98 Discourse delivered by Baron Huviboldt to the 



undergone considerable changes. New instruments, I miglit al- 

 most say new organs, have been invented to bring man into 

 more immediate contact with the mysterious powers which ani- 

 mate the works of creation, and of which the apparent disturb- 

 ances and irregularities are subject to eternal laws. If modern 

 travellers can submit to their observations, in a brief period of 

 time, a larger portion of the earth's surface, it is to the improve- 

 ments effected in the mathematical and physical sciences, to the 

 precision of our instruments, the perfection of our methods, and 

 the art of grouping facts and rising to general considerations, 

 that they owe the advantages which they possess. The traveller 

 applies to use what, through the beneficial influence of societies, 

 and the studies of sedentary life, has been prepared in the silence 

 of the cabinet. To judge with equity and justice the merit of 

 travellers of different times, we must be acquainted with the 

 degree of development which practical astronomy, geognosy, 

 meteorology, and descriptive natural history, had simultaneously 

 acquired. It is thus that the degree of culture of the great do- 

 main of the sciences must be reflected in the traveller who would 

 raise himself to the level of his times; and, in this manner, 

 travels undertaken for the extension of the physical knowledge 

 of the globe, must at different ages present an individual cha- 

 racter — the physiognomy of a given epoch. They exhibit a 

 picture of the state of cultivation through which the sciences 

 have progressively passed. 



In thus ti-acing the duties of those who have gone through 

 the same career as myself, and whose example has often re- 

 kindled my ardour in moments of difficulty, I have pointed out 

 the source of the feeble success of a devotion, which your gene- 

 rous indulgence has condescended to magnify by public testi- 

 monials of your approbation. 



Finishing under happy auspices a long journey, undertaken 

 by the order of a magnanimous monarch, powerfully aided by 

 the knowledge of two philosphers, whose labours Europe has ap- 

 preciated, MM. Ehrenberg and Rose, I might here confine my- 

 self to laying before you the homage of my lively and respectful 

 trratitude ; — I might solicit him who, young as he still is, has 

 ventured to penetrate into those ancient mysteries, the memo- 

 rable sources of the religious and political civilization of Greece, 

 to lend the aid of his eloquence to enable me to express more 



