writes in March — " I hope Herr von Humboldt has
been industrious, and also anticipate conversing with
him again soon on anatomica. I have put aside
some very natural but very interesting chemical pre-
parations for him. Remember me most kindly to
him and the ladies/' Goethe spent nearly the whole
of April in Jena ; and in May he was agreeably sur-
prised, in Weimar, by a visit from Humboldt. In
June he visits Jena again, and Humboldt accompa-
nies him to Weimar.

Goethe sent his contributions to the " Horen '' in
MS. to Schiller and Humboldt, and requested them to
read them over once more, and correct them ; he had
made them as complete as his time permitted. He
also sent the MS. of " Wilhelm Meister,'' on which
he was at this time employed, to Schiller, with the
request to mark what he did not approve of; and
adds — " I recommend my hero and his companions
also to the consideration of Herr von Humboldt and
the ladies.'' The friends were delighted ; Schiller
made a few marginal notes, and the more important
objection — when Wilhelm receives the present of
money from the countess, through the baron — that
he, as well as Humboldt, considered, with such a
tender relation as the one existing between the par-
ties, such a present, and through a third person, could
neither be offered nor accepted ; and suggested a modi-
fication. Goethe replied, that he hoped to be able to
change this objectionable incident, and to follow the
other suQ^crestions of the friends. Humboldt read the
conclusion when he returned to Berlin, and writes —
^* The fifth book is highly interesting, and entirely
in the spirit of its predecessors. But the difficulty
with the person in whose arms Wilhelm felt himself
is more seen through than, I think, was permissible.
Meister's falling asleep is also not natural."

The most interesting discussion on this subject took
place when the conclusion of the " apjorenticeship "
appeared, as both Schiller and Korner took part in

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 293

it. The latter commenced it by a letter to Schiller,
exclusively devoted to this subject, in which he pro-
nounced himself unconditionally in favour of the prin-
cipal character in the book. Humboldt opposed him
on this point, without, therefore, thinking less favour-
ably of the work itself Korner's letter had been,
shown to him and he sent his opinion direct to Goethe,
who forwarded it to Schiller, with the remark : "It
is consolatory to have such sympathizing friends and
neighbours. From my own immediate circle nothing
like this has come.'' We see by this correspondence
what a great influence our Humboldt has exercised
on the works of the two greatest of modern poets, and
that without having produced such works himself he
has been very instrumental in their production.

Of Humboldt's works written during this period,
we may name his review of Jacobi's " Waldemar,"
which appeared in the ''Allgemeine Literatur Zei-
tung" (1794, Nos. 315 and 317), and is now included
in his collected works. This very profound essay
treats of the most interesting problems of psychology
and ethics, and has great value independent of the
too-favourably criticised work. The philosophical
portion of the review is much more important than
the esthetic part ; but this is natural, as the value of
the work lies far more in its matter than in its form,
and it was the friendly purpose of the critic to dwell
principally on the former. Rabel Levin writes of the
review, in a letter to a friend, that it had been decried
as too difficult, but that she had found it very intel-
ligible, and admired it exceedingly. "It is much more
talented than 'Waldemar' itself, as it contains every-
thing the book should have contained, while Jacobi does
not give what he should give ; he describes only the form
of a system, not characters who embodied it — not a
living natural specimen." The work, she says, seems to
her as the sketch for a criticism, and she is disgusted by
the naturalness and stiffness of Jacobi's characters.
Humboldt, she continues, should have reviewed He-
loise, Werther, or Tasso, and then one would have

294 LIFE OF

had tlie pleasure of admiring two geniuses at the-
same time, and see one genius admire the other.
Humboldt's own ideas she thinks excellent, and can-
not understand some persons' opinions of him. " You
always considered Humboldt an extraordinary philo-
sopher, and praised and exalted him, but denied his
knowledge of character. Has he then never spoken,
with you as he has written in this review ? Or have
you entirely misunderstood him ? Else you must have
bowed deeply before his knowledge of chareicter.''

Other less favourable reviews of " Waldemar "
appeared in other journals, soon after the publication
of Humboldt's criticism ; so that it would seem that
he was led by his friendship for Jacobi to judge his
work too favourably.

Besides this review, two essays, which he wrote for
the Horen, are remarkable. I. " On the difference
of Sex, and its influence on Organic Nature,'' and II..
" On Masculine and Feminine Form/' They were
written during the time of his most intimate commu-
nion with Schiller, but are entirely his own, and a
kind of centre of his ideal world. For, although he
may have discussed these subjects with Schiller, and
modified or enlarged his ideas by communication, it
could easily be proved from their correspondence that
Humboldt persuaded and encouraged Schiller to turn
his genius to the consideration of these subjects..
Schiller also never entered so earnestly or deeply into
the subject as Humboldt did ; he treats the subject
only in some lyric, l3rric-didactic and epigrammatic
poems, i.e. " WUrde der Frauen," " Die Geschlecter,"
" Tugend des Weibes," " Die Schonste Erscheimmy,"
" Forum des Weibes," "' Weibliches Urtheil," " Das
Weibliche Ideal," which all appeared in 1795 and
1796, during the period of, or immediately following,
his intercourse with Humboldt, who descends into the
depths of his subject, and draws the pure ore from the
rich mine of his thought. Any attempt at a descrip-
tion of the chain of ideas developed by Humboldt in.
these essays would lead us beyond our limits, and

WILLIAM VON" HUMBOLDT. 295

would still give but a very poor idea of the profundity
of knowledge displayed in them. They are among
the most interesting works which Humboldt has
written, for he appears here as an entirely original
thinker. Both his subject and its treatment are pecu-
liar and novel, and have formed the basis of subsequent
investigations by other philosophers.

The second treatise was quoted soon after its publica-
tion by Franz Schlegel with great commendation.
Jacobi wrote to the author to express his commendation
of the first. The introduction only he considered, and
perhaps not without reason, as too abstract, and thought
that the quantity of great and glorious ideas in which
the essay abounds, might have been so put that the
subject should flow more from them than they from
the subject. Humboldt himself had little hope of
disseminating his ideas, and felt this more powerfully
when he read Schiller's poem " Wlirde der Frauen.'"
He writes to him 11th September, 1795 : " It was
indeed an indescribable feeling to find things on which
I have thought so much, which are perhaps more than
you may have remarked, interwoven with my whole
existence, expressed in such an appropriate diction.
What we think and write down in prose is, after all,
only words, something dead and powerless, and espe-
cially something indistinct and imperfect. It only
receives completion, life, and a peculiar organization
from the pen of the poet, and I have never felt this
so vividly as now.'' Schiller replies to this, 5th Oct. :
" Do not doubt, my dear friend, that your ideas on sex
will eventually become current, and will be stamped as
scientific coin, as soon as you will publish a still more
detailed work on the subject. This is certainly neces-
sary, and I think the matter deserves it. I am now
only waiting for some public voice of approbation of
my poem, and for a suitable opportunity to state pub-
licly how much is contained in your essays." A very
important opinion on these essays, and especially on
the one treating of masculine and feminine form, has
lately been published by Francis von MlUler : " When

296 LIFE OF

Humboldt wrote these essays he had not seen Italy,
and consequently knew the classic statues only through
copies, some of the most charming of them not at all.
It is therefore the more remarkable, and to be •
admired, with what an unerring and penetrating judg-
ment he seizes the forms of the classic gods and heroes,
and brings them before our mental eye, and the
happy aptness of his nature to comprehend the origi-
nal types of the beautiful with clearness and purity,
to conceive and examine them in their most profound
peculiarity is undeniable and admirable.'' Simulta-
neously with these essays Schiller's letters on the
Esthetical Education of Man appeared in the " Horen."
The intimate relation of the chain of ideas in the two
authors is nowhere more decidedly apparent. They
seem almost to struggle for the palm in brilliancy
of diction, in the poetically attractive garment they
both throw round the most abstractly philosophic
ideas. Humboldt's power of language can scarcely
be more gracefully displayed, a difficult subject could
not have been more perfectly mastered, nor abstract
dryness been more happily avoided than in this essay.
We would even, if it were not presumptuous, award
to it the palm, in consideration of its clearness and
intelligibility, in preference to the letters, in which
the ideas are rather too finely and dialectically drawn
out.

Humboldt also published an announcement of the
small edition of the Odyssey, by F. A. Wolf, for the
Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung. It was a public ac-
knowledgment of the merits of Wolf, as regards his
restoration of the Homerian text. We have already
quoted the passage in which he speaks of the im-
portance of the most trifling points in science, and
which occurs in this essay.

Alexander von Humboldt visited his brother several
times during William's residence in Jena, and during
his stay, galvanic and anatomic studies, in which
William participated, and Goethe was equally in-
terested, were the order of the day. In 1795, Alex-

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 297

ander made a journey across the Alps to Italy, from
which he did not return until the following year.

Humboldt's intimacy with Schiller naturally brought
him into closer connexion with those who enjoyed
Schiller's friendship, or visited him in Jena. The
principal of these was Korner of Dresden, with
whom he entered into a warm correspondence. In

1794, a young fellow countryman of Schiller's, Fre-
derick Holderlin, also came to Jena, and was very
kindly received and supported by Humboldt. He
was a highly poetical spirit, but died too soon, after a
most unfortunate career.

Humboldt, with his family, left Jena, in June,

1795, with the intention of returning in October,
after a short visit to Tegel, but they found his mother
so ill that they remained near her the whole winter,
and did not return to Jena till the autumn of the
following year. This long separation was equally
painful to Humboldt and to his poet-friends. Schil-
ler writes to Goethe, 2nd October, 1795, " Hum-
boldt is not returning this year, which is very un-
pleasant for me," and to Humboldt he writes :
" Goethe laments your long absence very much. Even
on account of anatom}^ he wished for your presence."
But Humboldt felt the long separation from Schiller
most acutely, especially whenever he was uneasy
about Schiller's health, as he then thought how wel-
come his presence and conversation would be to the
invalid. He even suggested to Schiller to remove to
Weimar, as he would then, at least, have Goethe
near him. In every letter, Humboldt expresses his
longing for Schiller's society, and writes to him 4th
August, 1795, " I have become so accustomed to
social thinking, that if my absence lasts long, I shall
fear for my stock of ideas. I take refuge, however,
in memory, and, mentally, I spend the best part of
my time with you."

In Tegel, he led a very retired life, which was fre-
quently disturbed by sickness in his family. His own
health had not been so robust in Jena as formerly.

298 LIFE OF

and he suffered from an eye disease, wliicli sometimes
even made reading a difficulty. He rarely received
visits, and sometimes did not go to Berlin for six
weeks. Many obstacles prevented liis producing any-
thing for publication at this period, and principally
his ceaseless study. But the most important part of
his correspondence with Schiller, took place at this
time, and, as it has been published, the world has
been a great gainer by the temporary separation of
the two eminent friends. In their correspondence,
we see the greatest works of Schiller planned, dis-
cussed, corrected, and gradually brought to comple-
tion, the ideas and sentiments contained in them are
debated and suggested, and, now and then, Goethe
also sends manuscripts and plans of works to Hum-
boldt, that he may peruse and correct them. This
correspondence enables the reader better to compre-
hend all the works of the German poet, as their
beauties and defects are discussed and pointed out with
penetrating criticism, in the unguarded outpourings
of an affectionate correspondence.

For himself, Humboldt made more plans and pro-
jects at this period than he realized ; he seemed to
live only for Schiller, as the adviser and corrector of
his genius. But even his plans are interesting, and
we will therefore briefly sketch them. He purposed
to make Voss's "Louisa'' the subject of a critical
essay, and intended to confine himself strictly to the
idyllic portion of the work, to glance at the idyllic
poets of other nations, and take the opportunity of
elucidating his favourite theory of the similarity of
the Greeks and Germans. Another project was the
criticism of Goethe's " Beinecke, the Fox," of which
only some very original ideas on the Fox have reached
us in letters to Schiller. Schiller requested him to
write an explanation of his " Eeich der Schatten,''
but although Humboldt would have liked the task,
he thought it unsuitable in him to constitute himself
a commentator on Schiller.

The plans and works relating to antiquity were

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 299'

more perseveringly pursued, although his translation
of " Aristophanes '' remained very fragmentary. But
he laboured seriously at the plan of giving a compre-
hensive picture of the Greek poetical spirit, with a
few characteristic features and some prominent ex-
amples in a special essay. He had read nearly all
the great poets more than once, and with great care.
But not wishing to aim at too much, he was to com-
mence only with the poetic spirit of the Greeks, with
their descriptive power, and in future essays treat
them in' a more universal spirit. But of this little
could have been achieved, and nothing was published.
The only works which were printed were the transla-
tion of Pindar's Fourth Pythian Ode, with introduc-
tion and notes, and a review of Schiller's " Almanac
of the Muses, for 1796.'' What a glorious time for
literature that was when Schiller edited an almanac,
Goethe was the greatest contributor, and William von
Humboldt the critic I

-300 LIFE OF

CHAPTEH lY.

As Humboldt intended soon to leave Germany for a
journey to Italy, he made a short trip into the north
of Germany in the course of this summer (1796), and
visited Voss in En tin, and Klopstock in Hamburg, who
were both much pleased and flattered b}^ his visit. On
his return from this trip he went once more to Jena, in
November, 1796, and remained there till the follow-
ing April. The time was spent as before, in almost
constant intercourse with Schiller, in literary activity
on both sides, with frequent visits from Goethe, who
came to read his unfinished production to his critical
friends, and receive their judgment and praise.

In November, Humboldt received the account of
his mother's death, which afflicted him much, though
it was not unexpected ; and at the beginning of the
year, Alexander came to visit him and spend some
time with his family, which had been increased
by a little boy, who received the name of Theodor.
Alexander was full of plans for his great West
Indian journey, and with this object in view he
cultivated his knowledge of practical anatomy, spend-
ing from six to seven hours daily in the anatomical
lecture room.

William, during this winter, commenced his trans-
lation of the " Agamemnon'' of Eschylus, and after
he had submitted it to his friends and received their
judgments, he writes to F. A. Wolf, with unaffected
modesty : — " Having shown my translation to some
here, I find myself in a very peculiar position. Schiller
is not quite pleased with it. He does not deny that

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 801

the translation has energy and poetical feeling, but
he considers it too harsh, heavy, and indistinct. It
wants a more common structure, more clearness, and
perhaps a less faithful metre.

"You seem to condemn my work equally, but just
from contrary reasons, though it might be possible
that your complaint of want of the true spirit of
Eschylus is identical with Schiller's objection of want
of clearness.

" Franz Schlegel made the same objections that you
make when I read the manuscript to him in an
earlier copy than the one you have. I altered many
things, and at the second reading he seemed mora
content. Whether he was quite satisfied, I do not
know. He is, as you know, rather laconic in these
matters.

" Goethe is very well satisfied with the work, as I
gather from remarks made to myself and others, and
from his constant interest in the progress of the work.
He wants me not only to finish the " Agamemnon,"
but to follow it up with appropriately chosen pieces
by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. They all
seem not particularly to esteem the versification, which
is the most difficult and, in my opinion, the most me-
ritorious portion of the work. With Schiller, it is
from want of the requisite knowledge of Greek. You
have given no opinion on this point. Goethe seems
to feel and to approve of it, but he wants the know-
ledge for criticising it. Franz Schlegel is the only
one who has entered into the subject, and he is, with
a few exceptions, satisfied.

" Thus far my report. The position I take up in
face of these criticisms is this. In the first place I
always consider blame more justified than praise.
Goethe's praise is, for many reasons, not satisfactory.
He finds my translation of great use in reading the
original, and is grateful. Of the adverse judgments,
Schiller's seems to me the least important; it only
proves that I cannot count on a very extensive circle
of readers, and I knew that before. Only your con-

302 LIFE OF

demnation has grieved me, and I confess frankly to
you that I have not written a verse for four days, nor

looked at my work My courage has now,

however, been revived, and I find myself in the true

position which I ma.y follow It is my firm

intention to collect as severe criticisms as possible,
before my work is completed, without, however, giving
up my independent judgment. I have no want of
industry and perseverance, but when I perceive the
impossibility of doing more, I shall declare it to be
finished. For what else can I do ? This work occu-
pies me much, and I have never felt such interest in
any.''

He wrought a long time at the alterations of the
work before he declared it to be finished.

At this period Humboldt left Jena and his poet-
friends. Schiller parted with him more easily now
than he would at any other time have done, as his
intimacy with Goethe was now at its height, and he
therefore missed his friend less. But for Humboldt
the separation must have been more painful, for he
had in the previous August, v/hen speaking of his
journey, declared that he could nowhere, wherever he
might live, find a compensation for this friendship ;
he subsequently writes, that he knows not how much
he would give if his friend could accompany him ; and
after Schiller's untimely death, he wrote to Wolf that
he had spent his most intellectually fruitful years in
intercourse with Schiller.

From Jena, which Humboldt, with his family, left
the end of April, 1797, they proceeded to Halle,
where William remained some days, that he might
settle many disputed questions concerning his " Aga-
memnon," in personal conversation with Wolf, and
then hastened to Berlin, where, after the death of his
mother, he had to arrange his affairs, with a view to
a lengthened absence. Alexander met him there, and
in order to be able to defray the expenses of the great
journey he had planned, sold the estate of Ringewalde,

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 303

which was his share of the parental inheritance, to
the poet Franz von Kleist. Both brothers had the
intention of proceeding to Italy over Dresden, Vienna,
and the Alps — the younger brother with the view of
continuing his journey to Spain, and thence to the
new world.

In June, William proceeded, with his whole family,
to Dresden, where he remained several weeks, and
was joined by his brother Alexander. Here the family
affairs were finally arranged, for which purpose Kunth,
the former tutor, had also joined the brothers. In
Dresden they spent their time agreeably, with the
Councillor Korner and the Prussian ambassador.
Count von Gessler. They were obliged to remain in
Dresden longer than they had anticipated, because
Madame von Humboldt was attacked by a fever.
From Dresden the entire family proceeded to Vienna,
and remained here also longer than they had wished,
awaiting the issue of the pending war, which at last
forced them to give up for the time their journey to
Italy. The Southern Germany had been swept tole-
rably clean of enemies by the victorious campaign of
the Archduke Charles in the preceding year, but the
advantages which Bonaparte's genius had achieved in
Italy and the Adriatic provinces obliged the Austrians
to negotiate. These negotiations lasted a long time,
but the fate of Italy was clear, and a journey thither
scarcely possible. Goethe, also, could only proceed as
far as Switzerland. On the 15th September, Schiller
wrote to the latter : " I have to-day received a letter
from our friend Humboldt. He no longer likes
Vienna, has all but abandoned the plan of the Italian
journey, and is nearly determined to proceed to Paris,
but the newest events there will have changed this
purpose again.'' Schiller was, however, in error, for
these events confirmed the plan of the journey to
Paris. Humboldt now determined to approach the
French boundary at the foot of the Alps, and there
to await the anticipated peace between Austria and
France.

304 LIFE OF

On the 30th of October, Schiller writes again to
Goethe — " Humboldt has at last written to me from
Munich. He is now steering for Basel, where he will
decide whether he proceeds to Paris or not. He will
therefore scarcely meet you, unless you spend the
winter in Zurich, where he will go if he does not go
to Paris. He describes a large salt-mine, near Berch-
tolsgaden, very amusingly. The Bavarian nation
seems not to please him, but he praises the Minister
of War there, M. Rumford, on account of his very
fine and humane establishments.''

The peace of Campo Formio was signed on the
17th of October ; now France was again open to
the German nation, and Humboldt, with his family,
at once proceeded thither. After his arrival, and
during his stay, his correspondence with Schiller and
Goethe continued with the same vivacity as if they
were only a few miles distant ; and Humboldt seems,
during the first period of his Paris life, only to have
used the new impressions he received, that he might
give a faithful picture of them to the friends he had
left. He described the French spirit and French art
in his long and interesting letters, with fidelity and
vivacity.

Humboldt remained true to his German nature,
and to the great interest of German philosophy and
art, far more even than his friends expected. While
Schiller and Goethe exchanged comments on his
descriptive letters, he wrote, in April 1798, his
aesthetic essays on Goethe's ''Hermann and Dorothea"
— i.e. a theory of poesy, and especially of epic poesy,
based on this new masterpiece of the gTeat German
poet.

The matter contained in this work had long occu-
pied Humboldt's attention, and his ideas on the
subject had been elucidated and perfected by commu-
nication with the two poets.

It may appear strange that the enthusiastic admirer
of Schiller's poetry should not have chosen one of the
works of that poet as the basis on which to develope

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 305

Ms own reflections on art. But the reason seems to
be, that the tendency of both poets to approach the
ideal of Greek perfection was most plainly shown, and
most successfully achieved, in this production of
Goethe's. Now, none of the literary men of the day
were so partial to this imitation of the Greeks, as
Humboldt ; and none, therefore, felt such a high
degree of critical interest as he did, when he saw this
splendid proof of the success of his favourite theory.
This selection also plainly proves that he not only
deemed epic poetry in general, but this poem of
Goethe's in particular, as appropriate for developing
the fundamental laws of the beautiful in art. It was,
therefore, a fortunate circumstance for him that he
was now separated from Schiller, so that the indivi-
dual characteristics of the latter could not exercise
that influence over his judgment which they had
hitherto done. He, however, loses no opportunity of
doing justice to Schiller in this essay.

Humboldt sent the manuscript of his work to
.Schiller, with the request to read it over with Goethe,
correct it, and prepare it for publication. That Goethe
was pleased and flattered by this great testimony to
Ms talents, cannot be doubted ; and after reading it,
and debating on it, the two poets determined to send
it to press as it had left Humboldt's study, without
any material corrections.

S06 LIFE OF

CHAPTER Y.

When Humboldt determined to devote the next years
of his retirement from public affairs to travelling and
to longer residences abroad, affairs at home had
undergone little change, and those of Europe merely
a deceptive one. In Prussia, the weak rule of Frederic
William II. was still paramount, and all hopes for
improvement were centred in his successor, Frederic
William III., who ascended the throne shortly after
Humboldt had commenced his journey (16th Nov.,
1797). Worse the condition of Germany could scarcely
be. The governments and the people were apathetic ;
no trace of national spirit existed ; the political feel-
ing of the nation was annihilated by centuries of
miserable tyrants, and a few rays of light existed only
in the intellectual progress made in a few German
principalities. In this intellectual progress of the
German nation in arts and science, Humboldt had, as
we have seen, taken an active part, but he could do
nothing but turn in disgust from the sphere of political
life. For what but shame and defeat could be ex-
pected from this divided nation, whose powerless
fragments had at their head two monarchies filled
with intense hatred of each other. What prospect
was there but a fearful revolution, whose issue could
in no way be calculated ? What could be hoped for but
a fundamental renovation, inwardly and outwardly,
of the national life, and of Prussia, powerless and cor-
rupt in its isolation ?

Would not any man who is independent rather quit
for a time a country which has such melancholy pros-
pects, and reserve his services until he may hope to

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT, 807

be useful ? And how could a man of such high intel-
lectual attainments as Humboldt spend his leisure
better than in seeing the men and manners of diffe-
rent countries, and in increasing his knowledge and
experience. Indeed, these wanderings abroad were
of great service to Humboldt. In studying the nations
of southern Europe, and the remnants of classical an-
tiquity, he expanded his views of the past and of
humanity in general. Besides, his innate talent for
languages developed itself, not so much by intercourse
with the various nations, as by the linguistic treasures
in which Paris and Rome abound. And, finally, these
years formed the practical man — the statesman who
was to become eminent by his knowledge, practice,
and skill. We may imagine what a residence in Rome
and amid Roman scenery must have been to such a
sensitive mind as Humboldt's, even without the un-
equivocal testimony which we have in his letters.

We saw hovf his plan of proceeding to Italy with
his whole family was frustrated by the warlike events.
He therefore went to Paris, and we have shown how
he cultivated his interest for German art and science
even here, surprising his friends in Weimar and Jena
with his compendious contribution to art-philosophy.
We must now inquire into the cir cum. stances of his
Paris life, and see what men there enjoyed his
intimacy.

Humboldt arrived in Paris for the second time in
his life in the autumn of 1797- To him who had
seen the French nation in its enthusiasm for liberty
in the first days of the revolution, the place may,
spite of the changes it had undergone, not have had •
the same attraction at this period of temporary ex-
haustion, although his interest must have remained
the same. But as few communications from him
during his second visit to Paris are on record, we can
only quote some letters from his wife written to
various friends. She writes to her friend Rahel
Levin, in Berlin, on the 25th May, 1798: — "Paris is
the town in which you ought to reside ; which you
X 2

808 LIFE OF

would enjoy more than any other, especially if you
had some Germans near you. Paris is very beautiful ;
there is scarcely any town which affords a view equal
to the one you enjoy when standing on the Pont
Koyal with the Pont Neuf on the right, the Pont de
la Revolution on the left, the beautiful broad river
beneath, on each side the broad quays with a row of
splendid buildings, the castle of the Tuileries, the
garden and the Champs Elysees in the distance."
After describing to her friend her mental condition,
her longing to know everything clearly, even if it
should cost her life, as for him whom nature has so
formed no other condition is tolerable; and after
adding the confession that she has not arrived at this
clearness without deep pain and the greatest loss, but
that she is now free and calm and impressible to all
humanity, and to the Divine in human nature, having
at last arrived at the conviction that love must remain
the centre of union, "which alone forms our exist-
ence, and which, when every other illusion has passed
away, still maintains the harmonic flow of life;" —
after such outpourings, she continues, " I must tell
you a word of my children. My soul lives in my
children, as they feel, and I lead a very domestic life
with them. The mornings here last till four o'clock ;
no one dines before that hour, and thus I can be
very much with them. In the evenings I am fre-
quently in company, or in the theatre — frequently
also at my tea-table at home, with my small circle of
acquaintance. Many Germans are here, and my house
is a point de ralliement for them ; but I see, also,
many Frenchmen, and like them. The theatre is
very interesting, the comedy excellent. The polish,
politeness, and superficiality of the French in their
manners and feelings are frankly revealed in their
pieces, in the manner in which they are performed.
In tragedy this is perhaps more remarkable. I can-
not imagine how one can ever feel moved by
them ; but they are highly interesting, because the
performance of the principal actors is a perfect

WILLIAM VON" HUMBOLDT. S09

work of arfc/' A second letter from Madame
Humboldt describes her domestic happiness more
clearly. " My little ones/' she says, " would please
yon. Li (Caroline) grows very amiable; she is
delicate, and has a rare degree of sentimentality,
perfectly natural, however, as you may imagine.
Her brother William is handsome, much more rough,
very naughty, self-willed, and yet exceedingly good-
natured. Theodore is the most amiable child I ever
saw — he is stout, and almost fat, and yet looks slender ;
his little face has an expression of merriment, and yet
his glance seems to indicate something more profound.
His eyes are as if you gaze into the heavens. The
white in them is quite blue, and the eyeball brown.
His hair is light, and his mouth the prettiest I ever
saw in a child. If you could see the boy, he would
make a fool of you, as he does of me.''

In the spring of 1798, Humboldt enjoyed the plea-
sure of his brother's society in Paris for some time,
He came to Paris with the intention of joining Capt.
Baudin's expedition, but when that was abandoned,
and other attempts to organize an expedition had
failed, he repaired to Spain, where he met with assis-
tance from the court, and started on his first journey
from thence.

The house of Humboldt in Paris was the centre of
union for all the Germans who in any way merited
being guests there. Even if Humboldt devoted
himself principally to his studies, and to those men
with whom he could maintain an adequate intel-
lectual intercourse, his wife formed an attraction
for the most various kinds of talents, and German
artists especially were sure of her patronage and atten-
tion. The French painter David attracted a consider-
able number of young artists to Paris, and among the
German ones especially the painter Schick, the sculp-
tor Tieck, and others. Among the interesting men at
that time staying in Paris we may mention Gustav
von Brinkmann, who contributed some clever epigrams
to Schiller's " Horen, and Almanack of the Muses,"

310 LIFE OF

and was on tlie most intimate terms with Madame de
Stael, Humboldt, &c.

