232 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



facts in parentheses, which he who runs over the page may read, 

 indeed, but which only the most learned and the most reflecting will 

 be apt to comprehend. In candor it must be said, that his long career 

 has left some room for the complaint that he did not feel bound to 

 exert fully and continuously all his matchless gifts in behalf of the 

 science of which he was the most authoritative expositor. 



But if thus in some sense unjust to himself and to his high calling, 

 Brown could never be charged with the slightest injustice to any 

 fellow-laborer. He was scrupulously careful, even solicitous, of the 

 rights and claims of others ; and in tracing the history of any discov- 

 ery in which he had himself borne a part, he was sure to award to 

 each one concerned his full due. If not always communicative, he 

 was kind and considerate to all. To adopt the words of one of his 

 intimate associates, " those who knew him as a man will bear unani- 

 mous testimony to the unvarying simplicity, truthfulness, and benevo- 

 lence of his character," as well as to " the singular uprightness of his 

 judgment." 



The remaining, and the most illustrious name of all, — and one in 

 its wide renown strongly in contrast with the last, — has only just now 

 been inscribed upon our obituary list. 



The telegraph of the last week brought to us the painful intelligence 

 that the patriarch of science, the universal Humboldt, died at Berlin 

 on the 6th of May. Born in 1769, a year more prolific in great 

 men than any equal period of all preceding time,* Humboldt had, 

 before the end of the eighteenth century, exhibited qualities of 

 the very highest order, and obtained a place of acknowledged celeb- 

 rity in Europe. This, however, was the mere prelude to his career, 

 for with the close of that century he commenced, with Bonpland, his 

 wonderful exploration of Spanish America, which continued during 

 five years. This journey must be considered in all future time as, 

 substantially, the scientific discovery of Spanish America ; and whether 

 we measure its results by the amount of knowledge through the wide 

 fields of Astronomy, Geography, Geology, Mineralogy, Meteorology, 

 Zoology, Botany, and Political Economy, or the personal qualities by 

 which this knowledge was collected and reduced to its place in the 



* Napoleon, Wellington, Mehemet Ali, Soult, Lanires, Ney, Castlereagh, Cha- 

 teaubriand, Cuvier, and Humboldt. 



