OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 11 



sent to him a lyrical poem in the ancient language of their country, 

 written by Bernadahes, one of their number, who has since distin- 

 guished himself in poetical literature, and the University of Athens 

 addressed to him a grateful letter, written in Classical Greek by Pro- 

 fessor Philippos Johannis, one of the most accomplished teachers, and 

 in that year the Prytanis or Rector of the University. Professor 

 Thiersch, it is understood, has left an edition of ^schylus, which he 

 had prepared with a view to its publication after his death. 



By his decease the world has lost a scholar of large and various 

 acquirements, a man of elevated principles and pure character, of 

 amiable temper and cordial manners, an acute and tasteful critic in 

 literature and art, an author whose woi-ks take rank among the most 

 learned productions of the age, a friend and supporter of learned insti- 

 tutions and of liberal principles of government. 



Caul Ritter, the renowned author of the Erdhunde, &c., — or 

 " The Science of the Globe in its Relation to Nature and to the His- 

 tory of Mankind," was born in Quedlinburg, a town of Prussian 

 Saxony, on the 7th of August, 1779. When he had passed only two 

 years as a student at the University of Halle, he became, for eighteen 

 years, a private tutor in the family of Mr. Hollweg, a wealthy banker 

 of Frankfort, where the celebrated statesman and minister. Von 

 Bethmann-HoUweg, was one of his pupils. In 1814, after prolonged 

 ti'avel in the middle and south of Europe, he brought his two pupils 

 to the University of Gottingen, where he produced, in 1817 and 1818, 

 the first and second volumes of the fii'st edition of his great geographi- 

 cal work. Two years after, mainly through the instrumentality of 

 William Humboldt, then Minister of Public Instruction, he was called 

 to Berlin, as Professor of Geograjihy at the Royal Military School 

 and at the University, — where the first chair, it is believed, devoted 

 to that special branch of knowledge in any German university, was 

 created for him. 



Here, besides other writings, he published, in 1822, the first volume 

 of a second and much enlarged edition of his Erdhunde. This — 

 after ten years of intense academical activity, largely occupied by the 

 preparation and delivery of the courses of public lectures which gave 

 him such renown as a teacher — was followed in 1832 by a second 

 volume ; and from that time down to 1838, six more volumes, or one 

 volume a year, attest his wonderful industry and learning. In the 

 twenty-one succeeding years, that is, to the close of Ritter's life, eleven 