But among the Germans then residing in Paris
few interested Humboldt more than the well-known
hermit, the Count von Schlabrendorf, a Prussian,
a man of great and comprehensive mind, versed
in the modern French circumstances as few others
were, and addicted beside to a persevering study of
human and rational life, of political considerations,
and even of language, and resembling Humboldt in
liberality of thought as much as in elocutionary talent.
It is, therefore, not surprising that they should have
esteemed each other highly. Varnhagen von Ense,
who wrote a very clever account of this eccentric man,
relates, among other things, how he, being accustomed
to speak for hours uninterruptedly in the most beauti-
ful connexion, with the most vivid phantasy and in-
creasing energy, once was so lost in discussion with
William von Humboldt that he early one evening
accompanied him to the stairs, candle in hand, and he
was found the next morning on the same spot still,
en^ao^ed in earnest debate with him. Humboldt has
testified the great interest he took in the Count
in a letter written to Varnhagen, after the latter
had published the above-mentioned memoir. It is
dated 5th March, 1832 : " I have read your ac-
count of our ever memorable friend with great
pleasure. It has most vividly recalled to my mind,
the time of my intimacy with him, and it seems
to me that you have been very successful in giving
so much of his traits of character and mode of action,
as might give the public an intelligible idea of
him, and that even his more intimate friends will
acknowledge the resemblance. You must not be dis-
appointed because your memoir does not give the
entire impression, which we might desire, of this dear
and venerable departed friend. There are mediocre
and great men whose merits and advantages can be
counted at once and easily, but Schlabrendorf was not

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 311

one of these. He required to be thoroughly knowu,
and more than known, really felt. Whoever was not
enchanted with him in the first days of acquaintance,
and whoever did not prove at once that he possessed
the sense for comprehending him, with such an one
every discussion was vain, as I often convinced myself.
It is, therefore, not possible that any description
could exist which should give his true inner being, one
of the most remarkable which has ever existed on
earth, combined of a melancholy sweetness and gen-
tleness, and the most indomitable courage.'' We may
be permitted here to insert an anecdote which
Schlabrendorf told of his friend. " In Paris," he says,
*' there lives a count K — n, a very good man, as I think,
but weak. Once, when he had just left my room,
Humboldt said, K — n is a very good soul, but I would
rather be his father than his son. I could not help
laughing at the idea ; but there is deep thought in it.
I called upon Humboldt in joke to name one person
among his circle, whose son he would like to be from
choice, and whom he would love with pure gratitude."
Probably, in 1798, Humboldt would have chosen none
but Schiller.

The French world, in which Humboldt now for the
second time lived, was full of interest and excitement.
A new social life commenced with the political apathy
under the Directory, and survived its fall. Manners,
laws, and intellectual life were confirmed, and every-
thing began to adopt that physiognomy which charac-
terizes modern France. The representative of this
change was a great woman, daughter of the revolu-
tionary minister Necker, and wife of the Swedish
ambassador. Baron von Stael. She was one of the
greatest literary capacities of these years; and, as such,
could not escape Humboldt's attention. He esteemed
her highly, and praised her works. Madame de Stael
was an enthusiastic admirer of Humboldt, and called
him always, la plus grande capacite de V Europe.
She was not less intimate with Madame von Hum-

312 LIFE OF

boldt, lived for some time with the family, at
Rome, and saw them again in Paris, in subsequent
years.

Before we accompany Humboldt on his journey to
Spain, we must mention an essay, or letter, which he
sent from Paris to his Weimar friends, — probably to
Schiller. The essay is. " On the present French tragic
stage,"' and was printed anonymously, in a journal
edited by Goethe. It describes the French stage
mannerism, and compares it with that of the German
actor, who, he says, merely continues the work of the
poet — gives the feeling and expression, without at the
same time uniting in himself the talents of the artist
and musician, thus making the character he represents
an independent work of art. The French artist,
on the contrary, exceeds in an opposite direction, and
exaggerates nature ; while the true ideal of repre-
sentative or dramatic art unites the two qualities,
modifying excess on both sides.

It is probable that the letters which Alexander
wrote from Spain had determined Humboldt to under-
take a journey thither. The events in France made
a stay in Paris daily more inconvenient for foreigners,
while Spain was now again at peace. Madame von
Humboldt wrote home, in February, 1799, — "At
latest my return to Berlin will be in about a year and
a half Our plans are so. End of next month we
leave this place. I shall stay in the Pyrenees with
the children during the summer, and Humboldt will,
in the meantime, travel to Madrid, perhaps to Lisbon.
In autumn he will join me again, and then we shall
decide whether we live in Paris for the winter, and
return home by way of England, or whether we can
proceed from the south of France to Italy, and then
return to Germany through Switzerland. Either of
these plans would bring us home in about eighteen
months.''

The Spanish journey was realized, although later
than the letter states, and Madaine von Humboldt,
with all the children, accompanied her husband

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 313

through the entire Spanish peninsula. The family
left Pans in July or August, 1799, and repaired to
the south of France. From the shores of the Garonne,
whose fertility Humboldt admired, they reached the
northern point of the Pyrenees. We do not know
how long the travellers remained here ; they crossed
over to Spain at St. Jean de Luz, in Bidassoa. From
Bidassoa William von Humboldt and his caravan
came to Biscay. Biscay and the Basque nations made
the most favourable impression upon him, and excited
a lasting interest. This nation — melted down to a
small handful, while it was once spread over nearly
the whole of the peninsula, and whose language, like,
probably, no other in Europe, has remained almost
unchanged from the earliest periods — had for him a
great attraction, and was a desirable means for attain-
ing to a more profound knowledge of the original
inhabitants of Spain. The language of the Basque
nations charmed him by its strange construction ; the
people, by their honesty and fidelity, by their parti-
ality for their valleys, and their jealous love of their
peculiar liberties and laws. The Spanish Basques,
especially, excited his interest. If the French have
more French sprightliness, the Spanish have the
Spanish seriousness, though not the sternness of the
Castilian, with whose indolence the industry of the
Basques, and their good-natured cheerfulness, form a
most agreeable contrast.

Humboldt entered the Biscayan soil near the boun-
dary fortress of Fuenterrabia, on that portion which
bears the name of Guipuzcoa. It was early in autumn
when he reached these lovely mountain districts and
valleys. The family journeyed across Tolosa to Vit-
toria, the capital of the district Alara. Here, as in
all towns, the paintings in the churches and private
galleries occupied his attention greatly. In Yittoria,
especially, he praises a Magdalen by Titian, in the
house of a Marquess de Alameda. The sketches
which Humboldt has published of this journey con-
clude with his entrance on Castilian soil.

314 LIFE OF

Our travellers soon reached tlie shores of the Ebro,
and journeyed to Madrid across the barren plains of
Castile. Humboldt's descriptions and impressions of
this portion of the Spanish peninsula are only recorded
in his letters to Goethe, and we have, therefore, no
clue to them until this correspondence shall be pub-
lished. We know only so much respecting the
southern and western portion of Spain, that we
can about gather what occupied him most there.
When he composed his elegy to his expected son in
Januar}^, 1800, in the Sierra Morena, he had been in
Cadiz, had admired the splendour of the southern
sea and the beautiful bay, had visited Lower Anda-
lusia, Seville, and the mournful ruins of old Italica,
and had traversed the immense ruins of the twice-
destroyed Saguntum, the present Murviedro, and had
crossed the happy plains of Valencia. These excur-
sions prove that, next to the beauties of nature, no-
thing attracted him so much as the remnants of a
classical world, which he found in these regions.

Our travellers must have leamt something of the
perseverance of the Spaniards, for the family accom-
panied Humboldt on all these pilgrimages ; the eldest
daughter, about eight years of age, always in boy's
clothes, and Madame von Humboldt in a critical
state of health. One point which especially capti-
vated Humboldt's attention was the Montserrat, near
Barcelona, to which he made an excursion in March,
1800, and which he has beautifully described in a
letter to Goethe, published in a geographical journal
at the time, and now included in his collected works.

The journey was made on mules from Barcelona,
through the valley of Llobregat. The Montserrat
stands, as is well known, island-like, rising in the
midst of the plain. Near the summit of the moun-
tain, in it as it were, and surrounded by cones, on
whose summits pious enthusiasm has planted those
hermitages, stands the Benedictine cloister of the
mountain. Humboldt was entertained by the monks
with their celebrated hospitality. He gives a detailed

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 315

*

description of the mountain, of the arrangements and
constitution of this peculiar world, and the life and
character of the people who take refuge in these soli-
tudes. From the cloister he leads the reader to the
hermitages surrounding it ; speaks of the extraordi-
nary play of clouds beneath his feet, of the sea, the
mountains of Rousillon, and the sno\Y-covered tops of
the Pyrenees in the distance, in an entirely peculiar
manner, a master-piece of art. The letter concludes
by an extract of a letter from his brother, who had
visited the mountain in the previous year, and exa-
mined its mineralogic constitution.

The great Spanish journey terminated at the eas-
tern point of the Pyrenees, and amid the plains and
mountains of Catalonia. It was of lasting mfiuence
upon Humboldt, for this country, and this nation,
especially, afforded him a treasure of enjoyment and
instruction. The acquaintance with this southern
primitive nation not only extended his knowledge of
humanity, but it annihilated many of the prejudices
existing against the character of this people in the
rest of Europe. It is probable that Humboldt was
one of the first among German statesmen who lent
their attention to the Spanish rebellion. The peculi-
arities of the nation, and its various tribes, also
afforded plentiful material for pohtical instruction and
reflection.

The fruits of this journey in art and science were
not less abundant. His love and his a^ppreciation of
the fine arts, especially of painting, was increased, and
also his knowledge of antiquity, and of the archi-
tecture of the ancients. The Basque language had
excited his especial interest, and induced him to further
investigations, and finally his journey was prolific for
his other philological studies ; in Spain, and afterwards
in Rome, he brought together such a numerous col-
lection of American dictionaries as had never before
existed.

In the spring of 1800 Humboldt with his family
returned to Paris. Imminent and threatening wars

316 LIFE OF

defeated all plans of travel, while Paris could be safely
inhabited beneath the protection of the consulate,
therefore departure from thence was postponed to the
winter.

The life in Paris was spent as it had been on the
previous occasion, and all the eminent Germans and
other talented men living in Paris again frequented
Madame von Humboldt's saloons. Among others
whose society they enjoyed was that of Rahel Levin,
who visited them here, and with whom a great
intimacy seems to have subsisted.

In May, 1800, Madame von Humboldt was again
confined of twins, a boy and a girl, of whom the
former died shortly after his birth ; the girl was named
Adelheid. The birth of these children had been
greeted in the elegy mentioned upon a former occa-
sion. The departure from Paris was now again
delayed, but in the spring of 1801 everything was
prepared for it. On the last day of May they intended
to proceed to Erfurt and Jena, and spend the winter
in Tegel, when a sudden plan again delayed the
journey a few months.

After the Spanish journey, Humboldt had devoted
himself principally to the study of the Basque. Paris
afforded him opportunities for this which he would
have found nowhere else. He immediately planned
a Basque-Spanish dictionary, compiled from the rare
works and manuscripts in the extensive royal library.
Many of the latter he copied verbatim, and received
some pages on the language of the Basques from
St. Croix, an eminent French philologian.

But all this did not satisfy his desire for knowledge.
On the point of departing for Germany, he turned
suddenly again to the south. This time he left his
family in Paris, and undertook a second journey into
the Spanish and French Basque provinces, with the
intention of completing, by verbal communication,
what was much too imperfect in the printed works.
He spent several weeks in the most retired mountain-
districts of the country, and especially sought out the

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 317

linguists there, before all, D. Pablo Pedro de
Asterloa, pastor of Durango. He examined the
important manuscripts this pastor had collected, and
made extracts or verbatim copies from his great yet
unpublished work. Another linguist whom he visited
was the pastor Moguel, in Marquina, one of the first
philologians in Biscay, who translated the com-
mencement of the " Sallustian Catiline'' for Hum-
boldt.

Humboldt was, however, not equally successful in
attaining all the purposes of his journey. "It was,''
he says, "one of the principal objects of my journey to
Biscay, to find the traces which might still exist of the
oldest history and oldest condition of the people, in old
sagas or in national songs. But I was quite disap-
pointed in the hope of finding anything of importance.
In no other country has the mistaken zeal of the
earliest Christian inhabitants been so successful in
destroying all traces of heathen antiquity. It is
impossible to attain a satisfactory account of the con-
stitution, religion, or manners of the ancient Basques ;
and but a very few traces of these old times have
survived in the language, the popular names of the
months and days, a few proper names, national dances
or fables." Of old songs he could only find one very
imperfect fragment, whose age also seemed to him
doubtful for many reasons. He met with it in a col-
lection of manuscripts in the house of M. Heugartegui,
of Marquina.

Humboldt noted down his remarks on the spot
where he made them, and then hastened back to
Paris to his family. His interest in the Basque
nations remained equally strong for years, but the
change of residence, as well as of occupation, prevented
his publishing the results of his researches until a
much later period.

In the summer of 1 801 the whole family returned
to Berlin through Erfurt and Weimar, and lived there
and in Tegel a year. During this time the youngest
daughter Gabriele was born.

318 LIFE OF

This lengtliened sojourn in their native town was
made more agreeable by the improvement in the
intellectual life of Berlin which had taken place
during their absence; and it must also have afforded
Humboldt the greatest pleasure to find that Schiller's
works were successfully represented on the Berlin
stage. It was also of interest to watch the statesmen
who were preparing themselves to gather round their
king and his noble queen, and save Prussia from the
state of corruption into which it had fallen, and
whose names gave great promise of the future. Still
Humboldt would not have felt induced to exchange
his leisure and independence for public official service,
had not the requirements of the latter accidentally
harmonized with his own plans. The Prussian minister
in Rome had sent in his request for dismissal, and
Beyme, a privy councillor of the King of Prussia,
proposed Humboldt as the future minister resident in
Bome. This post was well adapted for the classically-
educated and art-loving man, as he would there have
abundant and the best opportunities of devoting him-
self to his intellectual development. He anticipated
only advantage from his stay in Bome, combined as
it would be with some business occupation. When
he had been in Bome some time, he wrote to Schiller :
" I was in no desirable mood in Berlin, and even in
Paris. I had been in no fortunate productive vein
for some years ; I knew so many things, and some
better than many others, and yet they would not
combine to a result, and I could not be satisfied
with the active part of my existence. It seemed
therefore better to me to give my activity a
positive, even if it were only a common, occupation,
and I sought only for one which would at the same
time take me again to some important spot." At
the same time he assured Schiller that nothing would
make him forgetful of his. higher calling, and it was
on this occasion that he told him that ideas would
always be to him the highest in the world. " But
it is also true/' he continues, "that if all one's time is

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 819

leisure time, and no compulsion forces a positive
application of it, much time would be lost."

Under such auspices, Humboldt entered upon his
diplomatic career. He was made a chamberlain, and
was appointed privy councillor of legation, and resi-
dent minister at the papal court, and departed for his
post, in the autumn of 1802, accompanied by his
whole family.

But he did not depart without having taken leave
of the friends of his heart. In Halle he visited
Wolf ; in Weimar, Goethe and Schiller. He also took
with him a young philologian, Dr. Riemer, as tutor to
his children.

He did not then imagine that he should not see
Schiller again, for the latter was now at the zenith of
his activity. The friends conversed much of Rome,
and Schiller imparted to him a plan for a history of
Rome, which he was deferring to days when the
poetic inspiration might perhaps have left him.

Filled with such impressions and ideas, Humboldt
with his family crossed the Alps.

S20 LIFE OF

CHAPTER VL

We now enter upon one of the most important
periods of Humboldt's life, one to which he ever after-
wards referred with love and gratitude. He arrived
in upper Italy and in Milan in October, 1802, and it
is probable that he visited Venice and Florence on the
way to Rome, as he did not arrive in the dwelling
which, had been prepared for him, the Villa di Malta,
till the 25th November. This villa and former
summer residence of the knights of Malta, inha-
bited also by the Duchess Amalie of Weimar and
Herder, and now the property of King Ludwig of
Bavaria, is situated at the foot of the Pincian Hill. A
high turret, monasterical arrangements, many stairs
through outbuildings and wings, a whole club of
houses grouped round lovely gardens, and favoured by
the most beautiful views towards all sides, that is the
seat which has already harboured so many artists and
art friends, men of all nations, and which now became
the residence of the Humboldt family. From the
wing which they occupied they enjoyed the view to
the South-east ; the distant prospect over the Cam-
pagna to the heights of Albano was before them, and
made a never-to-be-forgotten first impression. Frie-
derike Brun, who lived in Rome at that time and in
the same villa, has described their arrival : — " After
long waiting, a heavily laden travelling-carriage drove
slowly up the steep ascent. The father has already
descended ; a little child which can walk, and a very
small one carefully wrapped up, are handed out to the
nurses, who have also descended. Now one, two, three

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 321

boys jump out of the carriage, and then the fatigued,
anxious mother." The eldest daughter had again
made the journey in boy's attire, Adelheid, the next
one, was only in her third year, and the youngest was
about six months old and seemed not likely to live
much longer. The mother had not recovered from
the severe illness she had undergone in Berlin. The
youngest child soon, however, revived under her care,
" and scarcely,'" continues our informant, " had our
amiable neighbour been a fortnight in Rome, when,
in spite of her cares by day and night, we saw her
beautiful eyes, radiant with love and mind, brighten
again, her chesnut hair curled round her lovely head,
her cheeks bloomed again, and the expressive mouth
smiled with its charmingly mischievous smile.''

The family was soon settled in Rome, so that they
only complained of the smoky chimneys. Dr. Riemer
took charge of the boys ; a German doctor whom they
had brought with them to Italy, Dr. Kohlrausch, gave
his, not, alas ! always successful medical services to the
family.

From the first day of their arrival in Rome their
hospitable house was thrown open to their friends and
acquaintance, who were invited once for all to tea every
evening. The first winter was spent in intimate inter-
course with the artists resident in Rome, especially
Thorwaldsen, Schick, Reinhard, Keller, Lund, and
with Zoega, Fernow, Bonstetten, Friederike Brun,
and others.

Humboldt himself was also soon at home in the
Eternal City. Alone with his wife, or only accom-
panied by the elder children, he wandered through
its environs that he might revel in undisturbed enjoy-
ment of its beauties. He refers to this period in one
of his best sonnets, in which he says that two shadows
gliding beside each other are frequently used as a
comparison for intimate union, but that he and his
companion were much more as one.

No land excited and satisfied so many expectations
which Humboldt had formed, as Italy. Not only the

S22 LIFE OF

soil and tlie climate, but the people, tlieir language, art,
and literature, refreshed and pleased him. And his
love for antiquity could in no other country revel
amid such interesting associations. Italy |was fore
most in nearly all the branches of civic and political
activity ; and in the centuries in which the modern
tendencies first rose in intellectual importance to
oppose the ancient life, its history surpasses that of all
other nations. According to Humboldt's opinion, no
country can be compared to Italy in the number of
eminent men which it has produced. The study of
art and nature was developed here earlier than with
any other nation. Even the tone and sterling strength
of its language, its poetic fitness, filled him with
admiration. Of all the modifications which the Latin
has undergone, this seems to him as the most interest-
ing, and he has made its remarkable formation the
subject of especial consideration in the introduction to
his great philological work. In no other Komanic
language has the modern spirit remained so faithful
to the ancient form, without detriment, however, to its
independence or peculiar characteristic. Humboldt
also acknowledged the great and beautiful in Italian
art and poetry, which harmonized more with his
spiritual tendency than the severe Northern art ; so
Raphael interested him more than Sha^kespeare, and
Ariosto more than Ossian's shadowy creations. He
only prefers the Germanic tendency where depth of
meaning and truth of characteristic is so ornamented
with classic beauty, as we find it with the great
modern German poets. He could not, of course, with all
his appreciation of the Italian world and its greatness,
overlook the present degradation of the people ; but
he forgave them, in consideration of what they had
once been and once achieved.

If Italy, as a whole, was so dear to Humboldt, it
was natural that Rome, the Eternal City, should
excite an enthusiasm in him which was sometimes
carried very far, but whose deeply-felt expression is
irresistibly attractive to his admirers. Rome's great-

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 323

ness lies in its twofold past, and in the ruins which
reveal it. These ruins seemed to Humboldt such a
peculiar whole, that he grudged the spot another
historical development, from fear that what already
existed might be injured by it. He cherished this
enthusiasm not only in the moment of enjoyment :
the feeling for Roman greatness never left him, but
stands forth as the theme of a whole course of sonnets,
and is also expressed in an article on Goethe's second
visit to Rome, in which he says — " Rome's greatness
consists principally in something connected indisso-
lubly with the whole ; with the mixture of ancient
and modern splendour; with the ruins which meet
the eye for miles; with the plains, the mountains
enclosing it, the long series of historic recollections,
and indistinct tradition. This was plainly shown at
the time when it was robbed of its best treasures of
art, of the memorable remnants of antiquity, in a
shameful and undignified manner. There will always
be a great difference between countries and towns
which were themselves the scenes of classical anti-
quity, and those which were never warmed by that
first ennobling influence on humanity. In the latter,
the antique works of art resemble only a collection of
articles brought together from all parts ; in the for-
mer, the soil itself is impregnated with the feeling,
and seems to bear them in inexhaustible profusion, like
trees and fruit.'' But few can share such high appre-
ciation and enjo3niient truly. The Romans know
their city more from the reflex of the impression it
makes on strangers, and the real traveller rarely can
harmonize in such exalted feelings as those of Hum-
boldt. It is only with the artists residing there that
one can associate ; with such who make it their intel-
lectual and spiritual home ; who commence studies
there, or continue former ones, or give themselves up
entirely to the pure enjoyment which is afforded to
all the senses, and yet affords such an inexhaustible
depth for research.

Humboldt wrote a long elegy, entitled "Rome,"
Y 2

S24 LIFE OF

which was published with his name in 1806, in Ber-
lin. It is the largest poem he has Avritten, and may
be considered one of the most remarkable poetical
productions, both for its sentiments and the highly-
poetical form.

This poem is written with great ease and clearness ;
and only where the poet soars into entirely ideal
regions, as towards the conclusion, his thoughts refuse
to take a very comprehensible form. The poem was
originally dedicated to Humboldt's friend, Frau von
Wolzogen, whom he addresses in the last verses.

The Humboldts left the Villa di Malta in March of
the following year, as it was too small for them, and
removed to a more roomy residence in the Strada Gre-
goriana, on the Trinita del Monte, quite near the Span-
ish Place, which was the central point for strangers; and
here only was Humboldt able to make his house a
temple of hospitality, open to every worthy comer.

From his large, lofty rooms, high windows afforded
the most beautiful view, and his house was truly
Italian in its architecture, while German sociality
reigned within. Every evening the most mixed so-
ciety was gathered together at tea, and reminded
those present of Berlin or London companies. The
theatre only disturbed this arrangement sometimes,
and then Humboldt did not fail to take as many
friends as possible with him. Select friends were
invited to dinner, and after dinner they frequently
drove friends or strangers in their carriage through
the town and its environs. Report says that a cen-
tral reunion, like the one offered in Humboldt's
house, has not since that time existed in Eome.

High and low met here ; the stream of strangers
which constantly flows through Rome visited these
halls ; all intellectual and artistic celebrities were
united in it, before all the German artists resident in
Rome. For a quiet mind^ the crowd which met here
every evening was almost too much. Here a cardinal
conversed with a German professor ; there a painter
was obliged to converse for hours with a duchess in

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 325

languages he barely understood. In the background
Humboldt conversed with his friend Zoega ; while
Lucien Bonaparte was paying his court to the lady
of the house. Madame von Humboldt, while she did
the honours of the house, displayed more than any-
where else her great social talents. She was the soul
of this splendid circle, which she filled with her mind
and amiability, — -not her husband, who lived more for
a few chosen individuals. Such was their reputation
at the time, that few books written on Rome or
Roman life at that period neglect to name them
with praise and respect.

In autumn a pause generally intervened, for then
Humboldt repaired to the country for some time with
his family. Immediately after his arrival in Rome
he hired a summer residence in Ariccia, and went
there in July of the following year ; but a domestic
misfortune occasioned their quick return to Rome,
and made them take an aversion to this residence in
future.

In the autumn of 1804, we find him in Albano.
Here, and in the neighbouring Marino, he made a
short stay every year, and excursions to more distant
points were sometimes undertaken from here; but we
know nothing of longer journeys to different parts of
Italy, which he must doubtless have made. We do
not know whether he was in Sicily — how he liked
Florence — not even that he visited Naples ; though
so much is sure, that nothing, to his mind, equalled
the influence Rome exercised over him.

Unalloyed happiness rarely falls to the lot of man.
Perhaps it is that we may the better enjoy its plea-
sures that pain is mingled with them by fate. In
the first year of his Roman residence, Humboldt met
with a heavy loss, that of his eldest boy. Since July
1803 his family had been frequently in Ariccia, to
spend the hottest part of the summer there in the
cool air. In this summer the heat was insupportable
even in the hills, and the strangers especially fell
victims to it. About three weeks after this misfortune

326 LIFE OF

Humboldt writes to Schiller : " Rome, 27tli August.
I write to you, dear friend, with a sad heart. T may-
say that, since I live, the first misfortune has befallen
me, but this first blow is almost the severest that
could have come/' His eldest son, Wilhelm, had
been suddenly carried off by a malignant fever. The
child had scarcely been ill a few days. A slight attack
of fever was followed by violent bleeding of the nose.
The family was in Ariccia, but Dr. Kohlrausch — a
doctor who did not perhaps merit such confidence —
was with them. He did what he could, but in thirty-
six hours the boy fell a victim to the violence of the
attack. " His death '' — so writes his afflicted father —
" was calm, very calm ; he had cheerful dreams, — did
not suffer nor expect death. He now lies at the foot
of the pyramid of Caius Cestus, which Goethe can
describe to you. I have lost very much with this
child. Among them all, he was most fond of being
with me ; he scarcely ever left me, particularly during
the last few months ; I occupied myself regularly with
him ; he always walked with me, asked about every-
thing, knew most of the localities and the ruins, and
was every one's favourite, because he spoke with all,
and in tolerably good Italian. Now this is all gone !
This death has robbed me of all my confidence in
life. I trust no more to my fortune, to fate, to the
strength of events. If this impetuous, blooming,
strong life could be extinguished so suddenly, what
then is certain ? And, on the other hand, I have all
at once gained an infinite conviction : I never feared
death, nor had a childish love of life ; but if a being
we love is dead, the sensation is different. We think
ourselves at home in two worlds.''

Immediately after this blow, the family hastened to
the town, for a similar misfortune threatened another
child. The younger boy, Theodor, was attacked by
the same illness, a severe brain fever, only with less
suddenly dangerous symptoms. For three days his
recovery was despaired of, but he was saved. It may
be imagined how much the anxious mother suffered

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 327

during this time, and Humboldt states that she be-
haved with extraordinary calmness and self-possession.
He afterwards feared a sudden outbreak of the re-
pressed evil, but it did not appear, and all things
would have gone on as before in Humboldt's house if
the loss could have been so easily forgotten. A friend
of Humboldt's writes, on the 2nd September, 1 803, —
" The sadness which reigns in this formerly so merry
house, the only one I frequent, and whose inmates are
the most amiable people I know, has quite depressed
my spirits."

Schiller was also much affected by his friend's loss,
and announced it at onc(; to Goethe. He says in his
letter, — "From the inclosure you will sec that our
friend Humboldt has been sorely afflicted. Write to
him, if you can, a word of sympathy. I pity him
much, for this child was the most hopefid of them
all.'' On the 12th September, he writes to th(3 afflicted
father : " In this sad event I can do nothing but share
your grief You were justified in cherishing the
brightest hopes. Everything was combined to pro-
mise a happy life to the boy, and now all these hopes
are violently destroyed. Like you, no great affliction
has hitherto visited me, and I cannot refrain, on this
occasion, to look into my own heart, and fancy the
possible loss of those dear to me. With my failing
health, I had attained to the firm conviction that I
should never be so situated, but your loss, my dear
friend, convinces me that all these calculations are
deceptive." He advises him at the same time, if the
climate should be too trying for his wife and children,
rather to set aside all other considerations, as he was
always master of his own fate.

