Vm INTRODUCTION. 



the great reading public of the United States, the history 

 of the great man, with whose friendship I was honored ; 

 and, as the literary labors I had already on hand prevented 

 me from imdertaking such a work, it is all the more grati- 

 fying to me to know that it has been faithfully and con- 

 scientiously done by one every way capable of the perform- 

 ance. Having examined the biography which follows, I can 

 testify to its exactness and completeness, and therefore — • 

 though the subject of the book is its own sufficient recom- 

 mendation — cordially accede to the request of the author, 

 that I should add a few words of introduction, embodying 

 my own impressions of Humboldt's character. 



When I first saw him, he was m his eighty-eighth year, 

 but, except in the bowed head and slow step,showed scarcely 

 any signs of bodily decay. A portrait, painted nearly forty 

 years before, at which time his hair was already gray, 

 showed that time had occasioned but Httle change in his 

 appearance, while its only efiect upon his mind was, j^er- 

 haps, a lack of that power of concentration which enabled 

 him to master so many various departments of natural 

 science. He was still exerj inch a king, with no faculty 

 appreciably dulled, no sympathy blunted, no hope for the 

 increase of human knowledge or generous aspiration for 

 the good of his kind less earnest than in his prime of life. 

 A year later, I found him broken, indeed, in bodily health, 

 yet still capable of sixteen hours of continuous mental labor, 

 and his last letter to me, written but a short time before 

 his death, betrayed no sign of failing faculties, though the 

 hand which traced it was evidently weak and trembhng. 



