16 TOO LATE TO WRITE OF HIS YOUTH. 



William meanwliile was deep in the philosophy of Kant, 

 and the esthetic speculations of Goethe and Schiller 

 Occasionally the brothers strolled through the city, arm 

 in arm. Led on by their vagrant fancies they would 

 cross into the market-place to watch the fountain splash- 

 ing its broad basin ; lounge on the bridge and look at 

 the boats below; or quickening their steps they would 

 hasten to the ramparts, and saunter up and down the 

 shaded avenue of lime trees. If the day was beautiful, 

 they wandered out of the city gates into the fertile 

 valleys beyond, and perhaps clomb the Hainberg before 

 they returned. 



So passed their university life. It ended in the autumn 

 of 1789. 



It is to be regretted that we have no fuller account of 

 the youth of Humboldt, for if there is anything interest- 

 ing in the life of a great man like him, it is a minute 

 relation of his youth. We want a living record of his 

 sayings and doings in the ductile period of his genius : 

 even his sports, if we can recover nothing better, will 

 give us some insight into his character. We have pre- 

 sented, as the reader will perceive, the merest skeleton 

 of the first twenty years of Humboldt's life. He may 

 clothe it with flesh, if he pleases, we can do no more. 

 Nor can others at this late day. It is easy to write the 

 biographies of those who die young, they leave so many 

 behind who recollect all that we desire to know; but 

 when a man of genius lives to the age of ninety, as 

 Humboldt did, and leaves no auto-biography, the sweetest 

 time of his life is lost, 



" In the dark backward and abysm of Time." 