Hereupon Humboldt breaks out anew into com-
plaints : " The loss I have suffered," he replies, on
the 22nd October, " is ever present to my imagination,
and nothing can compensate for it. Even in the first
moments, dearest friend, the pain did not deprive me
of mental clearness, or of a certain calmness. But a
sadness and loncfinsr overpower me since that unfor-

328 LIFE OF

tunate epocli, of which I can give you no description.
It seems to me, that the death of a child has some-
thing more affecting than the death of an adult per-
son. Not ruled yet by its own will, it trustfully
follows that of others, and it seems as if one had de-
ceived its careless confidence, even if death is only the
result of mere blind fate.

" Dear Schiller, why are you not here now ? For
that I left you, I do not like to think. Rome has
enchanted me in every way, and it is even difficult
to leave the soil to which one has entrusted one be-
loved thing. You may imagine that I should not
remain a moment here, if 1 had to fear the least dan-
ger for my family.'' But this, he says, is not at all
the case. Peculiar circumstances had been combined
in the one unfortunate case ; the blooming health of
the other children showed that the climate was not
unfavourable. " You should have seen poor Wilhelm
a day only before his illness; and the Princess Rudol-
stadt will tell you that he bloomed like a rose, and

death has disfigured him but little You can,

therefore, let me remain here a few years longer. I
cannot tell you how I enjoy this residence. Here
everything is inspiring and cheering. I am more
fruitful in ideas, and even the sadness, even the bitter
pain, leaves a clearness and cheerfulness of mind.''

In the commencement of the following year, soon
after the loss above mentioned, Madame von Hum-
boldt gave birth to a daughter, who died very soon.
She was, however, in such a delicate state of health,
that she undertook a journey to Germany to restore
it. Her doctor. Dr. Kohlrausch, accompanied her.
The newly-born child seems to have died on this
journey. She visited the friends in Weimar in May ;
it must have been a painful pleasure to Schiller to
meet her again in such bad health, and he does not
conceal to Humboldt that he felt uneasy about her.
From Weimar Madame von Humboldt repaired to
Paris, as it seems, with the intention of gathering

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. S29

speedier intelligence of Alexander von Humboldt,
whose return was anxiously anticipated.

Humboldt had received a letter from Havanna, from
his brother, announcing his approaching return, but
soon afterwards the report was spread that the cele-
brated traveller had died of the yellow fever, when
he was on the point of embarkation. It now hap-
pened that Madame von Humboldt was in Paris,
when Alexander, with all his treasures, entered the
Garonne, in August, 1804. As soon as the news of
this happy event arrived in Paris, the sister-in-law
was at once informed of it by the secretary of the
National Institute. Alexander hastened from Bor-
deaux to Paris, delighted to meet here a member
of his family whom he had not anticipated seeing
till the commencement of the following year in
Rome.

Madame von Humboldt, after another confinement
in the autumn of 1804, left Paris in the spring of
1805, and with renewed strength joined her husband,
who had, in the mean time, spent a happy summer,
.devoted to solitude and study, in his retreat of Albano.
The new comer was a boy, and was named Gustavus,
but died after a few years, in 1807, in Rome. Both
sons are buried at the foot of the Cestius pjrramid,
the well-known burial place of protestants in Rome;
but they lie in an inclosure presented by the Roman
people to this family. Two broken antique pillars
designate the spot where the children rest.

The year 1805 was the finest which the family
spent in Rome ; not only that a great number of
distinguished men were living in it during this period,
but in spring, Alexander arrived on a lengthened
visit to his brother.

The six years which William spent in Rome, were,
in reality, also years of leisure, for the official business
he had undertaken occupied him but little. Schiller
had feared it, but Humboldt assured him that this
was not the case ; that he lived as before, even if he

3S0 LIFE OF

had not quite so much time at his command. " You
must remember/' he writes, on the 22nd October,
1803, " that my business here has little to do with
politics. It does not therefore oblige me, as another
embassy would, to spend my time in going to parties,
and still less have I many cares or responsibilities.
The most important part of my duties consists in
single commissions ; these generally refer only to
private interests, and are important to me only in
so far as it is expected that I should execute them
in one or the other way; and, as it is interesting to
prevent, as far as possible, the influence which they
wish to extend from Rome over the most distant
places. These things do indeed cost time, they oc-
cupy several days of the week, if I include the ex-
tensive correspondence they entail, and the writing,
visiting, &c. The political correspondence, though it
is a mere communication of news, has to be made,
and, as I do everything myself, it certainly needs
some degree of industry and order to accomplish all
this, and have some leisure besides.'' In this he
succeeded, and as he had wished to be forced to a
regular application of his time, by some business
compulsion, there was no cause to regret his choice and
determination.

The post of the Prussian Ambassador to the papal
<3ourt was a very favourable one at that period, and
has probably never been so to such a degree since
then. Before Pius VII., who had only a short time
previously succeeded to the holy chair, Prussia had no
standing embassy in Rome. But at this period, for
the first time for centuries, the Holy See was
threatened by violence, and from a principal partizan
of Catholicism, while the other partizan had enough
to do to protect itself, so that it could not save others.
The struggle of France against the papal power,
commenced already at the end of the eighteenth
century ; the head of the church was deposed and
imprisoned. In 1800, the country was cleared of its
enemies, who, however, carried off some of the most

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 331

valuable works of art. Some years of peace followed,
but with the increasing good fortune of the French
emperor, these insults were renewed, and when
Humboldt left Rome, the immediate destruction of the
papal dominions seemed approaching.

All the weapons of the hierarchy, submission or
opposition, were alike inefficient against Napoleon^s
power. The pope went to Paris in 1804, to crown
Napoleon, but in vain. With the seizure of the
citadel of Ancona, a new series of hostilies commenced,
which terminated in July, 1809, with the imprison-
ment and abduction of the pope, and with the incor-
poration of the dominions of the church in the French
empire.

In such times of distress and ill usage by old
friends, those rise into favour who were before more
disregarded or treated with suspicion. Prussia, which
had offered no insults to the pope, and was even de-
feated by the common enemy, made this experience,
and was treated with more consideration, as it sent such
an extraordinary and skilful representative to Rome
as Humboldt, an individual who imposed respect in
every situation, and whose pecuHar talents were
perhaps better esteemed in the Vatican than subse-
quently, sometimes, in great assemblies of European
diplomatists. His partiality for antiquity, for art, his
patronage of foreign artists, not only German or
Prussian, which he exercised liberally, and in which
he has since been imitated by all the ambassa-
dors of Prussia ; the hospitality and liberality of his
house, at a time when want and distress frequently
reigned in Rome ; all this gained for Humboldt the
especial favour and esteem, not only of the govern-
ment, but of the Roman people.

This was shown on every occasion. If a great
solemnity, a canonization, took place, tickets were
always reserved for him and his friends; sometimes
even the cardinal's box was given to him. Another
time, a foreign, but not a Prussian artist, had insulted
an eminent person in Rome, so that he was banished.

882 LIFE OF

and no applications for mercy were of any avail. But
Sit Humboldt's intercession, the matter was dropped.
In his favour, the Romans even departed from es-
tablished rules, and gave him freely what they had
never conceded to the protestants. Their burial place
by the Cestius pyramid is an open unenclosed space,
and may not be enclosed or fastened. But to the
family of Humboldt, the Romans voted an inclosed
space among the other graves, and presented the spot
to them.

Although Humboldt had, as he himself says, little
to do with politics at the post in which he commenced
his diplomatic career, it was yet very well calculated
to develope in him the ability and finesse which
characterized him so eminently in subsequent years.
If there is a spot on which one can see through all
the tricks and cunning of low diplomacy, and learn
the greatness of the true science, Rome is the place.
Gonsalvi himself was a head with whom alone it was
worth while to be matched.

Of the other diplomatists acting in Rome at this
time we need only mention Cardinal Fesch, as Neapo-
litan ambassador, and the Danish envoy. Baron von
Schubart, who, being accredited also to the court of
Florence, generally resided in Leghorn. Schubart
was also celebrated as the patron of his countrymen,
especially of artists. He was intimate with Humboldt
and a welcome guest in his house, which was often
obliged to receive titled visitors who had nothing but
their rank to recommend them.

Humboldt and his wife took a lively interest in the
works of contemporary artists. The latter showed her
admiration for all branches of art, and she was indeed
more partial to the romantic style of painting than
her husband, whom the bright figures and severe forms
of the ancients, and our classic poetry, had rendered
more averse to the sombre, confused, and sometimes
even morbid character of many of the modern art pro-
ductions. Besides this, poetry alone had occupied
him in his youth, and the other arts only when his

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 333

archaeological studies had rendered it necessary. His
greater journeys, however, tended to cultivate his love
for art in all directions, except in music, for which
nature had denied him any talent.

Strange that Humboldt should here also greet and
assist the progress of a better time. The art of paint-
ing applied itself, with great success, to emulate the
depth, warmth, and beauty of a Kaphael and a Michael
Angelo. The poetic feeling of the German nation was
destined to give at least an imitation of that great
past. At the same time young sculptors endeavoured
to conceive their representations strictly and purely in
the spirit of Greek art, and to refrain from every vain
ornamentation. Thus in both arts Germans achieved
what had been denied to the most eminent talents of
Italy and France. This renovation proceeded from a
few. In painting, the first were Asmus Karsten from
Schleswig, with the two Wiirtemberg artists, Eberhard
Wachter and Gottlieb Schick ; in plastic art, the Dana
Thorwaldsen, and the German sculptor Rauch, who
followed close upon Thorwaldsen. When Humboldt
arrived in Rome, Karstens had unfortunately already
expired, and the surviving veteran Wachter had re-
turned to his native country, but Thorwaldsen had
achieved his first triumphs, Schick had but lately
arrived and found a congenial sphere here, and the
young Rauch arrived soon afterwards. The first cele-
brated modern works of art were produced in quick
succession ; before all, Thorwaldsen's Jason, and Schick^s
Apollo among the Shepherds,

If Humboldt owed a great part of his artistic educa-
tion to his Roman residence, he has richly compen-
sated this gain to the artists in Rome. For it was
more than common hospitality that they enjoyed in
his house. He and his wife advanced art and artists
with advice and active assistance. They cared for
them when they fell sick, they assisted them with
funds, so that they might not be forced to give away
their works below their value. They gave large orders^
and had great influence in introducing artists and

334 LIFE OF

their productions into the first society, and thus obtain-
ing reputation and honour for true art.

When the Humboldts arrived in Rome they found
Thorwaldsen already there, and an inferior German
sculptor, Heinrich Keller, from Zurich. Of painters they
had the Austrian pensioner, Abel ; the young Schick
from Stuttgart ; then the landscape-painter, Carl Rein-
hardt ; the well-known veteran of German art in Rome,
Joseph Koch, Tyrolez, and the Englishman Wallis ;
the drawer and copper-plate engraver, Imelin; the
landscape-draAver, Carl Grass ; and the portrait-painter,
Angelica Kaufmann. Each year brought a new relay
of talents, principally of those who had already adopted
the modern romantic school. Among these are the
sculptors Ranch and Franz Tieck ; of painters, the two
brothers Riepenhausen, Wagner of Wiirzburg, Jage-
mann of Weimar, Platner of Leipzic, and Leybold
and Steinkopf from Stuttgart. We must not forget
Muller, who is indeed better known as a painter,
and who remained an amateur in art, but who is
valuable as a connoisseur and critic. Humboldt
seems to have been partial to Imelin, and names him
to Schiller as an extremely upright man. Grass also
was a welcome guest. He was not a great artist, but
a variously cultivated man, and an enthusiastic admirer
of Schiller, and best known for the description of a
Sicilian journey. His poetry was only a poor imita-
tion of the great master. His talent seems to have
been devoted to the " Morgenblatt,'' which contained
his " Farewell to Summer,'' dedicated to Madame von
Humboldt. Humboldt himself joked with him. Thus
we are told by some one who visited the family in
Albano in autumn, and who purposed looking at the
country before dinner, that Humboldt said, " If you
should meet a man whose one shirt collar falls down
while the other rises up very high, you have that
genius the landscape-painter Grass before you.'' The
stranger found this satirical announcement confirmed
by the reality.

But Schick, Thorwaldsen, and Ranch, were those

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. S35

wlio received most attention and consideration from
the Humboldts; and Thorwaldsen subsequently made
one of his finest works, his Speranza, for Madame von
Humboldt. They also soon detected the great talent
of the painter Schick. They had met him in Paris,
where he had commenced his first studies under
David. In Rome his tendencies were more deve-
loped, and they showed him every favour. He was
almost looked upon as an inmate of the household;
and he had reason to mention these favours in the
most grateful manner in his letters home. He wrote,
in April, 1803, to his family in Stuttgart : " The
house of the Prussian ambassador is the place of ren-
dezvous for all the eminent men in Rome ; of all
those who visit there, I am almost the only one who
has no title and is of humble extraction, and yet hun-
dreds of proofs have convinced me that I am not the
least liked among them. I owe it to this family if
my ideas here expand.'' Another time he relates
that Humboldt had composed the dedication with
which he accompanied a picture for the Duke of
Wurtemberg. Schick was also an excellent portrait-
painter, and has executed most beautiful productions
in this respect for Humboldt ; works which belong to
the finest things that modern art has produced, and
which are now ornaments to the castle of Tegel.
They are as follows : 1, the sketch for a family pic-
ture, the mother surrounded by her children ; 2, the
portrait of Madame von Humboldt and one of her sons ;
3, the portrait of the eldest daughter, with a guitar in
her hand, a full-length full-size portrait ; and 4, a
splendid oil-painting, the two youngest girls, Adelheid
and Gabriele, who, embracing each other, sit barefoot
on a wall. These and many other works Schick made
for Humboldt while resting from his greater historical
works. Humboldt did much to extend Schick's
fame in Rome, and subsequently in Vienna and Berlin.
Schick unfortunately fell ill in a few years, and could
therefore not accept their kind invitation to Vienna.
He would probably have found a remunerative ap-

336 LIFE OF

pointment in Berlin, which Humboldt was endeavour-
ing to secure for him, but he died shortly after his
return to Germany, in 181 2. An unfinished oil-picture
— Christ as a youth, sleeping, and guarded by angels —
Madame von Humboldt was anxious to secure at any
price, but the family would not sell it. The third of
the artists they distinguished was Eauch. He came
to Rome in 1805, and during six years was received
by them with affectionate hospitality. He made
some statues for the family during that time — namely,
Mars, and Diomedes wounded, and the statue of
a young girl, a daughter of Humboldt, which he sub-
sequently executed in marble.

The country, its history, and the treasures contained
in the town and its vicinity, were also of the greatest
interest for Humboldt in his studies. What treasures
are alone contained in the library of the Vatican !
And how many things Humboldt found here which
he would have sought in vain elsewhere, and which
were especially valuable for his extensive philological
studies, for which no one could offer more resources than
the Propaganda of Rome. Humboldt frequently enu-
merates the works he met with in the extensive library
of the CoUegio Romano. He also collected American
grammars during his Italian residence. The inves-
tigations into the Coptic language were in vogue
just then, and the well-known museum of Cardinal
Borgia, of Yelletri, offered materials for hieroglyphic
studies. Indeed, the classic soil could not but afford
incalculable treasures to a mind which had from afar
already penetrated into its sanctuaries.

All this, however, only occupied his genius very
partially, and he was entirely without personal incite-
ment. We cannot, therefore, wonder if we always
see him look back longingly to his German friends.
In this spirit he writes to Wolf, on the 20th July,
1805 : "The pleasure I should feel in accompanying
you here is beyond description. It would be, after
years, the first truly intellect-satisfying conversation.
The scientific society which can be had here is dry

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 337

and insipid. Even Zoega, who certainly has exten-
sive views, is wanting in lively interest. He is a
universal indifFerentist and sceptic ; and though his
erudition is not injured thereby, his conversation
loses its charm. You would be interested in seeing
JZoega. My brother even remarked that his society
is not at all conducive to excite the productive facul-
ties, but rather the contrary. You know,'' continues
Humboldt, "that Spalding (the philologian from
Berlin) is here. But I have not enjoyed his society
as much as I might have done. I find, indeed, that
he has became more spiritless, and can speak of
nothing now but of long and short syllables, and of
etymologies. He was entirely occupied here with his
whole family, wife, son, &c. Would you believe that
during his visit of six weeks to Rome, I once found
him, at noon, playing cards en faonille. He did our
nation little honour. Every one acknowledged his
good nature ; but his pedantry, his rage to make bad
verses in all languages, and his shallowness, have
alternately surprised and disgusted Zoega, Marina,
and all the better class. Imagine only that here, in
the Corsinian Library, he copied thirty to forty
Homeric — genuine Homeric — verses out of the Iliad,
which were only not placed in their proper place as
new ones, that he related his discovery to all, and
pretended to have found barbaric words, such as
xsTTsrop, in them, nor would he let Zoega convince
him of his error till some days later. If he had only
not boasted of all this so, and to me ! He has made
innumerable verses, and always German and Latin at
the same time, and sometimes Greek also, but he will
certainly not have profited in the least by his journey.
He searched for Quintilian everywhere, and then
scarcely looked at it. You will feel, my friend, that
this impression of a German scholar needs to be wiped
-away.

"I know of no news to tell you. Here a new
book is written about twice in ten years, and the
remainder of the time it is talked of You know what

338 LIFE OF

is being done here. Antiquities are dug up now and
then, here and there, but none of any importance, as these
labours are not regularly or perseveringly prosecuted.
Fea's discoveries near the Pantheon might be im-
portant, if he did not look at them in a very casual
manner, then assert his opinion very obstinately, and
then generally fill up the holes again, which is indeed
the best way to escape contradiction."

Humboldt says himself, that of the Roman scholars
he esteemed Monsignor Marini, the predecessor of
Cardinal Mai as president of the library of the
Vatican, most highly. Fea, the well-known editor of
" Horace,'' is described in the above letter ; and of
the other Italian celebrities little can be said. Hum-
boldt's most intimate scientific friend was, as we have
already stated, Georg Zoega, born in Jiitland, but
educated entirely as a German. His profound know-
ledge of antiquity of languages, and his accurate ac-
quaintance with the topogra23hy of old and new Rome,
made him an interesting companion for Humboldt.
His amiable and fine nature had been, at an early
age, broken down by care and misfortune, so that
Humboldt found him sometimes a by no means
cheering companion. But for Zoega, in the last sad
years of his life, this friendship was all the more bene-
ficial, and Humboldt's house was the only one which
the failing invalid still visited. Humboldt made him
his companion in Rome and its environs, and he
could scarcely have found a more ajDpropriate one.
He in return assisted, sympathized with, and inspired
him in his studies. He no doubt joined him in his
studies of the Coptic, and of the subsequently better-
understood hieroglyphics. He took part in his
investigations of the antique bas-reliefs, and in his
topography of Rome. Yery shortly after Zoega
died, Humboldt left Rome.

It is time now to refer to the intellectual pro-
ductions of Humboldt during his Roman residence,
and to such of these as have been published. Rome
influenced his productive talent favourably, and if the

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 339

study of the place deterred him, as he says, from
independent productions; if he called himself and
his family, in joke, the people that spend their days
in walking; if, also, his official duties occupied a
portion of his time, and if he was carried away some-
times by a contemplative enjoyment of the great and
beautiful in art, and sometimes by the demands of
social life, we must consider, also, that he had accus-
tomed himself from his youth upwards to a restless
activity, and most conscientious application of his
time ; that he did more in hours stolen from his
ordinary occupations than others in a lifetime, and
that subsequently he found time, in the maddest
whirl of business, and when overwhelmed with the
most difficult affairs, to cultivate his favourite tenden-
cies. How much more could he not do this while he
was in Rome, with so much leisure to live for himself,
in a circle which excited and elevated him, and
where nothing existed of the circumstances which
had so frequently depressed and annoyed him in
Berlin and Paris. Here he felt himself more fruitful
in ideas, and if he completed few works, he was in
the real happy vein for production, and the creative,
the poetic spirit, of which scarcely a trace existed in
the days of Jena, developed itself more and more.
Two larger didactic lyric effusions are published,

which were written during the residence in Rome

the elegy, " Rome,'' which we have already refeiTed
to, and a poem to Alexander von Humboldt,
written in Albano, September, 1808, which was
published by the latter after his brother's death. It
was the reply of William to the great descri23tions
which his brother had given him on his return,
verbally and in his '' Views of Nature.'' This first
result of the great journey had been dedicated to
him by Alexander, and the poem reflects the impres-
sion made by it ; it transports us to the midst of that
great and wild nature, the uncultivatedness and the
distant future of this new world. It compares it
with the poverty and the greatness of the old world,
z 2

340 LIFE OF

shows the Indians the example of the Pelasgians and
Hellenes, and gives an interpretation of the great
laws of historical life. In matter and form this poem
ranks with his two former ones, the elegy to his son,
and that on Eome. In all we find poetry allied with
the philosophy of history, as in Schiller's " Poems on
Civilization,'' except that Humboldt's have a more
personal subject, and that therefore personal feelings
of enthusiasm have a freer vent in them, though they
certainly are second to Schiller's in talent and per-
fection. It is, however, a fine testimony of fraternal love.

The other fruits of Humboldt's literary activity are
mentioned in a sketch which Schlegel sent to Goethe
in 1805, under the title, "Artistic and Literary News
from Rome." He says, among other things, "Herr
von Humboldt, the Prussian ambassador to the papal
court, has completed a translation of the '■ Agamem-
non' of -^schylus in verse, and even of what is not
lyric, the trimeters, the anapests, and the trochaic
tetrameters, exactly in the metres of the original, with
the greatest fidelity, and in a language worthy of the
pathos of the old master. The publication of this
production would be the more welcome, as we have
hitherto only Stolberg's translation, which cannot be
called faithful, either according to the spirit or the
form. Herr von Humboldt is also continuing to devote
his attention to linguistic researches on the Biscayan
dialect, and to the origin and connexion of European
lano-uages in general. We wish he would publish
something on ancient Rome, with whose ruins he has
become perfectly acquainted during the few years of
his residence there ; such a work, composed not only
in an antiquarian, but in an historical and philoso-
pnical point of view, could not fail to be very
interesting."

The translation of " Agamemnon" on which Hum-
boldt was employed during his residence in Jena, was
entirely recommenced and concluded at once in
Albano, during the summer of 1804. Schlegel now
advised its immediate publication, but Humboldt kept

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 841

it ten years longer, so that he might correct and im-
prove the most minute faults. Humboldt's linguistic
studies now received a renewed impulse from the trea-
sures Alexander had brought with him. The latter
had during his journey collected, with infinite trouble,
from cloisters and missionary establishments, a con-
siderable number of books of hitherto unknown Ame-
rican dialects. He indeed lent this collection for a
few years to the completer of " Mithridates,'' Pro-
fessor Vater, of Konigsberg, and submitted a few to
Franz Schlegel, but he definitely gave them all to his
brother, who was now able to include the new world
in his studies, and to investigate these languages
thoroughly. William even increased this collection of
American grammars and dictionaries by new treasures
found in Rome, and among other things obtained pos-
session of fourteen manuscripts which had been copied
from manuscripts of the Abbe Hervas and the Eoman
Propaganda.

Humboldt's merits were now acknowledged on all
sides. F. A. Wolf publicly named him as the one
who had assisted him in a profounder study of archaeo-
logy. The Eoyal Society of Sciences in Gottingen, in
1803, elected him and his brother as foreign members
of their historical philological section, and in 1808, he
was elected by the Royal Academy of Berlin as cor-
responding member.

The state also acknowledged his services. After
ha^dng been named resident ambassador in Rome by
a cabinet order of the 15th May, 1802, he was raised,
in 1805, to the dignity of minister-resident, and in
1806 to that of minister plenipotentiary in Rome.

Humboldt had so accustomed himself to this city
during a residence there of six years, that he thought
never to return to reside in his native country. And
he would have willingly remained there longer had
not the terrible catastrophe overwhelmed Prussia
which he had probably long anticipated, and in
consequence of which he was required for more active
service.

342 LIFE OF

France had become mightier and more presump-
tuous under the empire, and the thunder of war,
though distant, wa* heard in the ancient Kome.
Austria's defeat in 1805 was bad enough, and of
melancholy import to every German. Italy was
tbreatened anew, the French advanced towards
Naples, and though Rome's neutrality was for a time
respected, its speedy destruction was anticipated.
Prussia was still standing, though in a lamentable
condition; it had again refrained from the general
combat. It accepted, as the bribing booty from
France, Hanover, which was then again secretly
offered to its former possessor, so that Prussia, every-
where entangled, could no longer avoid the unequal
combat. The ancient Prussian glory was destroyed at
a blow ; all the bulwarks of the kingdom fell into
the enemy's hand, and only at the extreme points of
the kingdom so much self-consciousness remained
that the state fought for mere existence. The govern-
ment tried to purchase peace at any price, in order
to compensate for the loss of power and greatness
by revival and encouragement of the inner strength
of the nation. It endeavoured, before all, to acquire
the means of effecting this internal improvement,
which was to support the throne by means of all the
talent, uprightness, and activity which might be
pressed into the service. Humboldt watched these
events anxiously, and patiently awaited their issues.
When at last peace was proclaimed, the happy life he
had till then led was embittered by the degradation
of his country ; even the possessions of individuals
were endangered, and it seems that the castle of
Tegel had also been plundered during these years;
the aspect of affairs in the papal dominions grew
more dangerous, and Humboldt determined to leave
Rome and his family for some time, and repair to
Germany on leave of absence. After having spent
the autumn of 1808 in Albano, he left Rome in
October, not foreseeing then that he would not return.
He only took his son Theodor with him, probably

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 343

ivitli tlie intention of placing him in some educa-
tional establishment.

On his return, he visited Goethe, and then re-
paired to his father-in-law, Herr von Dacheroden,
in Erfurt. While there he received a summons to
enter into another sphere. In December, 1808, the
cabinet sitting in Konigsberg offered him the post of
director of the section of worship and of public edu-
cation in the ministry of the interior, at the same
time naming him a privy councillor of state. Hum-
boldt declared himself willing to accept the post,
reserving to himself the right to resume his diplo-
matic career whenever he wished, and his definite
appointment was thereupon signed in Konigsberg on
the 20th February, 1809. He, however, had arrived
in Berlin in January, 1809, where he spent a few
months, before his departure to Konigsberg. He
placed his son in a Pestalozzian school, prepared to
enter upon his official duties, and arrived in Konigs-
berg in April.

Though it must have grieved him to quit such an
agreeable life as his Roman one, his duty required it,
and he did not hesitate to sacrifice his own predilec-
tions to the fatherland. He reserved the right to re-
enter the diplomatic career, principally with a view to
returning to Rome ; but he had left his post there at
the right time; for scarcely had he quitted the
papal dominions than the long-feared catastrophe
broke over it. On the 17th May, Napoleon decreed
the incorporation of the States of the Church with the
French empire, and on the 6th of July of the same
year the Pope was led a prisoner from Rome,

^344 LIFE OF

CHAPTER VIL

The unfortunate year 1806 had placed Prussia in a
most critical position. Its existence even for some
time seemed endangered, and at all events there
needed, to secure it, or to repair the past and prepare
for a better future, a fundamental renovation of what
had been saved. In the youthful history of Hum-
boldt's life we mentioned the period of political and
social demoralization which had succeeded the reign
of the great Frederic. With Frederic William III.,
a better man came to the head of affairs, but this good
prince, still surrounded by tools of the former reign,
was not able to avoid the catastrophe the times
threatened; and as it seemed to threaten under every
circumstance, he anxiously sought to avoid every col-
lision, and at every occasion for battle was led only by
his peaceful tendencies, which at last produced the
greater misfortune. But this misfortune effected
good, for the heart of the people was good, and the
prince noble. To produce this good, however, the
whole former political tendencies had to be changed,
the people strengthened by greater freedom, and the
general character elevated.

The king, with these views, appointed an " imme-
diate commission'' in Memel, which was to provide
means for the moment, and prepare the changes for
the future. It was divided into two sections, one for
the war department, the other for the interior. This
commission laid the foundation for the new order of
things, and, with lasting peace, needed only a power-

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 845

fill leader to effect these changes against the most
threatening foreign combinations, and against the
most violent opposition at home.

