HIS LOVE OF TUE UNITED STATES. 445 



dispatclies and orders, and in fact upon all tliat related 

 to liim personally in tlie conduct of the war, were such 

 as no American could listen to without feeling proud. 



" I had occupied, without any interruption, more than 

 an hour of Baron Humboldt's time, when the servant 

 entered to summon him to dinner — with the king. I 

 would have left him at once, but courteously saying that 

 if late, he would excuse himself by mentioning the 

 cause that detained him ; he urged me to remain a few 

 days for the purpose of making certain acquaintances at 

 Berlin, and, pressed as he was, insisted upon giving me a 

 line to a distinguished gentleman of that place, without 

 seeing whom he said I ought not to leave. Circum- 

 stances did not permit me to deliver the letter; but I 

 had the satisfaction of bringing it home with me, written 

 in German, in a strong, firm hand, as an autograph of 

 Humboldt, and a memento of one of my most interest- 

 ing incidents of travel." 



Amonsj the multitudes of all nations who visited 

 Humboldt in his last years, none were so warmly re- 

 ceived as those who came from America: to be an 

 American was an almost certain passport to his pre- 

 sence, and if the visitor was not ill-bred, to his favour. 

 He seemed to have a love for the people of the United 

 States ; he appreciated the youth of their countr}^, and 

 he admired their freshness and enthusiasm. " He who 

 knew our continent so well," says Bancroft, the historian, 

 wlio visited him in Paris in 1820, and again in 1847 ; 

 " he who knew our continent so well, knew the relations 

 of the United States towards every part of it, and formed 

 his judgments respecting the gradual advancement of the 

 United States in the extent of its territory — judged us 



