( 224 ) [May 23, 1859. 



ADDRESS 



TO THE 



ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 

 OF LONDON; 



Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting on the 2Srd May, 1859, 

 By Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 



G.'c.St.S., D.C.L., M.A., F.R.S., &C., 

 PEESIDENT. 



In mourning for the loss of the most illustrious geographer and 

 traveller of our age, I naturally open the Address to this Society by 

 laying before you a brief sketch of the career of Baron Alexander 

 von Humboldt, and by an effort, inadequate as it must be, to pay a 

 due tribute to the memory of him who, in the course of a long, well- 

 spent, and glorious life, has justly obtained the admiration of 

 mankind. 



William and Alexander von Humboldt, the sons of a Major in the 

 Prussian service, were two as remarkable men as the last century 

 has produced ; the one a profound scholar and celebrated statesman, 

 the other our deceased associate. 



Alexander, or, rather, Frederick Henry Alexander von Humboldt 

 was bom in the year 1769, so famous for the births of Napoleon, 

 Walter Scott, and Wellington. He owed his early sound educa- 

 tion to his mother, a relative of Princess Blticher. Being of 

 a weakly constitution when young, it appears, to use his own 

 words, that, with an improvement in his health, his mind was 

 suddenly illuminated, and that he was roused to endeavour to keep 

 pace with his brother William, who was two years older than 

 himself. The youths were first instructed at Berlin, in phi- 

 losophy, law, and statesmanship, by Engel, Klein, and Wohn ; and 