Such a man was found in the minister, Freiherr
von Stein. He had lived in retirement on his estates
during the war, and was now summoned to Memel
by the king in October, 1807, and placed at the head
of affairs. He was only allowed to remain at the
head for one year, but this short period sufficed to
make his ministry memorable. He began to intro-
duce his new measures while in the most difficult
position, and while Scharnhorst, the minister -of- war,
was raising a new army. Politics assumed a more
decisive German tendency, and Stein introduced
changes which may indeed be called a revolution by
constitutional means. The decree of the 9th October,
1807, repealed the laws of vassalage and feudality;
on the 19th November, 1808, a constitution was an-
nounced, and on the 16th December, an edict was
published which re-organized the entire state. At
the same time the cleverest and most appropriate men
were chosen to fill the various offices. Only character
and abilities were required, and the most liberal, in-
dependent minds were admitted, thus opening the
door to a constant progress.

But political changes alone were not sufficient.
The necessity for purifying the state from below was
also felt, and it was acknowledged that to effect this it
was necessary not only to teach but to educate ; to
free the spirit, and awaken the character and indepen-
dence of the young, and thus create worthy citizens
for the state, capable of coping with the future desti-
nies of the nation.

Two things seemed necessary to achieve this. The
introduction of the Pestalozzian system of elementary
instruction, and the erection of a great, new univer-
sity, in place of the university of Halle, given up at
the peace.

The more determinedly reforms were planned on
the field of popular instruction, the more it was felt

S46 LIFE OF

that a man was required for this post who was himself
penetrated by the intellectual genius of the nation,
and thus capable of leading and inspiring the intel-
lectual forces of the country — in short, one who
could give an impulse to this branch of government,
as Stein and Scharnhorst did to the others. And such
a man was found in Humboldt.

The selection of Humboldt for this post cannot be
enough praised, for one more fitted to direct on the
wide field of popular instruction could scarcely be
imagined. It has been asked whether he was equally
fitted for the post of minister of public worship, and
a word on this subject may not be out of place here.

No one can know anything of Humboldt, nor have
glanced at any of his writings, who doubts whether
religion was in him or not. It is, however, true that
his religious opinions were a little removed from posi-
tive Christianity ; whether it be that he objected to
the outward form of Christianity, or that he feared to
lose his intellectual freedom and independent nature
by entire submission to it. He, on this point, very
much resembled the great literary men of that period,
and although it cannot be said that he was bound by
the fetters of the eighteenth century, he must in this
respect be acknowledged its faithful pupil. Hum-
boldt's characteristic motto was "All knowledge
leads to God.'' But, in obedience to his own soul,
he might have added, " All natural feeling also leads
to Him.'' For although his being was so entirely
intellectual, natural feeling was, withal, a marked fea-
ture of his character. None of the philosophical
systems of the age was capable of entirely satisfpng
his requirements in this direction ; and he was de-
terred from joining the subsequent developments of
this science, as much by his just and natural mode of
thought, as by the warmth of his heart, and the pe-
netrating quality of his mind. He was not a mere
theist, and not a pantheist. The belief in the exist-
ence of God, in an all-wise Providence, in the indivi-
dual immortality of the soul, was firmly planted ia

WILLIAJM VOI^ HUJiiBOLDT. 347

his heart, and was united in a peculiar manner, partly
with the idea of fate of the ancients, and partly with
such theosophic and philosophic views as many of the
most thinking minds, from the oldest times, among
Hindoos, Greeks, and Germans, have tried to fathom.
His philosophy of history was also based on these
views, and, indeed, the whole philosophical result of
his reflections tended to this point. But he does not
require all what he conceived in thought, faith, and
imagination, to be philosophically proved, and, unlike
the thinkers of his day, he takes refuge with his
innermost feelings in the region of poetry, where the
doubt of the moment finds equal expression with the
baldest flight of thought.

He was indifferent to dogmas, but not hostile to
them. He avoided them with that awe which fears
to profane holy things ; and where he could not
escape it, he treats it as an established fact, to which
all submit, shirking any further explanation.

Such a man could not be out of place as the presi-
dent of the ministry for public worship, as his oflice
merely requires him to supervise the department, and
guard the interests of the State, letting the spiritual
authorities under him superintend the details. His
sphere, his positive business, is public instruction';
here he has not merely to watch, but to lead, and in
regard to Humboldt's great and peculiarly appropriate
qualities for this post, the question as to his fitness
for the religious part of his duty may be answered in
the affirmative.

The manner in which he fulflUed his duties left no
doubt on the subject. As it was his principle to give
full scope to the spirit of freedom, he seems to have
made it his especial duty in no way to oppose the
independent activity of Mcolovius, his colleague in
the religious department, but to meet his wishes and
demands as far as was in his power, when they were
not diametrically opposed to his own views of expe-
diency or liberality. Nicolovius has also gratefully
acknowledged the assistance he received from Hum-

348 LIFE OF

boldt, the chief of his department^ although he ex-
pressly endeavoured "to re-animate the people to
religious faith, and thus, in his department also, to
commence a new order of things/'

It may be considered inconsistent that Humboldt,
who had in former times determinedly opposed the
interference of the state with the education of its sub-
jects, should now with such zeal labour, not only to
effect a reform in instruction, but that education as
well as instruction be bestowed on the poorer classes.
This is indeed a concession which the theoretician
made to practical life. His theory of uncontrolled
individual development could not be maintained in
face of the requirements of reality of the German
national life, and of such a time when it was of the
utmost necessity to educate the people in a certain
direction. But nevertheless his ruling principle, which
he had only modified, not abandoned, exercised a
beneficial influence. Firstly, he ever kept sight of
the individual development as the grand aim, and the
more he had to do with those already advanced, the
more he left them at liberty to follow the bent of
their inclinations. It is characteristic of this tendency,
that at the very time when he was reforming the
Prussian universities and founding a new splendid
one, he published an injunction, on the 28th April,
1810, which unconditionally repealed the law forbid-
ding Prussians to attend any foreign universities or
high schools. And whenever it was possible, he acted
in this sense, especially with regard to the men whom
he had summoned to impart the sciences and higher
branches of education. He endeavoured, not to lead
them, but to allow them perfect freedom of action, so
that he even, in the choice of new professors, sub-
mitted his judgment to that of Wolf and the scientific
deputation, and only acted independently of them
when they deserted him.

The department of public instruction had long
needed such a reformer. Until the war it had been
presided over by the Minister of Justice, von Masson,

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 349

a proud man, opposed to all reforms ; and since the
war, a perfect confusion and partial dissolution had
ensued, and all were longing for assistance and for a
thorough reform. Zelter writes to Goethe, on the
26th December, 1808: "We are expecting the Roman
Humboldt here now ; he has been appointed privy
councillor and minister of worship, of instruction,
and of the theatres. If he is still as he was before
he went to Italy, I anticipate much from him. He can
do much good at his post whichever way events may
turn, for in this point, as in many others, we have
long led a sinful life.''

In April, 1809, Humboldt arrived in Konigsberg,
where the court and tne officers of state still remained.
Prussia was in a melancholy condition, for the pres-
sure and importunity of Napoleon became more and
more insufferable, even after the peace, and the pecu-
niary distress greater. The future existence of the
state still seemed uncertain, and many doubted
whether it might not be utterly destroyed in a week.
But though affairs were thus in such a melan-
choly condition, Konigsberg itself afforded a most con-
soling prospect. The best men in the state, full of
pure zeal for the welfare of the fatherland, had here
assembled, and in close communication with the royal
family were preparing measures destined to save the
country. Besides these men whom the times had
brought together, Konigsberg was, and had been, the
residence of some of the most eminent philosophers of
the day, whose presence had always exercised an
elevating influence over the inhabitants of the town.
Foremost among these was Kant, who had died a few
years before the present period, and under whose
tuition the other great men in the town had risen to
eminence. Humboldt entered into more intimate
acquaintance with Dr. William Motherby, an excellent
man, the friend and pupil of Kant. He was a
Scotchman by birth, but resided in Konigsberg, where
he formed a society in commemoration of the great phi-
losopher. Humboldt, as an adherent of the Kantian

350 LIFE OF

philosophy, soon became intimate with Motherby,
and after his departure from Konigsberg, remained in
friendly correspondence with him. Professors Yater
and Niebuhr came to Konigsberg during Humboldt's
stay, and it was here that he first met the great
historian, Niebuhr, who writes home on the 28th of
September, 1809: "I have only seen Humboldt, the
chief of learning, once till now. His reception was
extremely kind, and I anticipate much benefit from
his society.''

It was in Konigsberg also where Humboldt entered
into relations with the court. A man of such mind
and such profound knowledge of the world, was a star
even in the highest circles. He was honoured, not
only as a great scholar, as an eminent statesman, but
also as an unusually accomplished companion. The
court was amused by his jokes, by his comic descrip-
tions, and forgot the bitter troubles of the times when-
ever he indulged in his merry humour, and, com-
paring men to monkeys, forced them all to laughter.
He became most intimate with the Princess Louisa,
married to Prince Radziwil.

This was, on the whole, a time of harvest for Hum-
boldt, and he had full opportunities for developing
his practical talents. He found it easy not to aban-
don hope even on the brink of the precipice, and
worked on with untiring zeal, convinced that an ener-
getic and useful activity would always lead to favour-
able results. He sought to imj)art this feeling to
others, and exclaimed to one of his despairing com-
rades, "The present is a great goddess, and is rarely coy
to those who treat her with a certain cheerful courage."
While his official duties, and the social demands
consequent thereon, occupied so much of his time and
attention, he had nevertheless force of character sufii-
cient to remain true to himself and his individual
development, He always commenced his days with
the study of Latin or Greek, and said at this period :
" Without this, the parchments would spoil the man
entirely."

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 351

Correspondence also occupied a great portion of his
time. His family was in Italy, his brother in Paris.
"With XJhden, who had been his predecessor in the
Roman embassy, he stood in official correspondence ;
he had, besides, an extensive official and private cor-
respondence with many others, and especially with
F. A. Wolf. His friendship for the latter induced him
to place him in a prominent position in the educational
department, to which Wolfs talents entitled him, but
for which his aversion to move in circumscribed spheres,
and his obstinate demands, soon made him unfit.
Humboldt insisted on his great scientific worth to the
ministers, and even to the monarch, and convinced them
of the expediency of treating him cautiously and con-
siderately, in order to keep his services for the state.
He wrote to Wolf in June, 1809 : "Think of your fame.
Fame is a Sisyphus stone, which rolls back trea-
cherously if one does not always advance it. Your
calling is to produce great learned works ; you are
now so placed that you have sufficient time for them ;
your official duties are so arranged that you can easily
fulfil them in your leisure moments. Commence
some work, help us at your own convenience in our
less important" labours, and grant me now, as formerly,
your affectionate confidence. But do not let it be
said, that in fixing you in Berlin I make your talents
useless for science.'' His efforts were, however, in vain.
"Wolf was not fitted for business activity, and his
ambition was wounded by being placed in a subordi-
nate situation, In March, 1810, when the section for
sciences expected to commence their labours under
Wolfs presidency, he suddenly resigned the office.
He soon felt, especially after Humboldt had left his
post in the government, how foolishly he had acted,
and how kind his fiiend's intentions towards him had
been. His respect for him increased more and more,
and he lost no opportunity of shomng it in the most
solemn manner.

The first point to be achieved was a reform in po-
pular education, or rather, the introduction of a

352. LIFE OF

comprehensive system of national education. It was
not sufficient that schools were opened, order and
regularity introduced, and the position of instructors
raised ; for a true education and to attain what was
required, a thorough revolution in elementary in-
struction was imperatively needed.

This reform was found in the views and method of
Pestalozzi, a native of Switzerland, and a man pos-
sessing a deep insight into the life and requirements
of the people, into the means of rousing it, and of
educating it according to its natural powers and
abilities. His system included all the elements of
popular education, and his method was calculated, at
the same time, to awake the reasoning faculties of the
young, to form their character, and to strengthen the
body and mind. Pestalozzi was eagerly employed in
disseminating his views by books, and by the erection
of model institutions in Switzerland. But few had at
that time any mind for such things, least of all the
governments. Such misfortunes as that of Jena had
to come to make the soil fertile for such great reforms.

As soon as the necessity for a fundamental reform of
national education was acknowledged in Prussia, it
was determined to introduce the Pestalozzian method.
Nicolovius entered into personal communication with
Pestalozzi, young men were sent to his institution in
Ifferten, and it was determined to arrange a normal
institution in Konigsberg on these principles.

So far had matters advanced when Humboldt was
called to the head of affairs, and gave his uncondi-
tional support to the system. C. A. Zeller, a pupil
of Pestalozzi, was summoned to superintend the
founding of a normal school in Konigsberg, and to teach
the system to others, and arrived in September, 1809.
Zeller fulfilled his mission with admirable skill and
talent, and received a permanent appointment in
Prussia, and yet the reform still met with opposition.
The orphan establishment of Konigsberg was to be
the proposed pattern institution, but Zeller found it
in a deplorable condition. The authorities would not

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 353

give him sufficient opportunities for introducing his
measures, until Zeller, disgusted, was on the point of
returning whence he came. Then Humboldt repre-
sented to the highest authorities the injustice of their
treatment in such strong terms, that all that Zeller
required was immediately granted.

As the attacks on the new system still continued,
the king at last determined to inspect the new insti-
tution himself, and to surprise Zeller with a visit some
morning. The princess Louise Radziwil, however,
sent him the intelligence that the king, the queen,
and the whole ministry, would come to him the next
morning. It was a decisive moment. The king re-
mained from eight o'clock until one ; he inspected the
mode of life of the establishment, its system of tuition
and education, its military, gymnastic, and technic
studies, and was so gratified, that on the evening of
the same day the fate of this reform was decided, and
the king declared himself in its favour.

Humboldt took great personal interest in the forms
of the elementary tuition, in the principle of letting
children discover and afterwards teach everything
themselves, and especially in the mode of teaching
children to read, and giving them a knowledge of the
language by letting them learn all the roots, termi-
nations, and prefixes. He inquired how this division
of the syllables had first suggested itself, and remarked
that this system might be adopted in all languages,
except the Chinese. It is evident that Humboldt
immediately conceived the matter from its intellectual
side, and in reference to universal and comparative
philology.

It is a strange fact that the unmusical Humboldt
frequently was present at the musical instruction
which Zeller gave the children, and paid such great
attention to it as if it especially interested him. He
thought, perhaps, that he ought to try whether he
could not learn what, according to a certain method,
every child could learn.

Equal care was bestowed on the gymnasiums and
A A

354 LIFE OF

universities, and here Humboldt found the oppor-
tunity of showing his active universal mind in founding
a real pattern university. His mind Avas filled by a
high ideal, foreign to every low thought, and he was
quite as averse to satisfpng such demands of selfish-
ness as those made by common statesmen, who consider
high schools as mere training establishments for the
public service, and use them as a means for forming
the spirit of the nation according to their narrow-
minded or arbitrary views. Humboldt, on the con-
trary, wished to free the mind from its fetters, and
so little did he care to maintain the influence of
the state over advanced studies, that, as we have
already stated, he repealed the law forbidding students
to visit foreign universities.

Two high schools had remained in Prussia after
the peace — Konigsberg and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder.
The one in Konigsberg was well reformed ; an obser-
vatory was built, a number of new professorial chairs,
such as the progress of science called for, were erected,
eminent teachers, in the full vigour of manhood, were
appointed, and the funds of the university considerably
increased. Frankfurt was also not forgotten. The
intention of removing this establishment to Breslau,
and of uniting it with the theological institution there,
was formed at this time, but not carried out until
1811. It was, however, not forgotten during Hum-
boldt's period of office, as we see by a letter written
by Professor David Schulz, who was appointed there.
"Matters improve even Vvith us, and something
effective is being done for the academy. Herren von
Humboldt and Slivern were here in person a short time
ago. Several new professors have been appointed.'' •

All this v^^as effected during the greatest distress,
when the government did not know how the necessary
expenses were to be provided. And yet there was
no parsimony in a branch which generally is the first
to suffer retrenchment.

The most important work, however, is the founda-
tion of the university of Berlin. The king gave his

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 855

assent to the project Ijy an order in council, signed
4th September, 1807, which decreed that a universal
institution for instruction should be erected in Berlin,
in appropriate connexion with the academy of sciences.
The ostensible motive for the new institution was the
loss of the university of Halle, which had hitherto
been the most important establishment of the kind
in the monarchy. But the real reason was a deeper
one. It was felt that the state, the nation, and the
government, needed an intellectual impulsion, such as
only a great institution of this kind, in the immediate
vicinity of the highest authorities, could give. It was
felt that this, which common minds would consider
an unwarrantable luxury in such a time of distress,
might prove the means of saving the state, and the
government, therefore, did not shrink from the sacri-
fices which the execution of the plan demanded.

The matter had advanced so far when Humboldt
was called to the post, and on him devolved the
onerous duty of carrying out the plan. For scarcely had
the first step been taken when the mode in which
the plan should be executed was warmly discussed,
and the place chosen for its erection met with great
opposition. The prime minister, Freiherr von Stein,
was even on the side of the opponents. To his idea
the calmness of academic life was quite inconsonant
with the bustle and diversions of a great capital, and
with his usual impetuosity he declared the plan to
be absurd. He feared especially the demoralization
of the young students. F. A. Wolf, however, succeeded
in representing to him that his fears were exagger-
ated, and in persuading the minister of the feasibi-
lity of the plan, who thereupon became as violent
a partizan as he had been an opponent. Again the
insufficient funds were advanced as an obstacle, but
this objection was met, and justly, with the reply,
that with small funds more could be achieved in the
capital than anywhere else, as so many indispensable
institutions and collections were already in existence
there. A third objection was of more importance

A A 2

256 LIFE OF

and was even shared by ^Yi^i^^ ^^^ Humboldt
when he first heard of the plan. He could not
deny the restraint and prosaic tone which the
vicinity of the government and of the civic relations
might create ; he feared to see the liberty of univer-
sity life circumscribed, and did not think it advisable
that the impetuous, ardent youths should be con-
strained by the formality of official life ; finally, he
objected to the pressure which the immediate neigh-
bourhood of the government might exercise over the
noble freedom of the teacher and of learning.

Important grounds must have existed to conquer
the aversion Humboldt felt for the shadow of undue
control which might eventually be brought to bear
upon the young university. One reason unquestion-
ably was the hope that the government might be
benefited by the contact with intelligence and the
freshness of academic life, and that the communica-
tion between the chiefs of science and the higher
members of the administration mio'ht have an elevat-
ing influence on the latter.

The mode of execution was the next consideration,
and Humboldt invited the most eminent men of the
day. Wolf, Fichte, Schleiermacher, and others, to
assist him with their advice. The plans of Wolf seem
to have been the most practical, those of Fichte and
Schleiermacher were profound and learned, but more
admirable in theory than practicable. Fichte also
laid too much weight on the form where the spirit
was required, and men with mind and the power to
impart it.

Humboldt's plan was to assemble a galaxy of talent
and science on one spot ; he wished all these powers
to operate quite uncontrolledly, and expected more
from this measure than from all exterior rules.

He does not seem to have been of the mind to
change more than was urgently necessary in such well-
established institutions as the German high schools.
Here no thorough reform was needed, as in the ele-
mentary schools and in the gymnasiums. All that was
required was an abundance of new strength, and

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 357

means to treat those sTimmoned with a spirit of libe-
rahty. In a word, to do for this new institution in an
appropriate manner, and on a larger scale, what MUnch-
hausen had once done for Gottingen, and the Govern-
ment of Weimar for Jena, and then success was certain.

As soon as Humboldt had reconciled himself to the
idea of erecting the new university in Berlin, — and
this seems to have been before his accession to office, —
he was heart and soul in the cause, and on the 25th
March, 1809, already his associate, Suvern, wrote from
Konigsberg to Professor ^Schiitz, in Halle : " Herr
von Humboldt is very much occupied with plans for
the new Berlin university ; it is now his favourite
theme, and although nothing has hitherto been de-
cided, there is a great probability, if the state only re-
mains at peace, that the new institution will be founded.

Persuaded by Humboldt's representations, the king,
by an order in council of the 16th August, 1809, gave
his definite consent to the proposed undertaking. The
new academy was to have the privilege of granting
academic dignities ; the academies of art and science,
as well as all the scientific institutions and collections
of the capital, were, under the immediate direction of
the department of public instruction, to be combined
with this new high school. An annual sum of 150,000
thalers (about 22,500^.) was granted for these insti-
tutions, and of this sum 60,000 thalers (9000^.) were
to be devoted to the university. The king presented
to them for a university house the splendid palace of
Prince Henry, situated in a central position in the
town. This liberality in granting the necessary funds
was beyond all anticipation. It was the highest
example of a real acknowledgment of the importance
of science and knowledge which a state has ever yet
given, for it was given during a most disastrous time,
and during great financial distress, and was intended
as a means for salvation and renovation.

The king had expressed his wish that the university
might be opened in the autumn of 1810, and the
exertions to complete all the arrangements were now,
therefore, redoubled.

858 LIFE OF

The court and the admmistration returned from
Konigsberg to Berlin in December, 1809. Humboldt
was expected on his journey to visit Frankfurt- on-
the-Oder on the 18th, but it is doubtful whether he
did so ; the king and queen made their entry into
Berlin on the 23rd.

Before leaving Konigsberg, Humboldt had requested
leave of absence to repair to Thuringia, and arrange
family matters. His father-in-law, Herr von Dachero-
den, had died in the course of the year. Frau von
Humboldt was the sole heiress, as a brother she had,
had died in 1806. The considerable inheritance which
fell to her share consisted principally of the estates of
Burgomer and Auleben, on which she had passed a
great part of her youth, and the first years of her
married life. The eldest son of this marriage received
the royal permission to add the arms of the now ex-
tinct family name to his own.

On this journey Humboldt visited Goethe, in Wei-
mar, and professor Reil, in Halle. The latter was a
celebrated naturalist and physician, as well as a most
enlightened and liberal-minded man, and was almost
indispensable to such an undertaking as the new uni-
versity. Humboldt, therefore, offered him an appoint-
ment in it, which he accepted, and soon afterwards
removed from the Westphalian university to Berlin,

On the 26th January, 1810, Humboldt returned to
Berlin. His family still remained in Italy. Sooa
after his departure from Borne, he was gladdened by
the news of the birth of a son, who received the name
of Hermann. He was the second of his sons who sur-
vived, and the youngest of his children. Frau von
Humboldt lived alternately in Rome and Naples, and
remained in constant intercourse with the artists who
frequented the former city, even when, after the
arrival of Cornelius and Overbeck, the romantic catholic
tendencies prevailed. She wrote to a friend at this
time : '* I like them, all, whether, they are new or old
catholics, if they are only good artists and good men.
I must indeed count some catholic converts among

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 359

these good artists, but they became catholics in the
spirit of love, and as artists, these catholics are among
the best/' She was expected in Berlin in the spring
of 1810, but probably the change which then took
place in her husband's position, delayed her return to
Germany,

Immediately after Humboldt's return to Berlin, he
made serious preparations for the arrangements of the
new university, and Arnim the poet writes to Konigs-
berg : " Humboldt has at last returned from his
journey, and is making serious beginnings for the
university, but unfortunately the ministry of finance
is quite at variance with that of the interior."

In spite of these difficulties, Humboldt devoted his
entire activity to this subject. The university was to
be opened on the 1st October, and a number of
important branches were yet unfilled ; the various
elements had still to be united to one whole ; the
collections and branch institutions had to be furnished
with a sufficiency of means. When Humboldt, after
a few months, quitted his post, the preparations were
so far completed that nothing stood in the way of the
opening at the appointed time.

All the eminent men belonging to Prussia were
first elected for the new university ; but if these
did not suffice, professors were invited from other dis-
tricts, and the universities which had been lost in the
war contributed the best and most important names
to the new establishment. Fichte, from Erlangen,
was a host in himself Halle sent several men, and
formed, in more senses than one, the basis of the
new university. All the important academic talent
of Prussia was associated there. The archaeological
studies in their most extended views had taken root
there, under Wolf's tuition. Beside Wolf stood
Schleiermacher, the advocate of that national ten-
denc}^ which subsequently grew to such strength.
These men, with Reil, a determined patriot, and
Schmalz, at that time a man with untarnished repu-
tation, introduced the healthy spirit which reigned in

360 LIFE OF

Halle into the new creation. Another very impor-
tant name was added to these : Niebuhr, who had
been of great influence for some years in the financial
department of the state, retired in disgust, and became
a professor at the university.

With all these, and with the means used to induce
the most eminent men in all branches of knowledge
to repair to Berlin, it became possible to open the
university with men of great, of the first eminence in
all faculties. Fichte taught philosophy ; Schleier-
macher, De Wette, and Marheinecke, theology ; juris-
prudence was taught by Savigny and Schmalz ; the
medical faculty included Friedlander, Kohlransch,
Hufeland, and Reil. The department of natural
sciences, of physics, and chemistry, was filled by
Klaproth, Hermstadt, Illiger, and Erman ; that of
mathematics by Tralles. The historians were Niebuhr
and Riihs ; the archssologians, F. A. Wolf, Spalding,
Heindorf, Buttmann, and Bockh, and the comparative
philologist, Bernhardi. Hirt lectured on plastic art.
The study of old German was introduced as an im-
portant addition, by Von der Hagen's lectures on the
Nibelungen Lied. These and other names were con-
tained in the first lists, published in September, 1810,
and some were still absent, though engaged for the
university, such as Wildenow, the celebrated botanist,
and J. Bekker, the critical grammarian.

This commencement has always been admired ; but
of late years a reproach has been cast on it, which
deserves mention here, as it was in fact directed
against Humboldt, and by a man who, on other occa-
sions, speaks olny with enthusiasm of the university.
This man is Steffens, who complains that the pro-
fessors of the new philosophies were excluded. He
says : " The most distinguished scholars were sum-
moned, and all willingly obeyed the call. Only in
the realms of speculation confusion reigned. At first
it was intended to introduce a philosophical chaos
into it, which seems a great contrast to the subse-
quently-introduced severe school. The importance

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 361

of speculation in German education was felt, but not
acknowledged, and especially natural philosophy was
scurvily treated. The most that was permitted was
the introduction of a few Kantish doctrines. William
von Humboldt thought that none of the philosophic
systems of that period could claim any consideration.
He thought that young clever men might emulate
with each other as private lecturers, and that the
prize could then be given to the victor. A professor
of philosophy certainly was required, but then Fichte
was there, and Schleiermacher, though a theologian,
was a profound philosopher/'

Berlin has certainly only lately become the chief
seat of the new philosophy; it is perhaps also correct
that Humboldt was not sufficiently just towards these
studies, as he considered them in general to be retro-
gressive in their effects. But it may be questioned
whether Schelling would not have been gladly wel-
comed, if he could have been induced to join the uni-
versity, or if the contrast between him and Fichte
had not been too great. Humboldt has at least highly
praised Schelling's merits in improving the philosophic
diction of the Germans, and he probably agreed with
Schelling in many points of his philosophy, although
he would have wished to have had it explained in a
more natural manner, and with more critical ability.
But if Steffens' reproach only means that it was very
wrong not to give him an appointment at the uni-
versity, it seems as if he were making himself the
judge in his own cause. The majority of the thinking
heads of Germany will certainly not blame Humboldt
for being somewhat suspicious of the philosophy of a
man in whom a profound contemplation of nature
was indissolubly allied to a degree of mysticism highly
dangerous to liberality of thought. Humboldt always
remained consistent in this aversion, and not only
opposed all Schleiermacher 's influence in endeavour-
ing to procure Steffens' appointment, but frequently
expressed his regret at the intellectual errors of this
otherwise clever thinker.

862 LIFE OF

But if even Humboldt had been too suspicious
against the modern school of speculation, it cannot
be denied that his rule was, on the other hand, free
from a fault to which the best directors of public in-
struction have ahvays been addicted — namely, in un-
duly or exclusively favouring one philosophic system.

The endowm^ent of the university was complete, not
only with regard to its teachers : extensive collections
had existed for some time in the capital, which were
now given to the high school, or at least united with
it. There was a considerable library, a botanic gar-
den, a collection of anatomical preparations, and a
quantity of other scientific collections, which were
now increased and completed, and formed into a
magnificent museum for natural history.

Thus everything necessary was arranged punctually
to obey the royal mandate, but Humboldt resigned
his office before the university was opened. The prin-
cipal part of the work was, however, done, so that the
rest might be completed by inferior hands. It is a
characteristic feature in Humboldt's life, that he was
not even present at the opening of this his creation.
On the 29th of April, 1810, he expressed a wish to
return to his diplomatic career, and in the middle of
June his wish was fulfilled by his appointment to a
post, in which such a man was urgently needed.

