Humboldt's Essai Geognostigue, 307 



But this work embraces " pour ainsi dire, toute la geognosie 

 positive ;" a fact which we are very happy to hear, as the shelves 

 of the Geological Society may now discard the lumber, German, 

 French, and Italian, besides English, with which they are loaded, 

 and replace it with this volume of quintessence. 



Before proceeding further, however, we ought probably to 

 apologize to Baron Humboldt, to our readers, and to what is 

 commonly called The World, for daring to take liberties with a 

 Great Man, or a Great Name rather. It is the courtesy of SiO- 

 ciety to fall down and worship the idol which it has set up, and 

 thus that Scotch Entity, called the Great Unkno^\^3, is permitted 

 to write with impunity, even St. Ronaris Well. All that we caA 

 say, however, in our defence is, that whatever respect we mav 

 have for Trojan or Tyrian, we have more for truth ; an.d that if 

 Plato himself had written on the two hemispheres, we should 

 have equally asked what he knew of them. 



Whywillnot M. Humboldt tell a plain tale plainly? If he 

 had useful geological information to give on an unknown coun- 

 try, he might have done it without all this pretension. His book 

 is not a system of Geognosy, and it is not a description of the 

 positions of the rocks in the two hemispheres. The Equator, 

 the Andes, the Amazon, the Oroonoco, are sonorous words, but the 

 world already knows, and is wearied of hearing, that he has tra- 

 velled them ; weary of his travels, weary of his latitudes, weary 

 of his isothermal lines, weary of his geography of plants and 

 animals, and weary of him. The very Faubourg St. Germain, 

 the saloons, the coteries, are as weary of the Andes as are Cuvier, 

 Arago, and Fourrier. 



We must not, however, transgress the circle here drawn round us ; 

 yet, in this narrow book, we can find matter for caution and advice, 

 which, in sincerity and friendship, whatever M. Humboldt may 

 think, we offer to him. He has seen much that others have not ; 

 he has collected facts that others have not ; he has travelled, and 

 he might have instructed. But not content with such fame, and 

 such praise, as he might have commanded, he has been resolved 

 to be a philosopher and a Sublime ; to Chateaubriandize on weeds, 

 find Algebraize on stones, forgetting that he who has placed one 

 foot on the pinnacle is thus much nearer to the bottom — " il n'y 

 a qu'un pas." 



There is a certain singleness and simplicity of apprehension 

 necessary to writing clearly, and this is a quality, we grieve to 

 say, <^ch M. Humboldt does not possess. If there be an idea, 

 it is involved in such a mass of words that it is suffocated ; if 

 there be two, they become so entangled that their separate iden- 

 tity disappears. The Baron's writing appears to have sat for its 

 portrait to M. Fuseli's lectures on painting. The purpose of 

 language, says Swift, (among others,) is to conceal your 



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