130 On the Olservalions to determine the Figure of the Earth. 
labours, an opportunity was afforded to consider the situation of 
the country; the character, the manners, the institutions, and the 
pursuits of the inhabitants. The review was both consoling and 
sorrowful, to one whose days had been spent amid wars and com- 
motions. Here dwelt a people poor, ‘but laborious; free, but 
submissive to the laws ; moral and religious, without sternness or 
indifference. The peasants were seen reading the Essays of 
Addison, Pope, Johnson, Chesterfield, and the most approved of 
the English moralists. Even in the passage-boats cards and 
dice were exhibited. Village farmers were seen in clubs dis- 
cussing the topics of politics and of agriculture; and these formed 
into societies to purchase the most entertaining and instructive 
works, the Encyclopedia Britannica not excepted. I saw, in 
fine, the higher classes adorning in an eminent degree their sta- 
tions, by exciting and directing all the enterprises of public 
utility, mingling with the vulgar, but preserving a noble supe- 
’ rlority, procuring respect without exciting envy, and enjoying as 
the reward of their exertions, peace, union, reciprocal esteem, 
mutual confidence, and a lively affection. 
I next visited the most industrious counties of industrious 
England. I saw there the powers of nature employed in the 
service of man under every supposable shape, and man himself 
reserved for those opcrations which mind alone can direct and 
perform ; but I rather admired that immense display of manufac- 
‘tures, than wished to see them established in my own country. 
After visiting Oxford and Cambridge, those ancient abodes of 
learning, I went to rejoin M. Arago in London, to measure the 
seconds of the pendulum no longer in a desert, but in the mag- 
nificent Observatory at Greenwich, M. Humboldt attended 
him,.assisted in the operation, and meanwhile seemed to forget 
the multitude of his other talents in his labours as an excellent 
astronomer. The Astronomer Royal manifested that generous ar- 
dour which men devoted to the progress of science, alone can feel. 
After such success, and brought under so many pleasing obli- 
gations, I returned to my native country. The pleasure of ob- 
serving the heavens, of studying one of the greatest phenomena 
of nature with fine instruments, by so manv observations, and in 
a place renowned for so many astronomical discoveries, enabled 
me to confer a lasting tribute of gratitude upon the place of my 
birth. In a voyage undertaken for the advancement of science, 
the stranger learns what to honour and what to cherish. With- 
out the circle of political passions, without rank, without am- 
bition, his principal aim is to do good to mankind. He is en~ 
nobled by the numerous services which he has rendered to the 
civilization of the world, by the universal admiration which he 
has excited, and by those intellectual stores with which he has 
enriched 