The reasons which induced Humboldt to resign
such a congenial sphere of action are involved in
mystery. It is certain that the ministry was in a very
feeble position, and anticipated its dissolution daily.
A certain vacillation pen^acled all its measures, be-
cause the financial department was not based on a
firm foundation. An arm to direct the whole firmly was
much missed, and reports were repeatedly circulated
that Dohna and the whole ministry had resigned. At
last the king determined to summon Hardenberg to
the head of affairs ; Napoleon permitted it, and on
the 6th of June, 1810, he entered upon his post. The
lord chancellor Begme, the minister of finance Alten-
stein, and Sharnhorst, immediately resigned, the latter

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. SG-S

only ostensibly, as he continued to work in the most
complete unanimity with the chancellor. Count
Dohha continued in his functions until November of
this year. With Hardenberg's accession to office,
unanimity and firmness were introduced into business.
The financial difficulties were obviated, so that the
reforms at home could be effected with more security,
and the state became more dignified in its foreign
relations.

This was the crisis which followed immediately after
Humboldt's request to return to his diplomatic career,
and in it must be sought his reasons for taking the
step. The critical situation of the ministry could not
interfere with his labours, and its fall would have
cleared away many of the difficulties which beset his
path. But those differences had commenced before
the fall of the ministry had been determined, and it
may be that they had been caused by the interference
of the minister of finance in Humboldt's department.

However this may be, the dissolution of the cabinet
did not change his resolution. Scarcely had the new
prime minister, Hardenberg, taken the reins of govern-
ment, than Humboldt's wish was granted, and he was,
on the 14th July, appointed ambassador extraordinary
and plenipotentiary at the Austrian court, and the
title of a privy minister of state was bestowed on him.
Besides the importance of this post under the circum-
stances of those times, there could not, as the Roman
embassy remained vacant, be a more agreeable post
than this.

Though Humboldt must have regretted leaving his
situation, and even Berlin, in such an intellectually
excited period, the thought might have consoled him,
that he would now have more opportunity for culti-
vating his scientific studies, without neglecting the
requirements of his fatherland, which had been im-
possible during the period he filled the office of muiister
of instruction.

Nicolovius was appointed provisionally to superin-
tend the direction of that department. The news of

S64 LIFE OF

Humboldt's departure excited the fear that these
affairs would be quite neglected, and that the opening
of the university would be delayed. But they were
groundless. The impulse had been given, and the
plans for the university so far prepared, that it was
easy for Nicolovius, in conjunction with the still acting
Count Dohna, to complete the measures. The state
chancellor offered the post to Alexander von Hum-
boldt, then residing in Paris, but he preferred to devote
himself to his scientific labours, and declined the pro-
posal. In November, 1810, councillor Schuckman
succeeded to the post, and Nicolovius was appointed
director in both departments.

The virtues which Humboldt had shown as a states-
man, his advanced views, his incorruptible love of
truth, and his energetic activity, were amply appre-
ciated by the court ; the best acknowledgment was the
Vienna appointment. He, however, received several
other tokens of royal esteem. Wlien the 2nd and
3rd classes of the order of the Red Eagle were founded,
in January, 1810, the third being first distributed,
Humboldt was one of the few statesmen decorated
with it.

His scientific greatness was also more and more
acknowledged. In the beginning of the year 1809,
he was elected foreign member of the Danish asso-
ciation for science, and in the summer of 1810, he was
appointed member of the philosophical class of the
royal academy of sciences in Berlin.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. S6i

CHAPTER YIII.

Humboldt left Berlin in the beginning of September,
and on the way spent two days at Togulitz, with Gentz,
who occupied an important position in the Austrian
cabinet. He arrived in Vienna in the middle of
October, and had an audience of the emperor, in which
he presented his credentials, on the 8rd of November.
Metternich had been placed at the head of the mi-
nistry for foreign affairs after the last peace. He there
developed that snakelike cunning which so soon helped
to effect Napoleon's ruin, and which, at least as re-
gards this western enemy, has been of such advantage
to Austria. These were the first years of this cele-
brated statesman's activity, which were evidently the
most important in his life, and in which he showed
talents which even his bitterest enemies cannot deny.
Metternich was clever enough to esteem a William
von Humboldt, and although their views and opinions
in general were diametrically opposed, they were out-
weighed by the immediate objects of the day. If to
this is added the charm of finding a worthy opponent,
the importance they had for each other and their
present intentions, it can be easily understood, that
personally a very good understanding reigned between
them. An evidence of this is given in a letter wTitten
by Gentz at this period, in which he says, that ui the
evening he is never disengaged, because his chief,
Metternich, is a great nightbird, and does not dismiss
those who are with him in the evening until one or
two o'clock ; that he had been obliged to roam about

366 LIFE OF

the evening before until half-past one, on the badly
paved streets of Prague, with Metternich and Hum-
boldt.

But when the great object for which so many dif-
ferent persons had met here had been achieved, the
difference between Metternich and Humboldt became
more apparent. It may, probably, have been prudence
on the part of the latter not to make himself sus-
pected before. At the congress of Vienna, he was,
probably, often in their way, and it is certain that
Metternich and Gentz did their utmost to obtain the
subsequent dismissal of William von Humboldt.

Gentz had not seen Humboldt for ten years, and
wrote to a friend at this period that all his awe for Hum-
boldt's superiority, all intimidation, had vanished, that
he was nothing now but an agreeable companion. He
does not seem to have understood why Humboldt did
not let him feel his superiority, when it would have so
much injured the purpose he came to effect. In 1814
this superiority was agam very evident, and although
Humboldt cultivated his acquaintance, nor deserted
the friend when he had grown old, still an intimate
friendship between them was impossible after 1818.

In Vienna Humboldt was again united to his wife
and children. Madame von Humboldt left Rome in
the autumn of 1810. The residence on this side
of the Alps did not seem to please her so much, nor
could her health bear the climate of Vienna. If we
add to this her longing for the beloved Rome, we
need not wonder that she never felt at home in
Vienna.

Humboldt's house was in Vienna, as it had been in
Rome, thrown open with the most liberal hospitality,
and again the highest in the social and intellectual
world crowded Madame von Humboldt's saloons.
Among the foreign diplomatists, the Danish ambas-
sador. Christian, Count Bernstorff, an amiable talented
man, was a welcome guest, and Humboldt remained
equally his friend when a post was assigned to hrni
which would have been with more justice bestowed

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 367

on Humboldt. We have already mentioned the chief
persons of the Austrian cabinet, Metternich and
Gentz. Franz Schlegel was now, also, in the Austrian
service, and lived in Vienna with his talented wife,
occupied in literary activity. With Arnsteins and
Caroline Pichler the Humboldts also associated. But
the chief of all the visitors was Alexander von Hum-
boldt. Scarcely had he published the first portion of
his descriptions, when he was already planning a
second great undertaking to central Asia and Thibet,
and repaired to Vienna in November, 1811, to take
leave of his family. The plan was, however, not then
executed, and Alexander returned to Paris, where he
was busy for several years with the publication of his
works. Another honoured guest was the Prussian
Rittmeister, von Hedemann, a clever officer and
adjutant of the Prince William of Prussia; he subse-
quently became Humboldt's son-in-law.

In Vienna Humboldt also found some leisure for
his favourite pursuits, and returned with redoubled
ardour to his philological studies, which he extended
more and more. He determined now to publish his
Basque studies. He was induced to do this by Pro-
fessor Vater, in Konigsberg, who had requested' him
to furnish an essay on the Basque languages as an
appendix to his " Mithridates." Humboldt acceded
to this proposal, and at the same time determined to
treat the subject in a more extended form.

But the events of the day soon tore Humboldt
from works of this kind, and with restless activity he
obeyed all the claims which his important official
position made upon him. At the time when the
storm lowered which spent itself in the Russian
campaign, Prussia's fate was at a crisis. It concluded
the alliance with Napoleon with more repugnance
than Austria. But although it publicly obeyed the
will of the mighty one, it secretly prepared for the
approaching definite struggle, especially by an alliance
with Austria. It may be assumed that the foundation
of the great European alliance, and of the union of the

^68 LIFE or

two great German powers, was laid towards the end of
1811, or the beginning of 1812. It is said that the first
and most important steps between the two nations were
made by the monarchs themselves, and that only through
the hands of their most confidential advisers. But the
work must have been more easily effected when a
man like Humboldt had laid the preliminaries. The
king came from Berlin to Prague, and proceeded to
the baths of Toplitz in June, 1812. The presence of
his monarch in the capital of Bohemia brought Hum-
boldt thither. Immediately afterwards he obtained
leave of absence, and visited his Thuringian pos-
sessions, probably only as a feint. He arrived in
Berlin in August, and returned from thence, no doubt
furnished with the most important instructions, to his
post at Vienna.

More quickly than had been anticipated, and under
more fortunate auspices, came the great day of
liberation. The catastrophe in Russia, the depar-
ture of the king from Berlin to Breslau, the junc-
tion of the Prussians and Russians, — these news
succeeded each other like lightning flashes. The
advocates of resistance now stood forward supreme,
a well-regulated complete force, whom the govern-
ment had to emulate in energy and activity, if
they would not lose their authority. The ambas-
sador at the court of Vienna was accurately in-
formed of all that passed at home. Theodor Korner,
who was in Vienna, wrote to a friend in Dresden, in
February, 1813: "You may imagine that my soles
burn since the address of the King of Prussia to the
volunteers has reached me. Through the Prussian
ambassador here, Herr von Humboldt, I am accu-
rately informed of the popular feeling in Prussia, and
of all that is being done in Breslau.'' In March the
Prussian landwehr was summoned, the king issued
an address to his people, and the formal declaration
of war was made; the struggle commenced on the
plains of Saxony, even before Austria had declared
itself, or thrown its influence in the scale.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 369

It was determined in Vienna that now a balance
of power and a secure condition must be attained by-
treaties or by force. But Austria, always slow, needed
time to prepare itself This delay was painful, and
Napoleon's genius showed plainly at the first blow
how fatal a singlehanded struggle would be. It was
now necessary, therefore, to soothe all doubts in
Vienna, to give political and military securities, and
overcome all hesitation and delays. What a field for
a Humboldt — for his intellect and his activity ! In
opinions they were agreed, but the leader of the
Austrian cabinet would not be hurried; he was
waiting for the time when, supported by a well-
equipped army, he could be sure to give a decisive
blow. In the meantime he threw his net so skilfully
round his opponent, that he was caught in it and fell.

The dallj'ing politics of Austria in 1813 have fre-
quently, and not quite unjustly, been censured. But
they were the chief means of confusing and ruining
Napoleon. He treated verbally and by correspondence
with Metternich, who acted as mediator between the
antagonist parties, and could not be spared. It was
only because he hoped to secure Austria's alliance that
Napoleon made a truce with Prussia and Russia,
accepted Austria's mediation and the peace congress
of Prague, and left all his enemies time to unite and
to strengthen their forces. Then the union with
Austria was definitively cemented, and Prussia and
Russia combined with the money-giving England.
Humboldt proceeded, in the beginning of the month,
to the head-quarters of the allied powers, and thence
to Ratiborzitz, a palace of the Duchess of Sagan,
near Gitschin, which, since the 4th of June, had been
the seat of the most important conferences. Gentz
wrote to a friend in Prague, from Ratiborzitz, on the
23rd of June: "You know that now by a chance
unequalled in history, four of the first sovereigns in
Europe, (with the exception of Napoleon !) with their
cabinets, ministers, courts, and six to eight hundred
thousand men, are concentrated on a narrow strip of
B B

370 LIFE OF

landj about twenty (German) miles long and ten miles
broad. In Gitscliin, six hours' distance from here,
are the emperor and count Metternich ; in Opotscbna,
three hours' distance, the emperor Alexander and his
two sisters stayed about a week. I was there two days,
and saw the king of Prussia, who dined with the
emperor. Humboldt was with me. To-day the
emperor has dined here with us in Ratiborzitz with
the duchess, and now returns to Reichenbach. I have
seen him often. Ratiborzitz is the central point
of meeting; here, all last week, Metternich, Stadion,
and Hardenberg were, together and separately.
Great things have been determined. Humboldt came
with Hardenberg, has fixed himself here, and will
remain till the further plans are arranged.''

The point where these plans were determined was
Prague, Y\^here the peace congress was appointed to
meet on the oth July, while the allied powers were
debating the plan of the campaign.

The confidence which was reposed in Humboldt,
when he was sent by Prussia as plenipotentiary to the
peace congress in Prague, and the share he subse-
quently took in all the debates, proves how well he
understood to treat the cunning policy of the Viennese
cabinet, and to urge it on without offending it.
Russia sent Herr von Austeth, and Napoleon, the
Duke de Vicenza and the Count de Narbonne, to
treat in Prague ; and Count Metternich represented
the mediating power. The meeting in Prague was
deferred till the 12th July, on which day Humboldt
arrived there. Herr von Austeth and the Count de
Narbonne were there also, but the latter would not
act alone, and the Duke de Vicenza did not arrive till
the 28th. As the French envoys immediately began
to disagree about the form even of the negotiations,
the allied powers were no doubt right in distrusting
the French emperor's intentions mth regard to the
peace. The mediating minister proposed the forma-
lities of the congress of Teschen, where the discussions
were only carried on by writing, and through the

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 371

mediating power. The envoys of the allies consented
to this, doubtless because they wished to have every-
thing in a written form ; Humboldt, because it agreed
with his instructions. But the French plenipoten-
tiaries demanded verbal and written communications,
and complained bitterly that they had not even seen
their opposed ambassadors. Hereupon a number of
notes were exchanged with the Austrian minister on
both sides ; the truce expired before the question of
these formalities had been settled. On the 10th
August, Humboldt and Austeth declared 'that their
authority as plenipotentiaries had expired.

On the 11th August, Humboldt left Prague. He
went to Vienna to arrange his affairs and take leave
of his family, from whom the expected events would
separate him for some time. He was now expected
in the head -quarters of the allied powers, where he
was to take part in the direction of affairs, in conjunc-
tion with Baron Hardenberg.

This separation even had its pleasures, for all the
members of the family emulated with each other in
doing their utmost for the fatherland. Humboldt's
eldest son, Theodor, a youth of seventeen, had inter-
rupted his studies to fight under Prussia's flag. He
entered the horse guards as a volunteer, was at Dresden
and Culm, and fought in the storming of Montmartre.
Madame von Humboldt also shoYA^ed her interest for
the great events of the day as far as she was able.
She remained in Vienna till the spring of 18] 4. But
as soon as the peace was concluded and her failing
health permitted it, she removed with her children to
Switzerland.

Humboldt was in Prague, on his way to head-
quarters, on the 1st September, 1813. He found the
monarchs and their ministers in Toplitz engaged in
concluding treaties with their new allies. Day after
day the arms of the allied armies were more success-
ful. The battles of Kotzbach, of Culm, of Denne-
witz, humbled the power of the common enemy ;
then from three sides the armies approached the to^\Ta
bb2

372 LIFE OF

in wliich the decisive battle was to be fougbt. Napo-
leon, however, retreated across the Khine, and Ger-
many was freed from her subjection.

After the battle of Leipzig, Humboldt paid a visit
to Goethe, in Weimar, where Metternich and Harden-
berg had also repaired. Frankfort on the Maine
remained the head-quarters until the end of the year.
Humboldt's office was, during this time, to conclude
treaties with the smaller German states, such as
Bavaria, and partly also with Wurtemberg. While
the war was still continuing, another peace congress
was to be held at Chatillon on the Seine, and Hum-
boldt was deputed to act in it again as Prussian repre-
sentative.

The French plenipotentiary at the peace congress
was the Duke de Vicenza, and on the side of the
allied, although the foreign ministers Metternich,
Nesselrode, and Hardenberg were at head-quarters,
and Gastlereagh was expected, it w^as determined that
not they, but the diplomatists nearest them in position
and influence, should fill this post. But these diplo-
matists received such decided and consistent instruc-
tions, that they had nothing to do but conscientiously
to act upon them.

Austria still wished to spare Napoleon, but hinted
plainly that it v\^ould soon no longer be able to do so.
On the 9th February, the ambassadors of the allied
powers arrived in Chatillon. Austria was represented
by Count Stadion, Russia by Count Rasumoffsky,
England by Lord Aberdeen, Earl Cathcart, and
Lieutenant-General Stewart, Prussia b}^ Humboldt,
who watched the interests of his country with his
customary industry and zeaL The communications
which passed between him and Hardenberg, as mi-
nister, were only sent through the safest couriers,
officers or mounted guards, and were always written
by his own hand.

On the 4th February, the ambassadors paid each
other the customary visits, and on the 5th the con-
ferences commenced. The plenipotentiaries of the

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 873

allied powers declared at once that they only acted in
concert in the name of Europe, and in meetings which
were to be reported. On the 6th, already the French
ambassador complained that it was evident the four
deputies, counting the three English as one, had
received the same instructions, and that they did not
say a word without having first all agreed to it ; and
this was indeed the case. After prolonged debates,
in which the terms demanded by the French varied
with the fortune of the war, the congress was broken
up on the 15th March, without having come to any
result.

But Napoleon's day had come. The courage of the
Silesian army and the union of the various forces,
opened the way to Paris. Napoleon was defeated, the
Bourbons returned, and on the 31st March the Em-
peror Alexander and Frederic William entered Paris.
Their ministers and diplomatists followed them on the
7th and 8th April.

Paris was not new to Humboldt ; he found old
friends among Frenchmen and Germans. There was
the Count Schlabrendorf, Oelsmer, A. W. Schlegel,
Madame de Stael, B. Constant, and many others;
but above all, his beloved brother, whose society must
have afforded him much delight, although the king
claimed him frequently as a guide. He also made many
new friends here, and became acquainted with most
of the political greatnesses of the day, such as Count
Miinster, Lord Castlereagh, and from this time
dates his friendship with the two celebrated Prussian
generals, Gneisenau and Bliicher.

He was soon, however, wanted for business, and
first to take part in the conferences for the first Paris
peace. The preliminaries only were settled here, and
a congress appointed to take place in Vienna, when
the whole would be definitively arranged. Wlien the
Paris conferences were over, the Prince Regent of
England invited the monarchs and their courts to visit
England. Humboldt accompanied his king, and was
received with distinction by the Regent. They re-

S74< LIFE OF

mained in England three v/eeks, and then Humboldt
aocompanied his king to Switzerland, where he joined
his wife and family. Madame von Humboldt deter-
mined now to proceed to Berlin with her family, to
escape the commotion of the congress ; Humboldt,
however, proceeded to Vienna, where the congress
was to assemble on the 1st October.

The history of this congress has been so meagrely
given in a few contemporary works, and the official
reports are so confined to generalities, that it is diffi-
cult to describe Humboldt's activity there, although,
from his position as ambassador to the Austrian court,
and as the most talented of the three Prussian repre-
sentatives, Hardenberg and Von Stein being the two
others, it must have been considerable. He seems to
have agreed very well with Hardenberg here, in the
difficult position he was placed in as regarded the
Prussian state chancellor, although it may be sup-
posed that some differences must have arisen between
them. Else, we should have to suspect Hardenberg
of mere jealousy and envy of Humboldt's talents
in subsequently effecting his rivaFs dismissal.

Humboldt's knowledge, his reasoning power, and
his skill, were everywhere admired, and all documents
existing from that time give abundant proof of the
respect in which he was held. The " Rheinische
Merkur," in an article on the congress, 12th January,
1815, says : " The minister Humboldt is clever, and
knows much. Many miss the heartiness in his man-
ner which Germans like to see in their countrymen,
but he is, nevertheless, a great light. The last plans
for a German constitution are said to be by him, and
he supports them warmly ; and, of all there, he is
best able to meet the Frenchmen in their underhand
dealings." Another article sa5^s : " The state chan-
cellor, Hardenberg, is, as always, confiding, trusting, un-
suspecting in his politics, and taking ever3rthing in a
favourable hght ; but Humboldt is cold and clear as a

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 375

December sun/' From all we can gather, it is evident
that Talleyrand, Metternich, and Humboldt were the
most prominent characters at the congress, and that
Prussia found in him an extraordinary representative.
And yet it may be doubted whether Humboldt found
at this congress a sphere consonant with his wishes,
on which his own being could have shown itself The
time was not made for it. A conservative age com-
menced in good and in evil, and the appropriate
measures could rarely be carried. If we consider the
opposition he met with in all suggestions for a funda-
mental reform, we must be surprised at what he has,
nevertheless, been able to achieve for Germany.

Humboldt was not only one of the most eminent,
but, fortunately, one of the most industrious members
of the congress. He was a member of nearly all the
committees. What Humboldt worked during the
congress, and how carefully, thoroughly, and pru-
dently, with what conscientiousness and perseverance,
is almost incredible ; he expected the same from his
assistants and subordinates, among whom the most
prominent was the Count de Flemming, the nephew
of Hardenberg.

During the most laborious days of the congress,
Humboldt was yet fresh and willing for scientific
labours and for social intercourse ; he corrected his
able translation of Greek choruses, practised the Pes-
talozzian system on himself, made a few German
verses every day, wrote many family letters, and be-
sides all this, he kept a diary, in which he reported
not only the great events of public life, but also the
incidents of society, the anecdotes and adventures of
the day. Unfortunately, as he himself says, he after-
wards had the idea to burn the majority of his papers,
and these among the number.

The congress commenced with difficulties and
delays, and the conferences of the eight powers were
deferred to the 1st November, and continued until
the return of Napoleon from Elba. The boundaries
of the different States of Germany, their privileges,

876 LIFE OF

and authority, were determined, and although Hum-
boldt laboured at all these matters with inexhaustible
industry, his liberal ]Dolicy was not always supported
or successful.

Overwhelmed as he was with pressing affairs, he
nevertheless found time to watch the excited life of
the day, and accept many of the numerous invitations.
He was, indeed, never seen on the Bastei, the regular
promenade of the inhabitants of Vienna, where the
whole fashionable world showed itself, but he was
present at all the festivities which at that period
rapidly succeeded each other ; he was found in the
saloons where single members of the gToat whole met,
as in the saloons of the Countess Taxis, the chief
point of meeting for eminent Prussians, the Frau von
Arnstein, by birth a Prussian, &c. We find Hum-
boldt at a ball in the imperial palace conversing with
Dalberg and Wessenberg on the Polish-Saxon ques-
tion ; we find him at a pic-nic in the Augarten, which
the celebrated Sidney Smith had planned, in lively
conversation with the Count Rechberg. Count Rech-
berg was speaking with such literary enthusiasm of a
work on Russia, that he forgot to attend to his master,
the King of Bavaria, who was calling for his assistance
in a dilemma. Gentz united the most distinguished
company in his house. One met there the Duke of
Weimar, Talleyrand, the Count and Countess Bern-
storff, the beautiful Countess von Fuchs, Dr. Boll-
mann, celebrated for his attempt to liberate Lafayette
from Olmiitz, Rahel with her husband, and, of course,
also Humboldt. It is told of a dinner at the Prince
Chancellor's, at which Humboldt, Prince Radziwil,
Stagemann, Grolmann, and Scholer, Von Biilow,
Count Flemming, Bartholdy, Varnhagen, Rahel, &c.,
were present, that the g3niinasiast, Jahn, also made
his appearance there, coarse and dirty, and imparted
his doctrines and rudenesses. Humboldt's anxiety to
be introduced to Jahn induced the latter to begin his
game with him also, but here he did not succeed ;
Humboldt's superior mind easily kept down the infe-

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 877

rior one, and Jahn remained standing at last, as if
he did not know whether he had been fooled or not.

Of former acquaintances, Humboldt met Cardinal
Gonsalvi, who appeared as the pope's representative.
Major von Hedemann also visited his future father-
in-law during this period. The bookseller Cotta came,
deputed by his colleagues ; besides many other diplo-
matic and non-diplomatic persons.

Several adventures and anecdotes of Humboldt
have also been handed down from this period, of
which we only give the two most characteristic ones.
The first was a serious one, namely, a duel, which
had nearly stained the calm arena of the congress
with blood, and which caused the more astonishment
because the combatants were not two young hot-
heads, but two sober, sedate men, both ministers of
the same great power — Humboldt and the Prussian
minister-of-war, Herr von Bogen. These men quar-
relled, in consequence of an almost childish breach of
etiquette, in which, however, Humboldt's wanton
humour deserves some little censure. The minister
had been invited to a conference of the five powers,
to give some explanations regarding the approaching
campaign. The matter had been settled, and other
things were to be discussed, for which the presence of
the minister seemed inappropriate. Instead of simply
stating this to him, Humboldt led him out of the
room under a reason which excited the military man's
anger. Bogen demanded satisfaction, arms in hand,
and Humboldt, whose courage never failed him, and
whose presence of mind never deserted him, accepted
the challenge with the most cheerful air in the world.
The duel took place. No witnesses were present
except Hardenberg, and the physician. Dr. Koreff.
The combatants fought seriously and conscientiously,
but it seemed as if both were invulnerable ; and after
two pistol shots on each side, they were reconciled.
Many were amused at the very susceptible honour of
the minister, Von Bogen, but all admired the calm-
ness and chivalry, and the good humour of his adver-

378 LIFE OF

sary, which was as constant in the field as at the
conference.

The other adventure was less serious. The painter
Isabey came to Vienna to commemorate the remark-
able assembly by a painting. On the one half of the
picture the crowned heads were assembled ; on the
other the diplomatic chiefs were sitting round the
table at which the fate of Europe was decided. Each
figure was a portrait ; the artist chose the moment
when Metternich introduces the Duke of Wellington.
But one circumstance nearly frustrated the artist's in-
tention. All the European representatives of import-
ance were to figure on this picture, and among them
Humboldt could not be wanting. But now Isabey
was informed that here he would meet with opposi-
tion, as it was well-known how averse this statesman
was to let himself be painted. He had refused it to
the Princess Louise Badziwil, sister of Prince Ferdi-
nand of Prussia. Isabey therefore went to Humboldt
with very little hope. His embarrassment, real or
feigned, increased the humour, now become prover-
bial, of the Prussian statesman, who, fixing his promi-
nent large blue eyes upon him, replied thus : " Look
at me, and confess that nature has endowed me with
a too ugly face than that you could disapprove of my
resolution never to spend a sou for my portrait. Say
yourself, would not nature laugh at my expense, if she
perceived such egregious folly in me ? No ; she shall
see that I can appreciate the ill-favour she has be-
stowed upon me.'" The painter, surprised at this
declaration, now gazed in astonishment at the irre-
gular features of the minister ; he, however, soon
collected himself, and replied that it was not his in-
tention to take any reward from his excellency for
the agreeable task which he wished to undertake ; he
only came to ask from him the favour to sit for him
a few hours. " If that is all,'' replied Humboldt,
" with the greatest pleasure I will sit as often as you
wish ; do not make any ceremonies. I can only not
give up my principle, not to go to the least expense

WILLI A]^I VON HUMBOLDT. 879

for my ugly face/' Humboldt sat for tlie painter as
often as he desired it ; and when the picture was
finished and engraved, the portrait of Humboldt was
considered to be the most faithful ; and he said fre-
quently, " I have paid nothing for my portrait, and
Isabey determined to revenge himself ; he has made
a speaking likeness/'

When Napoleon's return was reported at Vienna,
the most difficult questions had been decided, but the
stoppage which had entered into the affairs con-
tinued. Then came the dreadful news which made
so many tremble, but not Humboldt. He rejoiced at
the turn, and exclaimed, " Excellent ! now we shall
have some life."

The treaties which had been formed were now con-
firmed, and all the powers prepared to check Napo-
leon's further progress. Humboldt's office was as
important as before, and his name plays a conspicuous
part in all histories of that period. After the signing
of the Act of Alliance, all the plenipotentiaries has-
tened to head-quarters or to their courts. Humboldt,
Wessenberg, and Clancarty, remained a week longer,
busied in the last works of the congress, and then
repaired to their destinations. Humboldt repaired
first to Berlin. It had been determined that he
should not return to Vienna, but that he should fill
the post of ambassador to Paris.

