448 PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 



dermic skill, wliicli stood on a round table, before the 

 servant reappeared and conducted us through a large 

 room, the walls of which, from ceiling to floor, were 

 covered with books, plainly shelved up, into the room of 

 Humboldt himself. He met us at the door, and received 

 us very cordially. I must confess that my first impres- 

 sion was one of disappointment, for his busts and pic- 

 tures had given me the idea of a man nearly six feet 

 high, rather stoutly built, and erect as an arrow. Instead 

 of this there stood before me a man of middle height, 

 his once robust frame and limbs meagre with age, and 

 his head drooping and shoulders bowed under the weight 

 of more than four score summers. Behind him stood a 

 tall, rosy-complexioned professor from Bonn, some fifty 

 years of age, and at first my eye fell on him as the per- 

 son more nearly approaching my ideal of Humboldt; 

 but a single glance convinced me that he had not yet 

 lived his half century. This ideal is the one common to all 

 the world who have not seen Humboldt, for everybody 

 that has seen him seems to delight in repeating that age 

 has not touched his noble faculties, or abated his bodilj^ 

 vigour. It is very natural to us to excuse our want of 

 acquirements by attributing supernatural qualities to 

 those who excel us so far as to be unapproachable. But 

 in the case of Humboldt the miraculous escape from the 

 effects of age does not exist. He appears as old as he 

 really is, but in a fine state of preservation — the result 

 of constant temperance, and active exercise in the open 

 air from youth, and of carefully avoiding all unnecessary 

 exposure, and all extreme emotions, but at the same time 

 cultivating his affections, and the genial part of his 

 nature. 



