Humboldt's Essai Geognostique, 317 



was the discoverer of the continuous and orderly elevations of 

 strata, that this was an object to run away to the Equator about ; 

 and need he tell us, for the twentieth time, that he is The Tra- 

 veller of New Spain, that he has published a Geographic des 

 Plantes, an Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, a Relation 

 Historique, and a book of personal narrative ? As to the *' im- 

 portance" of the fact, he surely does not imagine that it was 

 pointed out by him ; and as to his ideas having been rectified by 

 four years of running about the Cordilleras, we only grieve that 

 he did not continue his " courses" for forty, that they might have 

 undergone a general rectification. 



We have no dislike to M. Humboldt. On the contrary, we 

 esteem him as an industrious and amiable man, ambitious, busy, 

 good-humoured, and, really, qualified, in many very important 

 matters, for a general traveller. But his ambition has been of 

 too vaulting a nature, and he has overleaped the point of success 

 and security. He would write of every thing ; and, on every 

 thing, he has been vague, inaccurate, wordy, and wearisome. 

 He would be the name to fill all Europe with its sound ; and he 

 has, for this purpose, filled it with his books. He has blown the 

 trumpet for himself, and he has found friends to blow it for him. 

 There is no base for all this building. It is too much the custom 

 of the day to work up to some niche in the Temple of Fame, by 

 contraband procedure, and it is not for M. Humboldt's sake alone, 

 that we make these remarks. 



Public Justice demands that all should have equal justice. Of 

 fame itself, there never can be but a certain portion in the world ; 

 for, where all are rich, no one is wealthy. If it is to be mono- 

 polized, let it be allotted where it is merited ; for, when it is 

 allotted otherwise, the meritorious must be robbed of their share 

 and their rights. The Journalist and Reviewer is the guardian 

 of public justice in Literature and Science ; and it is his duty, if 

 often neglected, to see that praise is duly and justly allotted, that 

 he may thus protect the feeble, or the neglected, whom the public 

 will not protect, and who cannot protect themselves. That 

 public will not listen to him, or about him, who is not A Hum- 

 boldt (as the phrase i"?), or a something else ; but it never stays to 

 inquire what A Humboldt is, or what Humboldt has really done. 

 For the sake of thi injured and oppressed, for the sake of civil 

 justice, we must strip off all that is fallacious or borrowed ; we 

 might do it for the purpose of criminal justice, as is the fashion 

 with modern criticism, that we might punish him who deserves 

 punishment. But this is not our object ; and, from this inten- 

 tion, we desire that the subject of our remarks will exempt us. 



We are not criticising the total works of this author, but we 

 may say that he who has not simply been ambitious to shine 

 alike as a general traveller, as an astronomer, a botanist, a geo- 