On his journey home, Humboldt received the news
of the victory of Waterloo. Scarcely arrived in Berlin,
he was summoned to the peace congresses, and left
for Paris a few days afterwards. There the king of
Prussia, and the emperors of Austria and Russia, had
also arrived ; and now a commission of representatives
of the allied powers was appointed, Avho were to fix
the conditions of the peace with France. Humboldt
and Hardenberg were again the representatives of
Prussia.

Humboldt and Hardenberg endeavoured to regain
all the dominions Prussia had lost in the war, and
others which belonged more to Germany than to

880 LIFE OF

France ; but their demands were not supported by
Austria, and opposed by Russia and England, so tliat
they were unsuccessful in this respect ; but it was not
their fault that the expectations raised by this congress
were not realized. As the details of this period have
not yet been published, and the generalities are
matters of history, we can only state that here, as in
Vienna, Humboldt's activity was untiring, and that
his patriotism excited the indignation of the French,
who considered themselves aggrieved by his demands.
Of the indemnification paid by France, Prussia and
England received 25,000,000 francs in advance,
J00,000,000 like the other powers, and 22,000,000
for the defence of the lower Rhine. The peace was
signed on the 20th November, 1815 : the French-
Pussian document by Richelieu, Hardenberg, and
Humboldt. On the same day, the other treaties
were signed, one concerning the contributions, a
second on the military occupation under the Duke of
Wellington, and a third very comprehensive one,
concerning reclamation from all parts of Europe.

This last treaty caused great trouble, and was only
carried by Humboldt's perseverance and activity. It
is owing to him that all the literary and artistic trea-
sures carried away by Napoleon, from Italy, and various
parts of Germany, were restored to their original
owners ; and especially the university of Heidelberg
owes to his exertions the restitution of very valuable
and rare manuscripts and documents. W. Eken, in
his " History of the Formation, Spoliation, and De-
struction of the Heidelberg Libraries," says : " That
our hope to regain these 850 valuable and singular
manuscripts was fulfilled, is owing entirely to the
zealous and patriotic assistance of his excellency the
Prussian minister, William von Humboldt.''

Humboldt had less time for social intercourse in
Paris than he had had in Vienna. And the Prus-
sians had less inclination for it, as the angry feeling
against them was very high. But Humboldt asso-
ciated with many who could separate intellectual and

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 881

scientific from political interest; among them was
Madame de Stael. He had also his brother here,
although the king frequently claimed the society of
Alexander. For the last time he enjoyed here the
exciting society of the Count Schlabrendorf, who
could not resolve to quit Paris, although tempting
proposals for returning to Berlin were made to him.
Oelsner could not resist those which his old friend
Humboldt made him in the name of the government,
and which promised him a position in the ministry
for foreign ptffairs. He proceeded to Frankfurt before
the end of 1815, to await his further fate there.
Here he met Humboldt and his family again, from
whom he received constant proofs of kindness and
attachment, even when his enemies attempted to
calumniate him. When Oelsner had published two
volumes of his great work, in 1817, he received a
pension from government, with the permission to
return to Paris. The time when such people were wil-
lingly appointed to official posts had already- passed by.

We must here also mention the distinctions which
Humboldt received during this time from his own
king, and from other monarchs. In 1813, the king
appointed him a knight of the order of the large red
eagle ; then he received the iron cross of the second,
and the Russian St. Anne cross of the first class.
Soon afterwards the great cross of the Imperial order
of St. Leopold was conferred upon him. In 1815,
he received the great crosses of the Danish Danebrog
order, of the order of merit of the Bavarian Crown,
and the Baden home order of fidelity. And ulti-
mately he received the highest honours of the war of
liberation; Hardenberg and Humboldt were the only
ones whom the king deemed worthy of the iron cross
of the first class, with a white ribbon.

He was also one of the eminent men whom the
Prussian state, after the termination of the second
peace of Paris, presented with large estates. Bllicher,
Yorke, Billow von Demewitz, Kleist von Nollendorf,
Tranentzien and Gneisenau, Hardenberg and Hum-

LIFE OF

boldt, and Knesebeck, were endowed with them.
The dotation granted to Humboldt was to amount to
5000 dollars of annual revenue, (about 7501.) and
he was to choose the estate himself. He selected the
castle and estate of Ohtmachan, in the district of
Neisse. The estate had formerly belonged to the
prince bishops of Breslau, but had lately been incor-
porated in the state. Now it was given to the Hum-
boldt family, and, in time, produced about 8000 or
9000 dollars annually to the new possessors.

On the 25th November, a day later than Harden-
berg, Humboldt left Paris. He overtook him, arrived
in Frankfurt on the same day, and remained there
while Hardenberg proceeded to Berlin. The other
members of the territorial commission soon arrived
at the place of their meetings ; they were sent for
this especial purpose, and were provided with assist-
ants and subordinates. With Humboldt, were count
Flemming, councillor Bois des Landes, and the attache
Freiherr von Biilow. The latter was soon acknow-
ledged as talented, industrious and very useful, and
under Humboldt's superintendence, developed his
talents till he became a statesman, to whom the most
important ofi&ces were entrusted, and who subse-
quently became minister for foreign affairs, and the
son-in-law of William von Humboldt.

The business of the commission progressed very
slowly, but there was excitement enough in Frank-
furt to make the time pass agreeably. Prussian regi-
ments marched back to then- homes through this
town. The venerable Bliicher remained here some
time, Stein and his family lived here the whole winter,
and Gneisenau came on a visit in the spring. Be-
sides this, the ambassadors to the next diet arrived,
and among them were men who do not deserve to be
blamed if the diet had not the beneficial consequences
that were anticipated.

Frau von Humboldt, with her children, was still
residing in Berlin. In 1815, the marriage of the
second dauditer with the Lieutenant-general von

WILLIAM VON" HUMBOLDT. 383

Hedemann was solemnized. She left Berlin in May
of the following year, and proceeded to Carlsbad, and
from there joined her husband in Frankfurt.

Of the good humour in vfhich Humboldt found
himself at that time, especially after the arrival of his
family, Rahel Levin, now Frau Yarnhagen von Ense,
speaks with great delight. She had gone to Frank-
furt to visit her old friends. She writes to her hus-
band : — " I dined yesterday at Humboldt's, and
Humboldt has got quite a new skin of amiability.
Yesterday it reached its climax. He alone ruled the
conversation, but so gently and mildly, that his
influence was only remarked because he allowed
nothing stupid or stiff to gain ground. He has the
same tone towards his family, towards guests, and
children, constantly relates strikingly comic things,
but not as in winter, from thorough ennui, and in its
harsh colourings. He has the greatest, most childlike
sincerity on all subjects, and this gives a truly cheerful
grace to all his sayings and doings. It seems to me
that he has more sense than ever. Or have I more ?
In the evening I found him the same at the Countess
Custines'.''

In Frankfurt, Humboldt had more leisure to devote
to his favourite studies, and it was here that he
prepared his "Agamemnon'' definitively for the
press. He wrote the introduction to it in February,
1816. This is in itself a considerable piece of work,
important for its characteristic of Greek poetry, espe-
cially of tragedy, and of ^schylus in particular, and
important also for its theory of the art of translation.
Humboldt dedicated it to his wife, who had, from the
first, joined him in these studies. The translation of
" Agamemnon" av?.s published in the spring of 1816,
in Leipzic.

Scarcely any year had passed since 1801? that he
had not corrected something in this work, and at the last
moment it was considerably improved by being com-
pared with a new edition of the Greek poet, which
had been prepared by the philologian G. Herrman, in

384 LIFE OF

Leipzic. This enabled Humboldt to correct bis trans-
lation by the entirely corrected and revised text, and
he acknowledges that without this assistance he should
not have ventured to submit the work, the choruses
especially, to the public.

Thus this work, commenced in 1796, was at last
given to the world. It is considered a masterpiece to
this day ; and the most perfect specimen of a transla-
tion from J^schylus. A. W. Schlegel, the great
master in the art of translation, acknowledged Hum-
boldt as an equal and competent critic of his works,
especially because he had fulfilled the difficult task in
the art of characteristic imitation of ^schylus.

This translation was a great boon to all friends of
classic poetry. Goethe writes of it : — " ' Agamemnon,'
translated by Humboldt, has just reached me, and
afforded me the easy enjo3rment of a piece I had
always extravagantly admired.''

During his stay in Frankfurt, the intelligence
reached Humboldt that Count Goltz was to retain the
post of French ambassador, and that he would receive
another appointment. The French minister, the
Duke de Richelieu, a much over-rated man, found
Goltz more convenient than Humboldt, and had
intrigued with Hardenberg to get rid of the latter.
The ostensible reason was the share Humboldt had
taken in the humiliating peace, and Richelieu asserted
that it would wound the French national feeling to
see him as ambassador in Paris.

But the truth was that the Duke feared the pre-
sence of so important a man. Hardenberg submitted,
and offered the London embassy to Humboldt, who
was surprised at Hardenberg's submission and Riche-
lieu's demands. The hope of living half for the state
and half for study, united with his family, in a climate
which would suit his wife's health was too tempting
easily to be given up, although in some respects he
preferred the London post. It would not have been
agreeable to seem responsible for the consequences of
the restoration amid such a miserable state of affairs.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 385

Humboldt therefore accepted the proposition, and
thus Count Goltz, a more narrow-minded man than
even RicheHeu, retained the Parisian office.

But it was not the intention of the government to
allow Humboldt to depart at once for London. The
affairs in Frankfurt had first to be arranged to a cer-
tain point, and the chancellor thought no one more
fitted for this business than the man who had arranged
them in Vienna and Paris. Afterwards he was re-
quired in Berlin to debate the constitution and a
comprehensive financial code of laws ; and it was also
generally anticipated in Berlin that he would be found
indispensable in the higher spheres of home govern-
ment, and that he would succeed to a post to which
he had more right than any one else.

In Frankfurt, Humboldt had also to represent
Prussia in the solemn opening of the diet, as the
deputy to the diet. Count von der Goltz (not to be
confounded with the French ambassador. Count
Goltz), although he had arrived in Frankfurt, was ill,
and could not appear in person. The day before, Hum-
boldt had effected the omission of church ceremonies at
the opening of the diet ; for it was in bad taste to
make arrangements which could not be generally
shared, and only reminded of the unfortunate disunion
of the nation. Therefore, only a solemn procession of
the ambassadors took place, to the palace of the Prince
of Thurn and Taxis, in which the session was to com-
mence at eleven o'clock. The entire personnel of the
embassies was present. The presiding ambassador,
the Count Buol-Schanenstein, opened the meeting
with a dignified speech, which showed as much consi-
deration for the independence of the single mem-
bers of the diet, as it proved the necessity of a firmer
national alliance. Thereupon the other ambassadors
replied, in longer and shorter speeches. Humboldt
expressed the opinions and wishes of his king, alluding
to the advantages which would arise from a uni-
versal and constant union of the Germans, from a
union which should be at home and abroad, securing,
c c

386 LIFE OF

protecting, and conserving, and which would facilitate
the common purposes of independent, self-relying,
and equally -privileged states for the common-weal,
by firnilj^-constituted legal forms and arrangements.
The speaker then expressed the hope that this would
secure the safet}^ of single states and of the common
fatherland, and that thereby all the privileges would
be maintained and supported, by means of which
Germany might calculate on the esteem of other
European nations. Finally, he added some personal
remarks. " For myself,'' he said, " I could not have
hoped for a more agreeable or honourable task than
to express these sentiments here on this day, and to
belong, though temporarily, to an assembly to w^hom
I devote my esteem, and the ardent endeavour to
labour for the same purpose with all my strength, and
whose favourable confidence I request.'' Then the
credentials were all submitted, and other formalities
gone through. This ended the meeting, which was
followed by a grand dinner at the presiding ambas-
sador's, where a brilliant company assembled in the
eveninsr. In the town, cannons and bells announced
the important event.

On the 11th of November, the first meeting for the
transaction of business took place, and in this the
Count von der Goltz was able himself to take his seat.
It is fortunate for Humboldt that he had no further
sha.re in these deliberations. The result could not
have gratified him, and he would hptve been powerless
to effect any good.

The labours of the territorial commission detained
Humboldt in Frankfurt until January, 1817, and then
they separated without having quite concluded the
affairs.

On the 11th of January, Humboldt with his family
left Frankfurt. He proceeded first to Weimar, where
he visited Goethe, and thence went to his estate of
Burgorner. In February they arrived in Berlin. But
Humboldt was not destined to remain long with his
family. His eldest daughter, Caroline, was in delicate

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 387

liealth, and had been advised to take sea-baths in
Naples. Madame von Humboldt therefore determined
to repair to Italy again, accompanied by her daugh-
ters and her son-in-law, Von Hedemann. She was
also afraid of the "fog island'' on which Humboldt
was soon to reside. But to one member of the family,
at least, this separation was doubly painful, namely,
to the youngest daughter, Gabriele. She had been
betrothed in Frankfurt to the young Baron Billow.
But Gabriele was very young, and Bulow was to
commence his career before their marriage, and for
the present accompany his future father-in-law to
London as secretary of Legation.

In April, Madame von Humboldt started on her
journey, and arrived in Home on the 3rd of May.
In summer she went to Naples, and returned to Home
in autumn. She deferred her departure from time to
time, delighted with Italian life, and patronizing art
and artists as before. Her own health forbade her to
venture into the London climate, and she also awaited
a turn in the career of her husband. On the 19th
of October she wrote to a friend: "I shall remain
here during the winter, and return to Berlin in sum-
mer, where I shall be present at Theodor's (her eldest
son's) marriage. In August, I shall arrive in the
4sle of fogs.' I part from Rome as I would part from
life." Her first station was the baths of Nocera, in
the papal dominions. Then she again returned to
Rome, and remained there until Humboldt seemed
to have a firm position in Berlin, in the summer of
1817. She then returned home, and brought splendid
works of art with her.

Humboldt remained in Berlin for some time, and
here his first disagreement with the state- chancellor,
Hardenberg, began. He was still on the best terms
with him, and the king also gave him repeated signs
of favour. It was at this period that he received the
before-mentioned dotation for his services ; and he
was among those whom the king summoned to his
new cabinet, as a sign of confidence. But this new
C C 2

388 LIFE OF

creation had scarcely entered into life, when it turned
indirectly against its originator, Hardenberg ; and it
was Humboldt who led the attack, and gave it import-
ance by his weighty name.

A great change had taken place in the condition of
affairs during some years, and it seemed doubtful
whether the chancellor could stand against them. The
great merits of Hardenberg cannot be denied. He
had courageously directed the government at a period
of oppression ; he had founded a free peasantry ; had
lessened the privileges of the aristocracy, and had
created rights of humanity, without which civic rights
w^ould be nugatory. The war then interrupted his
activity, and he again showed praiseworthy qualities
in his direction of foreign politics, especially during
the critical years of 1811 to 1813. Difficult as the
times were, they favoured his liberal policy in many
respects ; the king supported him against his oppo-
nents, for the privileges of the crown were scarcely
affected. But when the opposition increased, the
chancellor's weakness became more prominent, espe-
cially his want of energy, — an indecision and hesita-
tion which avoided letting matters come to a crisis, —
a conceding and weak policy where he should have
made a bold stand against his opponents. Vain of
his position, he tried to keep it by any means ; jealous
of talents which might surpass him, he endeavoured
to remove such talents from the affairs, or at least
from their central point, while unworthy individuals
frequently succeeded in gaining his favour, and with
it power and influence. But he was especially want-
ing in manly force to lead the vessel of state much
longer in troubled times. He liked to put a check
on one minister by the presence of another, but they
were soon too strong, and he was glad that by siding
v/ith the victorious party he could at least keep his
position.

It was natural that a reaction should take place to
ix certain extent. The public spirit had become so
mighty during the war, so many high-flown hopes

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 38^

had been clierished, that the calm observer — especially
one who knew Prussia's condition — could foresee the
ebb which would follow the tide. But no one could
suppose that the great movement would have such
insignificant fruits, and all Germany anxiously watched
a state which had shown itself so powerful, and had
become more powerful by its new acquisitions on the
Rhine.

To effect the reconstitution of Prussia, the king had
summoned all his ministers and councillors. They
were divided into several parties ; the chief of the
opposition — which consisted of the nobility, the abso-
lutists, and all those who feared to lose by the changes
in the constitution — was the Prince Wittgenstein, who
enjoyed the confidence of the king in the highest
degree. He was at the time minister of police, but
subsequently accepted the post of minister to the
palace, where his influence was a more secret one.
The party of progress was divided into several diffe-
rent classes, but all demanded a bold, liberal, energetic
government. First there were those who, with small
confidence in constitutional arrangements, held in
memory the traditions of Frederic the Great, united
with those of the last war, who hated all reaction, and
considered the freedom of the press as the best
guardian of an otherwise uncontrolled government.
The chief of this section was Gneisenau. Most of the
generals belonged to it, and also Begme, Next to
these men ranks the no less energetic party of Freiherr
von Stein. But although its chief advanced its de-
mands impetuous^, those demands were in themselves
undefined and vague. So much only is clear, that
they wished measures to be taken in accordance with
the spirit of the times, but their own measures were
not always in accordance with this spirit. Gorres
represented a decidedly constitutional party, but his
opinions savoured of the middle ages. Related to the
two latter opinions in many respects, but with more
political capacities, were men such as Niebuhr, Vincke,
and others who were opposed to a manifold govern-

890 LIFE OF

ment, who wished to circumscribe the power of the
state, in the manner of the Enghsh constitution, and
who, by self-government in the lower spheres, wished
to develop the capacity for sharing the responsibilities
of government of the higher ones. And, finally, there
was Humboldt's party, which advocated the intro-
duction of liberal principles, without exceeding the
bounds of what was for the time possible or expedient
for Prussia. They also wished to circumscribe the
powers of the government, but they demanded gua-
rantees for individual liberty, which is often as much
tyrannized over by the corporate as by the state au-
thority. They recognised the necessity of accustoming
the citizen to take an independent share in political
activity, and therefore demanded a representative
constitution, by which the interest of the people in
public life would be best formed and developed.

Between these parties — of which those on the one
side wished to stop and retrograde, while those on the
other demanded further advancement on the path
which had led to their liberation — stood the state
chancellor, personally inclined to favour the latter
party, but wavering and hesitating, so as not to ruin
his position with the others, and always ready to lean
on the one if the other should grow too strong for
him. In the meantime, the opposition gained ground,
and Hardenberg gradually felt himself inclined to
join them.

On the 30th March the council of state was solemnly
opened, and the debates on the constitution com-
menced, which, however, did not then lead to a
decided result. The second matter of debate, the
finances, was treated much more vigorously. The
minister of finance, Count von Biilow, a nephew of
the state chancellor, had submitted the project of a
law of taxation to the king, who submitted it for
revision to a committee of the council of state, of
which Humboldt was appointed president. The pro-
ject, however, did not give satisfaction, and was much
opposed. It seemed especially unsuitable to oppress

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 391

the people with the hated and oppressive cod sumption
taxes. In this committee Humboldt showed his
strength, and reported to the council of state on the
subject, in a masterly speech, on the 2nd July. He
showed, in liberal and bold terms, the faults of the
falsely-favomable report which the minister had made
on the Prussian finances, and pointed out the infeasi-
bility of his project with great energy and vivacity.
A great agitation then prevailed. Several members
opposed him ; he cpietly listened to their objections,
and replied to all in a speech Avhich was somewhat
longer than the first one. Nothing was effected, and
Billow's plan was defeated. But Humboldt's speech
was received with unmitigated admiration, and friends
and enemies ?Jike acknowledged his great eloquence
and his penetrating and bold treatment of his subject.

Hardenberg soon felt the consequences of this de-
bate, and saw that his nephew could no longer retain
his situation. He had to resign in December of the
sam.e year, and be satisfied with a post in the ministry
of commerce, which was made for him. The relation
between Hardenberg and Humboldt was much shaken
by this event, and even the king seems to have been
suspicious of the latter. But the public now looked
upon Humboldt as the leader of the opposition, and
the report was frequently circulated that the chan-
cellor intended to retire from the administration. If
he had at this period resigned his post in favour of
Humboldt or Gneisenau, the two favourites of the
public, he would have retired in the full glory of his
reputation, and more energetic hands would have
effected what his weaker ones failed to carry out.

In Berlin, Humboldt found his old friend Wolf
again ; Wolf, attacked by his students and his fellows,
felt himself very uncomfortable in his position, and
attached himself closer to Humboldt. Politically, he
also took part for Humboldt, and many thought he
had been left by him to watch the current of events.
Some said, even, that Wolf communicated to Hum-
boldt in the ancient Greek language, the most dan-

892 LIFE OF

gerous and suspicious news, but this is certainly un-
founded.

In July, Humboldt left Berlin, and made first a
journey to Silesia, to choose the estates which were to
form his dotation, then, in the beginning of August,
he visited the state chancellor in Carlsbad, where he
was recruiting his health. Although their connexion
had been shaken by the late events, all was still
apparently smooth, and the arrangement was here
made that Humboldt should wait for the chancellor
on the banks of the Puhine, to arrange the new estates
with him.

But Humboldt had scarcely departed when Har-
d'enberg regretted this arrangement, and sent Hum-
boldt a despatch that his presence in London was
urgently necessary, and that he was to proceed at
once to his post, The chancellor would not keep a
man near him who made such an impression, wher-
ever he spoke or acted, and who had only just before
given him such trouble in the state council. He
therefore sent him this order, which could not easily
be disregarded. Humboldt's friends, indeed, advised
him, as the chancellor seemed unwilling to fulfil his
promises regarding the ministry, to refuse London,
and re-enter the council, as during his absence he
would lose his influence, but Humboldt determined
to go.

After spending a few weeks in Frankfurt, Hum-
boldt proceeded to London in September. He went
by way of Brussels, where he had an audience of the
king, and remained a short time ; and the London
journals of the 8th October, 1817, announced that
the new Prussian ambassador. Baron von Humboldt,
had arrived in London, accompanied by his secretary
of legation, Freiherr von Biilow. He waited on the
prince regent on the 10th October, but had not a
formal audience for the presentation of his credentials
until the 5th December, as the death of the princess
Charlotte, heiress presumptive to the throne, had
placed the court and country in deep mourning.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 393

The prince regent was very partial to Humboldt,
and distinguished him by treating him with great
cordiality. The London Courier of the 26th March,
1818, states: "On Saturday, the prince regent
honoured a splendid dinner, given by the Prussian
ambassador, Freiherr von Humboldt, by his presence.
He declared his wish that the old English heartiness
should reign at the table, and sang two songs himself
after the cloth had been withdrawn.''

In business, indeed, the old toryism reigned, and
Castlereagh was still foreign minister. But the oppo-
sition was already powerful in the parliament, and
the changes commenced which subsequently brought
Canning to the head of affairs. The affairs to which
Humboldt principally devoted his time in London,
were the constituting measures against the Barba-
resks, in order to put a stop to piracy on the north
coast of Africa. Then Humboldt signed a treaty for
the extinction of the slave trade, promising that
Prussia would support England's right of search, with
the other powers of the continent. And, finally,
Humboldt was active in the organization of the
Prussian loan of 1818.

Shortly after his arrival in London, Humboldt
determined soon to resign his post. His wife had
written to him that her health Avould not allow her to
reside in the damp climate of England, and such a
separation, for any length of time, was insupportable
to Humboldt. He therefore requested to be dismissed
from his post in the spring of 1818.

But now the ingratitude towards him was plainly
shown. In November of the former year, the mi-
nistry of worship and public instruction had been
given to the Freiherr von Altenstein, and now, as if
there were not a man in the country fitted for the
post, a foreigner was summoned to fill the office of
foreign minister. Every one had expected that this
place would be given to the man who had served his
country so faithfully and effectively in the most
difficult times ; and the chancellor had even promised

394 LIFE OF

it to Humboldt. But the diplomatists disliked him.
Bussia would have been dissatisfied with his appoint-
ment ; for such a superior mind as Humboldt's could
not have consented to a humiliating subjection to the
autocrat. The post was therefore given to Count
Bernstorff, until then Danish ambassador to the
Prussian court.

This appointment caused a great sensation. Hum-
boldt himself seemed irritated less by the occurrence
than at the chancellor, who had really not acted fairly
towards him, and the apologies and explanations of
Hardenberg's friends even seemed lame. One of his
supporters writes: "Public opinion had expected that
William von Humboldt, and not Bernstorff, would be
appointed to this post, and Humboldt's penetrating
reason needs no praise. But he, in common with all
men of great superiority of mind who have not the
devotedness of heart which may be termed amiability,
has the misfortune to be more feared than loved. No
one likes to be detected in the secret recesses of his
thoughts by another, and Humboldt's native penetra-
tion, heightened by the study of profound sciences,
his talent for seeing through others, was intolerable
to the so-called clever men. Great talents soon be-
came intimate and friendly with him. If he was
indeed superior to them in scientific knowledge, they
liked to learn from him, and sunned themselves in
the rays of his genius. It v/as, however, necessary
to place a man of sense, frankness, and amiability,
but of inferior talent, at the head of affairs which
subject their leader to frequent personal intercourse
with the clever people, the ambassadors ; and the
position is not fitted for a man who has only mind,
and nothing else.'' Freiherr von Stein wrote to Von
Gagern on the same subject: "Bernstorff is an ex-
cellent man. I do not know what stand he will take
with the king and the chancellor. Whether he has
the strength to clear the Augean stables, remains to
be seen. Humboldt excels him • infinitely in mind
and knowledge, and I admire the skill of the state

WILLIAM VON" HUMBOLDT. 395

chancellor in keeping all talented great men out of
office. The spirit of the Lord has deserted the old
sinner, and His blessing has been taken from him, for
nothing succeeds a^nd nothing flourishes under his
rule.^^

It seems that Humboldt, when he received the
announcement of this appointment, at once resigned,
and demanded his dismissal ; for in August the report
was circulated that Humboldt had sent in his re-
quest for a dismissal, and that he intended to retire.
AH these reports were, however, premature, as it
seems that the consideration of Humboldt's? grievances
had been deferred to the great congress of kings
and ministers which was to take place at Aix-la-
Chapelle.

In September, Alexander visited his brother in
London. He came from Paris and was proceeding to
Aix, whither the king, who seemed to take increasing
pleasure in his society, had summoned him. William
was also summoned to be present, but did not leave
until some weeks later than his brother. He did not
return to London, and Freiherr von Biilow was at the
head of affairs for several years.

From Aix, Humboldt proceeded to Frankfurt, where
the former territorial commission again met and con-
cluded their former labours. From Frankfurt, Hum-
boldt proceeded to Berlin, where Hardenberg was
obliged reluctantly to appoint him to the ministry of
the interior, which was divided into two branches for
the purpose. The Count von Witzleben, adjutant and
confidant of the king, a liberal-minded man, wished
for his presence to keep a check on Hardenberg, and
used his influence with the king to procure the
appointment. Humboldt was appointed minister of
the interior, in conjunction with the minister Von
Shuckmann, but their departments were divided ;
Humboldt was also named commissioner of the prin-
cipality of Neufchatel.

When Humboldt succeeded to the ministry, on the
12th August, 1818, the political horizon was darken-

896 LIFE OF

ing all around. The reaction gained strength, and
some very lamentable individual events had given
a plausible colouring to their projects. The king even
declared that every time was not the right time to
make a change in the constitution of a state, and that
he who had given the promise, kept to himself the
right of appointing the period of its fulfilment. In
this close atmosphere the catastrophe of the murder of
Kotzebue made matters still worse. The universities
were watched, suspicions and accusations arose on all
sides, and men such as Arndt, Jahn, Welcker, Reimer,
&c., were treated as conspirators.

Public opinion expected much from Humboldt's
appointment, for he was considered the chief support
of liberal opinions in Prussia. The hopes of the
reformers and constitutionalists were all fixed on this
talented advocate, who had only lately in London had
the opportunity of gathering new experience on par-
liamentary institutions. Nor did he deceive these
expectations as far as lay in his power. Ideas of
liberty had early taken root in his mind, and he had
conceived the idea of individual liberty with almost too
little regard to the requirements of the real world,
and especiall}?' of the Prussian nation and the present
time. We have seen that he wrote on the subject of
fixing the extent of influence of the state, and he
advocated a freedom for the individual for which
men are seldom fitted. The Germans especially were
far from being able to dispense with the interference of
the state to such a degree. But although insight in
practical life soon taught him to adapt his views more
narrowly to the wants of the people, he did not
therefore give up the principle. His statesmanlike
talent showed itself in that he, when he had to do
with the reality, followed not only the bent of his
own mind, but consulted also the wants and wishes
of the majority of the educated men of his time and
of his people ; that he, penetrated by the feeling that
there was something higher in the prevalent ideas of

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 39T

any epoch, sought out these ideas, connected them
with his own views and thoughts, and thus endeavoured
to act with the universal spirit of progress.

