knowledge, but pre-eminently as a man in the world of men. It is good to contemplate the union of a well-balanced character with a completed and harmonious destiny. Like the Grecian mother, who feasted her eyes on perfect statues, that her unborn child might possess something of their beauty, so that divine order which Humboldt sought for with religious fervour throughout the material world, seemed at last to be reflected in the wonderful symmetry of his life. Fortune, however, was less partial than people were apt to suppose. And, though Humboldt was born under a happy planet,and it is difficult to imagine circumstances more favourable than those which surrounded his childhood, yet the same good fortune in hundreds of other instances would only have produced mediocrity. The germ of character lay far below the influence of circumstances.

The history of Humboldt's early life, though meagre and imperfect, yet furnishes the necessary clue to its grand development. His first teacher* was the translator of that wonderful fiction, more real than reality, "Robinson Crusoe." His friend and companion was George Forster, who had accompanied the celebrated

* J. H. Campe.

Captain Cook in his second voyage round the world. All his early recollections were mingled with stories of travel, adventure, and discovery; and, wandering among the pine-woods of his father's estate, his imagination enlarged them into vast continents, the arms of the lake expanding into breadths of ocean, hiding somewhere in the distance unknown islands. And long afterwards, when much of his labour had been accomplished, and his sacred fame was all secure, he observed that the impression aroused within us in early childhood always took a graver direction in after-years. The educational method of Rousseau had already found entrance and acceptance in Prussia, and had given rise to more liberal plans for the education of youth; and to those ideas Humboldt was indebted for a course of training which developed his body and mind in an equal degree, and allowed full play to the gratification of all his natural tastes. He was not the only child for which that crazy philosopher received a father's blessing; but in no other instance was his system so nobly justified as in Alexander von Humboldt. Noticing that the boy exhibited a more than ordinary interest in trees and plants, his teacher made him acquainted with the rudiments of botany, and explained to him the twenty-four classes of

the Linnæan system. He soon perceived, however, child as he was, that one science was but a single door to the great temple of nature; and he was not satisfied without possessing the keys to all; and his researches, commencing with the blossoming of a nettle by the wayside, finished their course among the beams of the remotest star.

A survey of the whole life of Humboldt, enriched by the manifold conceptions of three parts of the globe, manifests the ever clear and calm mind, which, in the storms of the sea, upon the cold glaciers, in the beautiful and fertile valleys, the great forests, and the immeasurable space of the heavens, calmly with an observant eye, received the world into himself, and reflected it again in the transfiguration of higher comprehension, awakening in him feelings of rapture for the beautiful and the sublime. But these impressions, instead of distracting his mind, did rather concentrate its powers; they conducted him to the depth of a phenomenon, not to the mere surface only; they prompted him to solve the part in its natural connection with the whole, and to comprehend the allconsolidating and mysterious forces of nature. With these splendid results of his knowledge, he appeared as a holy stream flowing over

the banks of strict science into the fields of the civilized world: he broke through the barrier which separated science from actual life; his object was not only to labour for the advancement of science, but more for the benefit of humanity. From this point of view we must consider the expression of an enthusiast who somewhere exclaimed that Humboldt was related to, and identical with, a conqueror of worlds; a reformer, a founder of a religion. Few ever painted with so much fidelity the remarkable scenes he had witnessed. This faithful representation of nature is the rare and the peculiar merit of Alexander von Humboldt. No one could reproduce to me, who had himself seen and felt it, with more power the fiery atmosphere of the South American valleys. His habits of observation as a naturalist aided in giving character to his descriptions of scenery. In his voyage on the Upper Orinoco, he referred again and again to the saddening impression produced by those magnificent scenes, where a savage vegetation seemed to have usurped the whole earth, and man was nothing in comparison. In those reflections the man's heart seemed rather to speak than the philosopher's brain. This equinoctial journey may be considered a great personal achievement of Hum

boldt's life, consuming almost his entire fortune, and twenty years of labour. It caused a considerable sensation in Europe, because such a gigantic undertaking of a private individual was without a parallel, -free from all personal egotism, a voluntary sacrifice for science and humanity. Humboldt's way, prepared through the discovery of the western hemisphere in the fifteenth century by Columbus, reflected with peculiar interest on the consequences of these discoveries; because he became, in contrast to Columbus, the geographical explorer of America; the scientific discoverer of these regions. Humboldt's name ought, therefore, to be placed at the side of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Vincent de Beauvais, Columbus, and Gama. The two latter are the discoverers of that space from which Humboldt dispersed the darkness; and, in reality, he discovered America for science. Thus were offered to the western nations of Europe the most valuable materials for the foundation of a physical description of the earth, in an already agitated period of time, when a great number of Europeans came in direct and intimate connection with the gorgeous tropical regions of South America. All know, at least partially, what the results of Humboldt's labours are; but his researches were too varied