It was his firm conviction that a people could only
be strengthened and elevated by free institutions.
He would have realized this conviction in the manner
most consonant to his feelings, had not his practical
mind prevented him. He therefore remained true to
his principles, but studied more nearly the most
urgent wants of the nation and the ruling tendencies
of the age, which were directed to constitutional life,
and the commingling of the people with the affairs of
the state. That this was the ruling tendency of the
age was shown by the opinions of his youthful and
intelligent contemporaries ; that it was the wish of the
great majority, which at that time showed little
inclination to exercise its voice in public affairs, was
proved by the happy results which every agitation of
the people from its centuries-long apathy had worked
in its character.

And finally, he saw that this practical view would
go hand in hand with his ideal one. The German
nation is so unused to political independent action,
that it can only be accustomed to it by, as it were,
forcing it to occupy itself with practical interests.
The universal interest is still the most exciting. It.
awakes the practical sense most easily, and step by
step the power is formed of dispensing with the direct-
ing tutelage of the state. And the Germans need a
strengthening of their sense for the common interest
in a national point of view, or they will run the risk
of being again oppressed by Romans or Cossacks at
the next opportunity.

Humboldt asked nothing from a Prussian consti-
tution which was impossible under the circumstances.
He wished to found the commencement of constitu-
tional life, and pave the way for further privileges
which might easily be added. He did not wish
Prussia to make a rash leap forwards, but to advance

398 LIFE OF

steadily with whole, not half measures. The govern ■
ment was to acquire the means, by representative de-
putations, of knowing the wishes of the people.

It was not his opinion that a state could be built
up by mere theories, and considered it a fortunate cir-
cumstance that the former history of Prussia con-
tained so many examples which might be consulted,
and so many elements which might be employed. In
all respects Humboldt's recal to the ministry en-
couraged the brightest hopes, and it was known that he
would not consent to a withholding of the promised
constitution on paltry grounds. He devoted himself
zealously to the work, and has immortalized his short
career by these exertions, and by the events which so
speedily terminated his ministerial career. Unlike
many who forget their liberal opinions when they have
ascended the ladder, he insisted on his views in the
most emphatic manner, in spite of the reaction which
was daily gaining more strength.

But his energetic interference in the form^ation of a
constitution did not alone cause his dismissal, for the
constitution question was yet too much in its infancy
to excite much apprehension. The struggle was con-
tinued on another field, and in a much more violent
manner, as here the point of debate was a positive
retrogression. It was the Carlsbad decrees which
were proclaimed on the 20th of September by the
diet.

The contents of these decrees are well known. They
introduced measures against the schools and univer-
sities ; circumscribed the freedom of the press by the
censorship, and put down a central investigating com-
mission in Mayence.

Humboldt had been irritated for some time : irri-
tated by the turn which had been given to the unful-
filled promises of a constitution and representative
assemblies, and by the whole policy of the chancellor,
who, instead of taking his stand by the support of
public opinion and of talented men, expected advice
and assistance only from Russia and Austria. The

WILLIAM VON" HUMBOLDT. 399

Carlsbad decrees disgusted him ; he declared them to
be infamous, unnatural, and insulting to the nation,
and did not hesitate violently to oppose the ministry.
He united himself with the high chancellor Yon
Beyme, and, supported by the minister of war, Von
Boyen, commenced an opposition to the ministry,
which he continued perseveringly and systematically,
and in which he violently attacked Hardenberg
and Bernstorfif for their share in the Carlsbad
decrees.

In his first attack, he declared that a minister of
state, a minister of foreign affairs, exceeded his powers
if he ventured to promise to make Prussian subjects
amenable to foreign legislatures. He demanded that
the minister Bernstorff be impeached, and the whole
measure be annulled, and proposed at the same time
that such projects should in future always be first
submitted to the ministry. This accusation was re-
ceived very ungraciously by his majesty.

In the second attack, the point was treated politi-
cally, and the decrees declared to be inconsonant with
the powers of the diet, and it was alleged that such
measures gave the diet a power fatal to Prussia's in-
dependence, and therefore proposed the non-acceptance
of these decrees by Prussia. This took place in
October, 1819. The consequences only followed at
the end of the year, which proves that they were pre-
ceded by some difficulties.

Such an attack was unprecedented in the annals of
Prussia. It was feared that the whole ministry would
be carried away by Humboldt's eloquence, if ener-
getic steps were not taken. Hardenberg, therefore,
coalesced with his former opponent the Prince von
Wittgenstein, to oppose Humboldt. Wittgenstein
proved to the chancellor that the opposition must be
undermined. The whole nobility was excited ; the
cabinets of Vienna and Petersburg, who only wished
for the overthrow of the opposition, were not idle.
The Prussians hated Humboldt especially. Austria
was alarmed : a few more attacks like this one of

400 LIFE OF

Humboldt against the Carlsbad decrees, and tlie great
reactionary scheme would be destroyed.

An accidental circumstance facilitated their plans.
The minister of war, Yon Boyen, disgusted by several
equally illiberal militia and military decrees, demanded
his dismissal, which the king granted, and his example
was followed some days after by Yon Grolman, director
of a department in the ministry of war.

The facility with which Boyen's dismissal had been
effected, inspired the party with more courage. They
told the king that nothing was gained as long as the
most able and most talented of all remained in the
ministry. It is said that the king hesitated, but
Hardenberg and Wittgenstein insisted, and on the 81st
of December, 1819, Humboldt and Beyme were dis-
missed. It may be said that they were thrust out of
the ministry as dangerous. The ministerial pension
of 6000 dollars was offered to Humboldt, but he refused
it and retired to private life. Thus Humboldt's con-
nexion with the court was entirely broken off. The
king was deeply offended to find Humboldt, whom he
had formerly met every evening in his palace, or that
of the Princess Radziwil, in such violent opposition
to his will. The people were indignant, although they
could not vent their anger, and the French papers men-
tioned Humboldt's retirement, and that of the other
men who had done so much for their country, as a
great loss for Prussia.

The reaction had now conquered and showed her-
self boldly after the fall of the opposition. Harden-
berg became the faithful servant of Metternich, and
died with the reputation of having done much for the
cause of despotism and retrogression.

Humboldt could retire with the consciousness of
having done his utmost without having exceeded the
bounds of loyal opposition. He willingly retired to
private life, as he saw no means of working good on
the field of politics. It has been said that he might
have continued the struggle on. another field, and
boldly, but for this there was no room in Germany or

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 401

Prussia ; Stein also could only vent his indignation in
letters. Humboldt, however, did not cease to take
the warmest interest in the progress of his fatherland,
of humanity, and of freedom, and expressed his opi-
nions on the questions of the day with frankness in
private life.

He willingly retired from business, for he had to
work on his own field before his death, and achieve
greatness there. He carried no feeling of personal
anger with him to his retirement, and associated sub-
sequently with Bernstorff as with Stein. But it is
remarkable to see the manner in which he subse-
quently judged of Hardenberg. Varnhagen von
Ense, that well-known artist in biographical descrip-
tions, had told him that he intended writing a life of
the state chancellor. Humboldt expressed his plea-
sure that such a task should be assigned to such
hands, and thus replied to Varnhagen's letter (7th
May, 1830) : " My feelings towards this man (Harden-
berg) have always remained the same, even at the
time when we were entirely opposed to each other,
and I rejoice, therefore, that he will meet with a kind
and considerate treatment at your hands, which he
deserves. It may in truth be said of him, that if we
consider the events of 1810 to 1816 as the progress
of a drama, a poet could scarcely have formed a more
appropriate character for introducing them into Prus-
sia than his. I have frequently felt this, and trembled
for the issue, at times when he seemed to be in great
difficulties. But it is certainly true, that I would
rather for myself have resigned all active share in
this drama, that I might stand firmly above the events.'^

He, indeed, attached little importance to his own
share in the drama, and to what had befallen him.
His brother Alexander repeatedly requested him,
shortly before his death, to dictate something on the
history of his dismissal. His answer was always the
expression of profound indifference for such insignifi-
cant circumstances, with which he did not consider it
worth while to occupy himself
D D

402 LIFE OF

CHAPTER IX.

We have now accompanied Humboldt to the end
of his political course, and have arrived at the last
stages of his life. We saw how readily he retired
from the service of the state when his talents were no
longer acceptable. He returned to private life, but
he did not, therefore, cease to strive and to work.
All the power and energy which he had so success-
fully displayed in the management of pu])lic affairs
were now concentrated on science and art ; his inquir-
ing spirit penetrated to the deepest and slightest pe-
culiarities of the manners, and especially the languages,
of distant regions, and, with lucid spirit, sought their
connexion with the history of human civilization. He
ornamented his family seat of Tegel by the collection
of magnificent works of art, and made it an intellec-
tual temple, a cheerful asylum for his friends, an
instructive means of study for himself. There the
muses frequently inspired him, and he composed
several minor poems. Content and calm, full of
confidence in an eternal existence, he gently departed
from the circle of his friends, ever memorable to all
who knew him.

Little could be hoped for on the field of politics at
that period ; a pure character only incurred the dan-
ger of being soiled, and it had, besides, been frequently
regretted that Humboldt had not leisure enough to
continue those literary labours for which he had shown
such great ability. He therefore devoted himself to
a sphere where something great might yet be achieved,
and something new and imjDortant be founded. He

V/ILLIMI VON HUMBOLDT. 40S

did not, therefore, cease to take an interest in the
affairs of his country or the progress of humanity ;
but his labours were all directed to science and art.
He could, at the same time, live quite according to
his taste, free from forms and demands which politics
make, and could therefore display the amiable part
of his character more plainly, and close the sphere of
his life in cheerfully-calm domestic happiness.

And Humboldt did not turn his attention entirely
from matters affecting practical life. In an essay
" On the Duty of an Historian,'' he taught a dignified
conception of imiversal history, and gave the sketches
for historical philosophy, which, until then, had not
existed. But he devoted himself principally to com-
parative studies, and to the philosophy of languages.
He submitted the results of his inquiries gradually in
various meetings to the Royal Academy of Sciences
in Berlin. He comprehends whole quarters of the
world, with their languages, in these studies, but fixes
them at last on the island group of Polynesia, and on
the combination of his investigations on the ultimate
reasons and the universal nature of language, and has
left the fruit of these reflections in three quarto
volumes. But all this does not fill up the rich con-
tents of the last years of his life. He is active for
art in the most extended sense of the word, gives
reviews of the coryphees of German literature, with
whom he has been so long and so intimately connected.
And finally, the poetical genius inspired him. also. In
a splendid series of sonnets, as in a diary, he recorded
the serious and cheerful emotions and feelings of his
last days.

These leisure years may be divided into two por-
tions,— that preceding and succeeding the death of
his wife. The first portion he devoted to a most ex-
tended study of languages, and the social and intellec-
tual amusements of the town. He lived in Berlin
during the winters, and the summer generally in
Tegel, sometimes on his estate in Magdeburg, in
Burgomer, or on his newly-acquired Silesian estates.

D D 2

404^ LIFE OF

The last years of his life, hovfever, he devoted to the
chief purposes of his age, and retired (resembling the
ancients in this also) to the solitude of country life, to
his castle of Tegel, which he had made into a real
palace of the muses.

Longing for domestic life principally had induced
William von Humboldt to give up his post in London,
and in the autumn of 1819 the family were again
united. But now, when the burden of public affairs
had been taken from him, he could enjoy this re-
union, which he had not been able to do since the
days in Rome. He devoted himself with increasing
affection to his wife and children ; and, indeed, the
amiable part of his nature became more prominent,
and the reserve melted away, behind which he had
concealed his real self in the days of political activity.
His v/ife had also satiated her love for the south ; his
children were grown up. Theodor, the eldest, was
married ; and now, when the war was over, he was to
go and superintend the newly-acquired estates. The
younger son, Herman, learned forestry after he was
grown up, but subsequently undertook the manage-
ment of the half of the estate of Ostmachan, and cul-
tivated it with praiseworthy zeal. He was a quiet
simple man, v/ith agreeable manners, and remained
unmarried. Caroline, the eldest daughter, also re-
mained unmarried. She much resembled her father
in character, and was, after little William's death, his
favourite. She was learned in languages, and a seri-
ous, clever woman, with great depth of feeling, and
some peculiarity of character. Adelheid, the second
daughter, lived always near her parents, with her
husband. Major von Hedemann, who was adjutant to
Prince William, brother of the king. The youngest
daughter, Gabriele, was betrothed to Freiherr von
Billow, who was, at the time of which we write, still
tharge d'affaires in London.

They inhabited the first storey of a very large man-
sion in one of the finest streets in Berlin, paying, as
Niebuhr mentions in some of his letters, a rental of

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 405

1500 thalers (2251.). In this house Madame von
Humboldt died.

Here they again gathered round them all the intel-
lect and art of the metropolis, not excluding the illus-
trious in station or politics. Princes of the royal
house, the highest officers of state, the first lights of
science at a period when Schleiermacher, Wolf, and
Hegel, and subsequently Alexander von Humboldt,
were the ornaments of the capital and the university
— whither many rare and aspiring talents also flocked
— all these met in the saloons of this hospitable house,
to which the highest ornaments of the female sex lent
attraction and brilliancy. And amidst this profusion
of mind and talent, the grace of the lady of the house
remained paramount; and that social talent which
had made her so popular in Paris, Vienna, and Rome,
combined, as it so rarely is, in so high and so well-
balanced a degree, with intellect and even erudition.

And then Humboldt himself ! The thinker, the
learned man, the statesman who knew most of the
countries of Europe from experience, and included
the whole earth in his comprehensive studies ; who
to-day spoke sterling wisdom to a ruler of the states,
and to-morrow investigated the newest revelations of
science with the first scholar of the age ; who at one
moment revived the remembrances of his Jena days,
at another related adventures and anecdotes of his
political life, and then again gave a sketch of the happy
days he had spent in Rome and in Albano : Humboldt !
who possessed all the means of ruling over other
minds, imposing dignity, flow of eloquence, and sharp-
ness of satire and irony ; who was possessed of an
infinite cheerfulness, which was vented sometimes in
joking humour, sometimes in amusing conversation,
as if he looked at life only from its brightest side ;
who, as he had not concealed his ideal tendencies in
the bustle of politics, now, when many thought him
absorbed by the minutia? of philologic studies, poured
forth a roaring flood of thought which had been cul-
tivated by science, and revealed at the same time a

406 LIFE OF

depth of feeling which no one had suspected in this
apparently cold soul, and from his penetrating reason.

And while Humboldt enriched the intellectual life
of the metropolis by his presence, he was also enabled
to take a part in those intellectual, artistic, and social
enjo5rments, for which, among all German towns,
Berlin was so eminent. Much of v/hat was there
united had been partly founded by his assistance, or
raised by him to the eminence on which it stood.
Take alone the university which he had founded !
He could already rejoice over the rich fruits of the
harvest he had planted.

Towards the end of May, 1820, Madame von Hum-
boldt went through Dresden to Toplitz, and thence to
Burgorner. Her husband remained in Berlin a little
longer. On the 29th of June, he delivered his first
address in the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. He
read an important treatise on "comparative philology
as relating to the various stages of philologic de-
velopment.'' When this essay was publicly read in
the meeting, on the 3rd of August, in honour of the
king's birthday, he had aheady departed, and Pro-
fessor Buttmann read it in his stead. During the
same year, Humboldt was elected honorary member
of the Society of Arts in Berlin.

The year 1821 commenced with a very agreeable
event for the family ; Gabriele's betrothed, Freiherr
von Billow, returned from London, after having for
two years managed the affairs of the embassy there.
He now entered the ministry of foreign affairs as
privy councillor of legation, and was particularly
active in the department of commerce. On the J 0th
of January, his marriage with Humboldt's youngest
daughter was celebrated. It must have been gratify-
ing to all parties, that now, vv^hen he was intimately
connected with the Humboldt family, he was able to
spend some years in Berlin.

On the 12th April, 1821, Humboldt read an essay
'' On the Task of the Historian ;" and after this period
he read a paper once at least every year to this scien-

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 407

iific society. He also published in the same year his
long commenced work, '' Investigations as to the ori-
ginal inhabitants of Spain, through the medium of
the Basque language/'

An unfortunate incident disturbed the peace of the
family during this year. The brave son-in-law of
Humboldt, Major von Hedemann, had a brother who
had been very wild from his earliest youth. His
eccentricity was unbounded, and caused much grief to
his excellent family. He had served bravely in the
war, and then been appointed as inspector of forests
in Westphalia, without, however, giving up his eccen-
tric course of life. In this mood he had the mad idea
of exciting a riot in West Prussia to procure the long
promised constitution, and to effect a change in the
administration. When he had collected together a
number of uneducated men, he went to work, not sus-
pecting that he was already betrayed. The govern-
ment allowed the riot to break out, and then seized
Hedemann and his companions, and gave them over to
the courts of law. The news of the rebellion arrived
in the beginning of July, and caused a great sensa-
tion. Humboldt, who was in Ottmachan at the time,
is said to have been much annoyed at the circum-
stance. How easily could his opponents m.ake use of
this fact, and connect it with his former opposition.
But the king knew Humboldt too well to give any
credit to such insinuations, and for his family's sake,
treated the unfortunate Hedemann with great consi-
deration. He was taken to the fortress of Grandeuz,
but liberated after a few years, and, it is said, reap-
pointed to his former place.

On the 17th January, 1822, Humboldt read his
treatise "On the origin of grammatical forms, and
their influence on the progress of ideas," in the Aca -
demy of Sciences. In the summer of the same year
he spent some time in Burgorner, where the Freiherr
von Stein paid him a visit.

During the years 1822 and 1824, Humboldt built
his new castle of Tegel. In place of the old hunting

408 LIFE OF

seat in which he had spent his childhood, he erected
a more splendid building, and made it a seat in which
an art-loving mind could appropriately end his
days. The inheritance became a new creation. In
order suitably to retain an old turret built in the time
of the great elector, he made a clever plan, according
to which the four corners have turrets. The whole
edifice retained an antique character. The interior of
the castle was ornamented with the most select trea-
sures of sculpture and painting by ancient and modern
masters, which had been principally collected during
the long residence in Kome. Humboldt wrote of his
seat to Gentz, in May, 1827 : — " I have here erected a
dwelling full of gypsum casts and marble statues
which would afford you great pleasure. You knew
the old house. Now you would wander among beau-
tiful statues, of which, especially, those in my room do
not suffer by a superabundance of costume.''

He made Tegel a beautiful seat in other respects
also. The gardens, which his father had planned,
were now formed into a beautiful park, which Hum-
boldt ornamented with monuments, and especially by
the monument which he raised to his wife, and
beneath which he also was buried.

Thus this spot, stamped by his genius and hallowed
hj the last few years of his life, has become, by the
new castle and park, by classical mementoes of
every kind, and by a select and excellently arranged
artistic collection, one of the most interesting environs
of the Prussian capital. During Humboldt's lifetime
already Tegel was hospitably open to all visitors, and
the inhabitants of Berlin did not fail to appreciate
such a favour.

In the commencement of the year 1823, Humboldt
saw his brother Alexander again. He had met the
king of Prussia at the congress of Verona, and accom-
panied him on his journey through Italy. He now
returned to Berlin with him, intending to remain some
jnonths, and then to repair to Paris again.

During this visit our Humboldt recommenced his

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 409

intercourse with the court. His intimacy with the
crown prince had never been interrupted, and from
that period the king paid an annual visit to his for-
mer minister in Tegel. .

Humboldt's worth had been much acknowledged
and remembered during the first months of the year
1823, and the public expected that he would be now
selected as the leader of the state. The state chan-
cellor, prince Hardenberg, had died at Genoa in De-
cember, 1822. Herr von Yoss, who was appointed
his successor, at that time enjoyed the perfect confi-
dence of the king, and had entered into the active
service of the state a few months previously. But
Voss died on the 30th January, 1823, and the king
was in great embarrassment whom he should select
for the important post of prime minister. One man
whom the king had in view, the field-marshal count
Kleist von NoUendorf, died three weeks later than
Yoss. The embarrassment increased. A conversation
has been communicated to us which the king at
that time had with his most confidential counsellors,
but as it is a verbal communication, we do not give
implicit confidence to it. It is, however, in part, con-
firmed by documentary evidence.

The king gave an audience to the Prince Wittgen-
stein, General von Witzleben, and the councillor
Albrecht. He spoke of the death of the minister
Yon Yoss, and continued : " I have for some weeks
considered how the post of Herr von Yoss, whose
death is greatly to be regretted, can be filled. Of all
the persons whose position fits them for the post, the
minister von Humboldt is the most capable, but he
enjoys so little confidence abroad, that he can in no
way be thought of I have gone through the list of
all my ministers, and have come to the conclusion
that Count Lottum is the most appropriate. Now,
tell me your opinion.''

Albrecht — "If your majesty cannot take the mini-
ster von Humboldt, I also believe that Count Lottum
is the most appropriate."

410 LIFE OF

Witzleben was silent, and his majesty said to him,
" What think you ?"

Witzleben. — "The minister Von Humboldt, is, in
my opinion, the only one properly qualified ; but if
your majesty has not the entire confidence in him
without which he could not fulfil the important duties
of such a position, I would, at least, humbly suggest
that he be made president of the council of state, and
member of the ministry, and that Count Lottum be
.president of the ministry/'

" No, that will not do,'' replied the king ; " the two
posts cannot be separated."

Prince von Wittgenstein. — "Count Lottum is a
very sensible man, and has very conciliatory manners."

The King. — " But whether he will have the neces-
sary energy to insist wherever it is requisite, is another
question, and the only objection I feel to him."

Prince Wittgenstein. — " He certainly is weak."

The King. — " But I know of none other."

The king is then said to have enumerated all his
ministers, ably characterizing each one. Witzleben
again spoke in favour of Humboldt, and of the just
views he always had on the state of affairs.

This conversation shows that it was principally con-
sideration for foreign countries, and, as we shall sub-
sequently prove, for Russia, which prevented Hum-
boldt's appointment as prime minister of Prussia, and
that General Witzleben principally supported him.
We have previously mentioned that Witzleben was a
friend and supporter of Humboldt, and had frequently
applied to him for his opinion in difficult matters ; it
is therefore natural that he should take this oppor-
tunity of speaking in his favour, and wish him, whose
mind and talents he so admired, to be placed at
the head of public affairs.

Witzleben had another opportunity of insisting on
the merits of Humboldt, when the king submitted to
his ministers some projects of improvement in the
Prussian management of affairs made by the prince

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 411

Hardenberg before his death. In Witzleben's re-
marks, he strongly recommended the king to select
Humboldt as chief minister of state. But the time
was not favourable for such a leader of the Prussian
state, and he would scarcely have been able to main-
tain himself in the position. His opponents probably
prevented his appointment, and the minister, Yon
Altenstein, principally, is said to have used his influ-
ence against Humboldt. Witzleben, however, boldly
opposed these machinations, and always recurred to
his favourite name, Humboldt, combating the objec-
tion that as president he would have too great power
in the council. Witzleben asserted that the president
could have but one vote, as all the other members,
and said : " It is the "mind which decides, and that,
certainly, Herr von Humboldt possesses in a high de-
gree. But Herr von Altenstein will not fear that, or
declare it contraband.''

The king, however, kept to the views he had once
enunciated. Count Lottum was, indeed, not named
president of the ministry, for this post remained
vacant, but he received the post and title of prime
minister.

Humboldt thus remained at liberty to devote
himself to science and to revel in the domains of
thought.

In the autumn of 1823, he was in Thuringen, and
visited Goethe in November. This great poet was
highly gratified by the visit of his old friend. Hum-
boldt brought with him the letters which Schiller had
written to him during the speculative period of his
life ; but Goethe, whose mind was foreign to this
speculative tendency, does not seem to have greatly
enjoyed these letters, for he at this time called this
speculative epoch in Schiller's life an unhappy one.
Humboldt opposed him, though without wounding
Goethe's susceptible nature. On the 14th November,
Humboldt was invited to the court of the archduke,
and was one of the first who received the great cross

412 LIFE OF

of liis newly-instituted order of the White Falcon of
Watchfulness.

The next summer Humboldt seems to have spent
entirely in his new palace of Tegel. Niebuhr paid
him a visit there, in the commencement of June.
The next winter Niebuhr remained in Berlin, when
Humboldt had again returned to toiYu. He writes
in his letters, that he frequently dined at Humboldt's
in the beginning of 1823, once with the purpose of
conversing with William on the Champollionic hiero-
glyphics, as he took a great interest in this pictorial
language, and on the connexion between language and
writing in general. Niebuhr says, " One rarely can
enjoy such conversations here.'' He admired the
whole family. The son-in-law, Billow, he calls one of
the most eminent men in Berlin, and speaks of a
grandchild as an extraordinarily amiable child.

The year 1824 was marked by two deaths which
affected Humboldt deeply. On the 8th August F. A.
Wolf died at Marseilles, as he had in vain hoped to
restore his health in a more southern climate ; and
on the 21st of the same month, the Count Schlabren-
dorf followed him. Wolf had become more soured
and embittered since 1817, and he certainly suffered
many insults. Humboldt, however, always honoured
him, although he did not approve of his eccentricity
and exao-o^eration. He interested himself to the last
for his studies and labours. We know that Wolf,
during the last years of his life, was employed on the
sketch for a Greek grammar on his own system, and
that he was greatly encouraged and supported in this
undertaking by Humboldt. But the acknowledg-
ment he expressed at his death best proves Humboldt's
esteem for the living man. He expressed it especially
in a letter to Varnhagen von Ense, written on the
Srd September, 1833, in which he compares him to
Goethe : " I have been thinking much of Wolf lately,"
he wi^tes. " Fate has made the distinguishing differ-
ence between him and Goethe in their general cha-
racteristics. This may sound very paradoxical to you.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 413

But in Goetlie a principal feature v/as his divine
reserve, his constant moderation in everything, the
maintaining of necessary, boundaries. In Wolf, there
was an endeavour after the contrary, an exaggeration
even in excellence. Thence proceeds his frequent,
divine boldness. In Wolf, the pure and sincere vene-
ration of Goethe was a beautiful feature ; Goethe, on
the contrary, was, especially latterly, very unjust
towards Wolf, and did not sufficiently acknowledge
his truly great and comprehensive mind.''

In 1825, a new and very congenial field of activity was
opened to Humboldt. A number of Berlin artists
and art-friends had united to give, by annual contri-
butions, opportunities of work to the German artists
studying in Rome, having merely the advancement
of art for their object. This plan was soon extended
in regard to its purpose and the number of its mem-
bers, and in ] 825 this first plan was changed into the
Union for friends of art in the Prussian dominions.
At first, prizes were given only to those artists who
remained in Italy for their studies, but this condition
was subsequently dropped. A directory and com-
mittee of artists managed the affairs. William von
Humboldt was at once appointed to the head of the
former, as his artistic taste and accurate acquaintance
with Home and Boman artists had well fitted him for
it. He valued this office, as he considered art and
plastic arts as one of the means for the development
of humanity. He even declared, that the influence of
art upon the public was of more importance than art
itself He proved this opinion by his acts, and de-
voted himself zealously to the duties of this society.
It was he who wrote the programme which was issued
by it on the 2ord August, 1825, and he ^v^ote a report
of the results achieved by the society regularly once
or twice a year. The first report is dated 29th Janu-
ary, 1826; the last, 2.3rd March, 1835, a fortnight
before his death. The principal portion of these pro-
grammes are merely of local importance ; but those
portions of them which are of general interest have

414 LIFE OF

been included in the collected edition of his works.
They form a valuable supplement to it, giving Hum-
boldt's views on this field of art, and are a valuable
contribution to the history of art in Germany.

In the spring of 1826, Humboldt went to Silesia
to spend some time in Ottmachan. He travelled
over Breslau, where he made some new friends, among
them the famed philologian and lexicographer, Franz
Passow. Humboldt honoured his opinions as much
as his talents, for Passow was one of those who
bravely opposed the romantic pietistic reaction in
literature, which threatened to gain ground.

In the summer we find him again in Tegel,
while his wife was at the baths of Gastein, and
towards the end of the year he paid Goethe another
visit, and remained with him over the new year. Goethe
writes to his friend Zelter, 9th Jan., 1827. " I must
acknowledge that I have been very well these last
days, for Herr von Humboldt remained with us
longer than I could have hoped, and I thus had the
opportunity of filling up a wide breach of social in-
tercourse.''

The year 1826 is marked by two events which ex-
cited Humboldt's interest, though in a diiferent
degree.

The first was the Greek war of emancipation, which
kept alive the opposition against the system of prince
Metternich during the following oppressive years.
The public sympathy for this cause was kept down
in Berlin for some time, but a change was effected
herein, in April, 1826 ; soon after the emperor Alex-
ander's death. Professor Hufeland and three theolo-
gians of Berlin issued an appeal in favour of the
Greeks in the beginning of May in this year, which
excited the greatest enthusiasm. The contrit)utions
were reported in the Berlin newspapers, and among
the first and most munificent, next to those of prince
August, was that of the minister Von Plumboldt.

The second event is of an entirely different kind.
It was more an agitation of the Prussian nationality,

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 415^

but directed to the intellectual field, and bore the
colours and tendency of the age. " Annuals of scien-
tific criticism" were originated in this year, under
Hegel's auspices, and the first number was published
in the following year. This project showed the
influence which Hegel's philosophy had at that time
already gained, and its striving for an increased
dominion. Many celebrated contemporaries who did
not subscribe to Hegel's philosophy, were, indeed,
invited to take part in this scheme, and among them,
Goethe and Humboldt ; but these names were wanted
in reality, more as ornaments. Humboldt was aware
of this, but accepted the invitation on that account,
to prevent one-sidedness. He subsequently wrote
several articles for these annuals.

The course which German philosophy had pursued
since Schelling taught, was not one which Humboldt
could follow. He maintained, as long as he lived,,
the critical system to which his friend Schiller had
adhered. He was less partial, even to Hegel's phi-
losophy, than to any other, and this is proved in a
letter written to Gentz on the 1st of March, 1828. " I
agree perfectly," he says, " with what you say of the
annuals. They contain some very readable things by
Varnhagen, some scientific ones by Bopp, but, on the
whole, they do not please me. Hegel is certainly a
clever and profound thinker, but I cannot imagine
that such a philosophy as his can really take root.
I have not been able to reconcile myself to it yet,
although I have repeatedly tried. The indistinct
language may injure him a little. It is not exciting,
like that of Kant or Fichte, colossal and elevated,
like the darkness of the grave, but arises from evident
awkwardness. It is as if he could not wield the lan-
guage. For when he treats of common things, it is
anything but easy or noble. It may arise from a
want of imagination, but I would not like to pro-
nounce for his philosophy. The public seems to be
divided into two classes with respect to Hegel ; those
who unconditionally adhere to him, and those who

416 LIFE OF

avoid bim as a sliarp stumbling-block. But be does
not belong to tbe pbilosopbers wbo trust boldly to
tbeir ideas, be teacbes his doctrines very perseveringly.
Tbe annuals are tbe fruit of this desire, and I joined
tbe society to sbow that this was not to be its exclu-
sive purpose. I do, however, associate with Hegel,
and am, in social life, on good terms with him. ^ I
respect bis talents and capabilities, without ignoring
the above-named faults.''

Tbe nature of Humboldt's mind reveals itself more
and more towards the latter end of his life, and it
becomes evident that not the influence over others,
not action, but an eminently ideal feature, inspired
him. His was a thoroughly inquiring nature : the
aim of his inquiries were ideas, and even his com-
prehensive intellectuality was subordinate to this
purpose. But he distinguishes himself from the
Indian sage, by not devoting himself exclusively to
the contemplation of the divinity, but, Uke the true
son of the more historical quarter of tbe globe, to the
conceivable and practical, to the investigation of the
intellectually-material nature of humanity, to the
laws of human development, and the course of general
history. When he did not act, he lived more in the
contemplation of events of the past,^ and chiefly of
antiquity, than of the present, more in ideas than in
reahties. This arose from a general view which he
had early formed, that the development and perfection
of the individual were the highest principle, and that
the tribute even which every individual is bound to
pay to the community, is yet principally the means
for the development of this chief aim. Humboldt
had paid his due tribute to the community ; he still
paid it, in so far as his activity affected the world ;
but he lived principally for himself and his own
studies.

And in this sense Humboldt expresses himself
unreservedly, in the confidential letters written at
this time. He always speaks with great indifference
of how the world judges what he does or did ; and

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 417

we find this feeling expressed in several letters : "I
am very well/' he writes, on the 21st May, 1827, from
Tegel. " Except the life with my family, and a little
business relating to my private affairs, I live only in
studies and scientific pursuits/' The agreeableness of
mere learning cannot be, he says, an entirely strange
sensation to Gentz. He tells him that he has paved
a new way for linguistic study for himself, which he
must diligently pursue to reach the goal towards which
he is striving. In another letter, after expressing his
desire to see and converse with Gentz, he says : " I
have always felt an old historical interest, and then
all human affairs contract to very small importance. I
see the stream which sweeps away the objects more
than objects themselves. I do not think I have lost
my vivacity: it arose in me because I do not draw it
from life, care little for life, and am not unduly
partial to life. This is now more the case than ever,
though not from weariness. What formerly gave me
pleasure, inspires me with the same feeling still, but
because I am more ripe in ideas, and with ideas one
grows beyond this life, which is not the true seat of
ideas. Besides, life is an act which not only needs to
be well commenced but well completed, and he who
is wise goes most willingly when he is happiest. And
I am very happy — so content vdthin and without,
that I have no wish which I could not attain through
myself I employ, myself much with science now:
but that also is only secondary, and not the principal
object.''

In the autumn of 1826 Alexander von Humboldt
came to Berlin. He was persuaded by the king, who
wished to have a scientific adviser at hand, to settle
in Berlin in the course of the following year, and the
wish to live near his brother, from whom he had
been so long separated, induced him to comply with
the king's request. He returned to Paris in De-
cember for the necessary arrangements in his affairs
and literary labours.

A portion of the Humboldt family left Berlin in
E E

418 LIFE OF

the ensuing year. William von Humboldt's son-in-
law, FreiheiT von Biilow, was, in February, 1827,
appointed ambassador to London, where he had for-
merly been only charge d'affaires, and where he
gained such celebrity for his diplomatic skill, that
he was, in later years, raised to the post of minister
of foreign affairs. Billow's wife and children re-
mained at first in Berlin. He started alone, and
proceeded first to Paris, from whence Alexander von
Humboldt accompanied him to London. Both ^en
vv^ere overwhelmed with attention by Canning, but
Alexander soon proceeded by way of Hamburg to
Berlin. William von Humboldt writes to Gentz,
in May, 1827: "Alexander has taken up his resi-
dence here. He is more active and lively than ever,
and we often speak of you." The brother remained
in Berlin henceforward, although he for some time
paid an annual visit to Paris, which had become his
second home.

Madame von Humboldt had been in delicate health
for some years, but the baths of Gastein had done her
much good, and the winter was spent very happily.
She determined, therefore, to visit the bath again.
Humboldt, who now felt every separation from her
painfully, accompanied her, as well as the eldest
daughter Caroline. He purposed to use the baths
himself, not for any positive complaint, for he was, on
the whole, healthy, but merely to strengthen himself.

On the 13th of July, on the way to Gastein, he
wrote to Gentz, that he wished to meet him there ;
but although Gentz was in the habit of visiting Gastein
every year, he could not leave Vienna before Septem-
ber, on account of business ; and as the Humboldts left
on the 24th of August, to meet their children on one of
their estates, they did not see each other. Humboldt
was much pleased with Gastein, and felt himself
strengthened by the baths.

He returned to Tegel, but soon removed to the
town, where an especial treat awaited him. His brother
Alexander gave a course of sixty-one lectures there as

WILLIAII VON HinVIBOLDT. 419

the result of his travels, as has already been alluded
to in Alexander's life.

In the spring of 1828, William von Humboldt
made his last great journey. Madame von Biilow, his
youngest daughter, had remained in Berlin, but was
now to follow her husband to London. Humboldt
determined with his wife and eldest daughter, to
accompany his youngest one to her destination, and
visit Paris at the same time.

On the 30th of May, they left Berlin, and pro-
ceeded direct to Paris, where they stayed several weeks,
intending, however, to make another stay here on
their return from London.

Paris at that time presented a scene of great inte-
rest. It was the time of Guizot's, Cousin's and Ville-
main's lectures, the epoch of a great intellectual revo-
lution, which contributed with equal force to the over-
throw of the elder Bourbons, to the foundation of a
politically improved time, and to the extension of the
intellectual life of the French nation. Indeed, the
whole intellectual life in that capital was striving and
refreshing.

And not only in a general point of view, but also
for special branches of study, Paris offered a rich store
of treasures. Paris was the central point for universal
and comparative philology, and here it flourished most.
Silvestre de Lacy, the father of imiversal philology in
France, well known to Humboldt from former years,
taught there among a new philological generation, to
whom the great German philologian was a well-known
and honoured name. In the session of the 19th of
August, 1825, the Parisian Academy of Inscriptions
and Sciences had elected him, and the philologian
Creuzer, in Heidelberg, as foreign member (associe
etranger), by an overwhelming majority of votes. But
he probably only made the personal acquaintance of
many of the younger philologians at this period, such
as ChampoUion, the discoverer of hieroglyphics, and
Jacquet, the adept in Asiatic languages. He was
especially indebted for a hospitable reception to Abel-

E E 2

420 LIFE OF

E^musat, St. Martin, Boumouf, and Julius Klaproth,
his fellow-countryman, resident in Paris. Humboldt
remained in scientific correspondence with nearly all
these men, and also took the opportunity of returning
their kindness by a learned essay on Philology, which
he read in the institute which had elected him its
member.

In London Humboldt saw his son-in-law in the
office he had once himself filled, and met many a
statesman and learned man whom he had known
before, or whose acquaintance he now made. The
great Canning was already dead, but he met his
former colleague, the Austrian ambassador. Prince
Paul Esterhazy, the Count Miinster, minister for the
Hanoverian affairs. King George IV., who had
showed him great favour as Prince Regent, now
received him with great honour. He decorated him, not
only with the Grand Cross of the Guelphic Order, but
had his portrait painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence for
the royal castle at Windsor, where it now hangs beside
that of monarchs, statesmen, and generals, beside
Metternich, Hardenberg, Schwarzenberg, Wellington,
Blucher, &c.

Humboldt, mth his wife and eldest daughter, left
the British capital on the 19th July. They returned
to Paris, and hastened, after a short stay there, through
Strasburg to Gastein, where they used the baths
again, from the 15th August to 15th September. It
is probable that on this occasion Gentz met them
here. The remainder of the autumn the Humboldts
spent in Tegel.

After the baths of Gastein had had such a favour-
able influence over the health of Madame von Hum-
boldt, the evil now broke out with increased violence
after their return from their journey. The end of
November she was lying dangerously ill in Berlin ;
in January it was again said she was on her death-
bed, but she lingered till March, when her illness
suddenly took a more rapid turn, and she died on the
26th March, 1829.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 421

The death of such a woman could not but be deeply
felt. The report of her death in the Berlin Allge-
TYieine Zeitung contained the words : — " The rare
merits of her mind and character made the deceased
lady the object of universal interest and esteem." By
her travels she had become connected with every-
thing great in science and art, and as in Rome,
Vienna, and Paris, so had her house in Berlin been the
centre for the most intellectual and agreeable society.

But her loss was most deeply felt by her family,
and principally by her husband. His love for her
had increased during the last few years, but had now
reached its height. It seemed as if he had again
won her, when she preceded him to a higher world.
Her image never again left him ; it was interwoven
with all his ideas, it followed him in his dreams, it
occupied every hour not devoted to serious study.
And the hope of a future life was infinitely increased
in confidence and strength by his desire to be re-united
to his wife.

What first occupied him after her death was a
monument which he had determined to erect to her
memory in the park of Tegel, under the superintend-
ence of the great sculptor Ranch. This monument
was raised on a spot in the park to which the deceased
had been especially partial, and had herself chosen
for a resting-place. In the meantime her body was
deposited in the churchyard of Tegel until the monu-
ment was completed. And frequently now Hum-
boldt wandered through the cypress alley leading to
the spot which contained these dear remains ; from
the summit of the monument a splendid statue of
Speranza, which Thorwaldsen had made expressly for
Madame von Humboldt, looked down consolingly and
trustfully.

Humboldt could soon not bear to leave Tegel.
He retired into solitude from the bustle of the town,
and lived only in studies and in the past.

422 LIFE OF

CHAPTER X.

The deatli of Humboldt's wife made a great cliange
in his studies, but it was a fortunate circumstance that
many occupations and diversions conduced to fill up
and enliven his leisure hours. This was the more ne-
cessar}^, as Alexander left Berlin a few weeks after
the death, to undertake his last long journey to the
Ural mountains, and did not return till the end of the
year.

Among the occupations which employed William
von Humboldt at this period, was the share which he
was commissioned to take in the magnificent founda-
tion of the new museum. The king, in May, 1829,
appointed him the president of a commission which
was to take charge of the interior arrangements in
this new institution, a choice which was universally
received with favour and approbation. In Berlin, it
caused especial satisfaction, because it was believed
that the honoured statesman would thereby be more
induced to mix with the higher circles of society
than it seemed probable he would do after his severe
loss.

This commission consisted of the first artists and
connoisseurs in Berlin, of Schinkel, the architect of
the museum, of the sculptors Ranch and Tieck, the
painter Wach, the councillor Hirt, and the subsequent
director of the gallery of paintings, Dr. Waagen.
With most of these men, Humboldt had been long
acquainted, and was connected with some of them in
the direction of the Art Union. He was on very

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 423

friendly terms with Raucli and Schinkel. Besides
the members of the commission, the crown prince
took a great interest in the arrangement of the mu-
seum, flumboldt's principal task in the commission
was to direct the councils, to reconcile contradictory
opinions, and to report to the king after the business
was concluded.

On the Srd August, 1830, the museum, a new
ornament to the town of Berlin, was opened, and on
the 21st of the same month, Humboldt submitted to
the king a report of the arrangements which had
been made. The king was highly gratified, and the
museum honours the memory of its founders. In the
hall are placed the busts of the men who were com-
missioned to organize the institution, and that of
Schinkel, the architect, and of William von Humboldt.
The bust of the latter was made by Tieck, after one
by Thorwaldsen in Rome.

To strengthen his health, Humboldt visited Gastein
in the years 1829 and 1830, but for his mind and
spirit he sought other means of consolation. And as
that sentimental feature which had characterized his
youth now returned in age, he loved with increased
tenderness all that had gladdened his younger years,
Rome, the life in Jena, and especially Schiller's
memory. He had for some time before had the in-
tention of publishing that beautiful memorial of their
intimacy, his correspondence, and had permitted Kor-
ner to publish a few fragments of it in his sketch of
Schiller's life. Now, after Goethe had published his
correspondence vdth his friend, Humboldt no longer
hesitated to do the same ; he prepared the publication
of the letters in the commencement of 1830, and
wrote his beautiful introduction to it in May, in Tegel.
The collection soon afterwards appeared in Stuttgardt,
published by Cotta.

In September of this year Humboldt received from
the King of Prussia the following gratifying commu-
nication. " I have read the report of the 21st ult.,
which you have prepared of the execution of the com-

424 LIFE OF

mission given you for the arrangement of the museum,
with great interest, and give my full approbation to
the arrangements made under your direction. I have
found all your propositions appropriate, and have re-
quested the minister of religion and instruction to
give his attention to their practicability, and then
report to me on the subject. As a proof of my con-
tinued good will, and in acknowledgment of your
former services to the state, I have elected you to my
Black Eagle order, of which I send you the insignias.
I wish, at the same time, that your health may permit
you again to take part in the labours of the council
of state. In this hope, I have announced to the
council your renewed participation in its labours and
its deliberations. Berlin, 15th September, 1830. —
Feedekic William.''

This re-appointment to the council of state was, in
reality, only a kind of restoration. Humboldt did not
return to the active service of the state, nor did he
draw his pension. But the mere re -appointment
caused great joy among the public, though only on
account of the expectations it excited ; for it was
hoped this appointment would merely be the first
step, and that Humboldt would return to the minis-
try. The report was even spread that he had been
entrusted with the plan of a constitution. But nothing
of this was fulfilled ; this would have been a reform
in the system of which the old king never thought,
although the critical foreign circumstances must have
reminded him of his former promises. It is also not
probable that Humboldt would have left his favourite
labours, and undertaken the burdens of a ministry
again, unless the condition of his country should have
imperiously demanded the sacrifice.

Humboldt, however, regularly attended the meet-
ings of the council of state, and was, with two others,
even appointed a committee for foreign affairs ; but
the office was entirely a nonentity, as the minister for
foreign affairs took care not to consult Humboldt on
matters which it was well known that he would
oppose.

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 425

"We know that after the death of his wife Hum-
boldt had chosen Tegel as his residence ; and he soon
did not leave it even in winter. In the latter
years of his life he rarely visited Berlin, and was
seldom present at the meetings of the academy. His
eldest daughter, Caroline, was with him, and was his
chief support ; and his second daughter, Adelheid,
with her husband, the General von Hedemann, also
had the gratification of being with him during the
last few years of his life. Besides this, there was no
lack of visitors from the town. Princes, statesmen,
and scholars, liked to visit the great man who lived at
Tegel ; but he was sometimes so wrapt in his studies,
that he saw no one except his own family, and even
the highest persons in the state could not be ad-
mitted.

His physical condition also warned him to keep his
last intentions ever in sight. Since the death of his
wife, his physical strength had gradually decreased ;
and his weakness visibly increased with his constant
grief and his incessant mental labour. Those who
saw him now in Berlin, and heard him speak publicly,
could scarcely form any idea of the formerly so robust
man. As if the mass of ideas which he carried with
him had now become too heavy, his head fell deeper
and deeper on his breast, and his tongue no longer
moved with its former volubility. To strengthen him-
self, he visited the sea-bath Norderney in 1831, 1832,
and 1883. The bath benefited him, and it seemed
as if fate would prolong his life until its task were
fulfilled. He worked industriously at his great work
on the constitution of languages and on the Kawi
language, and arranged all the mass of ideas which
he had collected and made his own.

Most of these ideas are contained in the great
philological work, but he had found another mode to
express the ideas and feelings which occupied him.
He had always felt the want of expressing the emo-
tions and ideas which occupied him in a poetical garb,
but this tendency increased to a remarkable degree

426 LIFE OF

with age, and more still with the mood in which the
ever-present feeling of a great loss contemplates nature
and the retirement of countr}^ life. The fruit of this
less sad than solemn frame of mind was a large num-
ber of poems, all in the same form, whose existence
was unknown to his brother or to any member of his
affectionate family. lie had for several years dictated
these sonnets to his secretary, Ferdinand Schulz, every
evening, even when on his shorter journeys, and a
portion of them have now been published. To every
volume of his collected works his brother Alexander
has prefixed a selection from this cyclus of beautiful
sonnets, so that several hundreds have been published,
and these are only a very small proportion of the
entire quantity.

Two men especially gladdened the last years of his
life — his brother Alexander and Goethe.

The brother now lived near him. How much they
had to tell each other who had been so long sepa-
rated, and, from reasons one may easily imagine,
could not even communicate by correspondence. The
letters they wrote to each other were rare, and were
like a landscape without water or foliage. For, as is
frequently the case, they did not even communicate
v\^hat they might safely have written. "What joy
must it then have been for Humboldt to have his
younger and more robust brother return near him,
and see him advance on his course. We know how
their studies had always advanced hand-in-hand, —
how, when their paths lay far asunder, they watched
each other's course with anxious interest, — and hoAv,
m the most opposite studies and pursuits, the relation
of their souls could not be concealed.

Humboldt and Goethe also continued in uninter-
rupted correspondence until the death of the latter,
and did not cease to assist each other by active interest
and assistance. If, especially in the present age, there
is something exceedingly gratifying in seeing two
such eminent men maintain such an intimate friend-
ship for nearly half a century, it is doubly affecting

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 427

wlien they impart their great thoughts to each other
until their hour of death. Goethe's last letter to
Humboldt was written on the morning of the day on
which his fatal illness commenced, atid Humboldt's
reply arrived on the day of Goethe's funeral.

After his death, Humboldt seized the first oppor-
tunity of publicly expressing his views of him, and de-
livered a funeral oration on his memory to the Academy
of Arts in Berlin. It was also the last time that
Humboldt came prominently forward in public. He
did indeed come to the town now and then till shortly
before his death, but except for these occasional visits,
principally made to the Society of Arts, he spent the
whole of 1834 in Tegel, bent on the completion of his
great philological work.

Whoever visited him in his solitude found him
always more kind and resigned. We know indeed
that his sentimental feature had never left him, but
he could always restrain it by his reason and his prac-
tical mind. He had never been wanting in deep and
tender feeling, but in the course of his public life he
concealed his warmth of heart, and those only whom
he loved and who were his equals in their tendencies
found, him always affectionate ; to others, though long
acquaintances, he seemed cold and indifferent. He
purposely concealed his feelings, and with conscious
superiority treated even men who merited more, as
subjects for his entertainment, so that many of his
contemporaries saw nothing in him except a gigantic
knowledge, a most penetrating insight, and gTeat
reason. But he was different after his retirement
from public affairs, and especially during the last
years of his life, Then he showed himself freely and
without reserve ; even the sentimentality which had
been peculiar to his youth returned. What he could
confide to no one he expressed in the eloquent verses
he left behind, but even in social intercourse his
tender feelings revealed themselves plainly by gentle-
ness and affection. Thus he lived until, in the
third decade of this century, Germany lost, one after

428 LIFE OF

another, a list of eminent men who had been her pride^
and among them, William von Humboldt. Most of
his companions had preceded him when he died in
1885.

He lived, as we have said, in Tegel ; his mind was
clear and bright, though his physical strength had sunk.
For several years he had not been able to write on
account of the tremulousness in his hand, but the
debility did not become alarming until the winter
1834 — 1835. His mind was as cheerful and calm as
ever. On the 5th February, 1835, he wrote to
Nicolovius : — " I am no sufferer, but live a quietly
happy life with my children, and alone with my
labours and my dreams, in memories of the past and
happy thoughts of the future."

Living with him were his daughters, Caroline, the
eldest, Madame von Hedemann, with her husband,
and Madame von Biilow, who had come with her
children on a visit. Humboldt's brother lived in
Berlin, and within reach. Thus surrounded by a
circle of loving relatives, and ceaselessly labouring to
give the finishing stroke to his Kawi work, he enjoyed
the last days of his life.

But suddenly the catastrophe commenced which
concluded his life. A cold which he caught in
February, 1835, brought on a severe attack of illness,
of which he died on the 8th of April, 1835.

The crown-prince and Prince William, the brother
of the king, had visited him in his last illness, and
had sincerely shared the grief of the family. Alex-
ander wrote immediately after his brother's death to
Arago, in Paris : " I had the misfortune to lose my
brother the day before yesterday, and am in the most
profound grief In great distress we think of those
dearest to us, and I feel a slight consolation in writing
to you. We saw him dying for six days. His weak-
ness had painfully increased during the last week ; a
continued trembling had showed itself in all his
limbs, but his mind had retained all its native

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 429

vigour. He laboured ceaselessly, and leaves two
almost finished works : one on the languages of the
Indian archipelago, derived from the Sanscrit ; the
other, on the origin and philosophy of languages in
general. These works will be published. My brother
has left his manuscripts, his commenced works, and
his valuable collection of books, to the public library.
He died of an inflammation of the lungs, watching,
with painful sagacity, the progress of the disease.
His was a high intellect, and his soul was full of
elevation and nobility. I feel very isolated."'

The news of Humboldt's death created a great
sensation in Berlin, and the newspapers all ex-
pressed the public grief at the loss of such a great and
liberal man. He was buried beside his wife beneath
the monument he had erected to her.

On Palm Sunday, April 12th, 1835, the interment
took place. His Royal Highness Prince William,
brother to the king, several generals and ministers of
state, and an immense number of scholars and artists,
had repaired to the castle to be present at the
ceremony, and the procession left the house for the
monument in the park at eleven o'clock. The hearse,
covered with black crape, and drawn by four horses,
was followed by the brother, the children, and the
grandchildren of the deceased; after them came all
those who had arrived from Berlin to be present, and
the rear was formed by the community of the village,
who showed their affection for him by accompanying
his body to its last resting-place, chanting hymns and
psalms by the way. At the monument, the coffin
was placed upon a scaffolding, and Dr. Kossbach de-
livered a funeral oration on the deceased, in which he,
without reference to dogmas, enumerated the merits
of the deceased in his services to the state and to
science, as well as his social and human virtues, in
simple but eloquent words. The coffin was then
slowly let down into the grave, where he rests,
according to his wish, not in a bricked vault, but in

480 LIFE OY

the earth. The grief of those present was too deep
for words; they all felt what he had been to the world
and to his country.

The children he left behind him -were —

1. Caroline, born in Erfurt, 1792. She was never
married, and died soon after her father.

2. Theodor, who took the name Humboldt-Dache-
roden, was born in Jena in 1797; is married, and has
two children — a promising son named Wilhelm, and
a girl called Mathilde. He still lives in Ottmachan.

3. Adelheid, bom in Paris in 1800 ; married to
General von Hedemann.

4 Gabriele, born in Berlin in 1802, was married to
the Prussian minister Von Bidow, who died in 1846.
She has a son and four daughters.

5. Hermann, born in Pome in 1809. He lives
unmarried, on his portion of the estate of Ottmachan.

Humboldt left a considerable fortune, and a very
explicit testament. His property was valued at above
600,000 dollars (90,000L), and consisted partly in
estates, which he had inherited from his father or
obtained through his wife, or those he had received
from the state. In his will, he divided the estates so.
that the portions of his sons were separated from
those of his daughters. The sons obtained the estate
of Ottmachan ; of which Ottmachan Nitterwitz and
a villa in Auleben were left to Theodor, and Ottma-
chan Friedrichseck to Hermann. The castle and
estate of Burgorner, and the castle of Tegel, with all
its treasures, were left to the eldest daughter, Caroline,
with the clause that this inheritance should be left
from one sister to the other. At present, Madame
von Hedemann is the proprietress of Burgorner and
Tegel ; but as she is childless, the youngest daughter
and her children will succeed to the property. Hum-
boldt made the clause, that Tegel should remain in
its present condition, and neither be sold nor divided,
as long as any member of the family lives who lived
there with him.

An important legacy was bequeathed to the public

WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. 43 J

library in Berlin. To it he left all Lis philological
manuscripts and valuable autographs, beside all his un-
finished works on this field, with the condition that
they should be accessible to all students. Besides
this, he left to it a large collection of rare books,
of which he has made a separate list. The impor-
tance of this legacy to the royal library may be de-
duced from the fact that Humboldt, having long de-
termined to leave these books to the library, had
been collecting the works it wanted in this depart-
ment, so that it was perfected by his means.

His collected works are being published under the
direction of Alexander von Humboldt, assisted by
Dr. C. Brandes, and have partly appeared. Some of
his correspondence has also been published, including
his letters to a friend, which have been translated,
and these splendid specimens lead us to hope that
others will follow.

And thus we take leave of this pillar of German
intelligence, the companion of the greatest men whom
the literature of the country has produced. We take
leave of him with grateful and joyful feelings, for
he was an encouraging and exalted pattern to his fel-
low men. Humboldt may justly be taken as a pattern
of the depth and diversity of the German mind, and
as the promise of a richer future for the German
nation. He stands like the representative of the
change from spirit to life, from idea to reality, in
which the German mind is engaged, for he was one
of the first and ablest who took this step. He adhered
to the past, advanced boldly forward, and put his trust
in humanity and his country.

THE END.

LONDON ;

SAVILL AND EDWAEDS, PRINTERS,

CUANDOS-STREET.

DATE DUE

CAYLORO

PRINTED INU.S. A.

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