84 HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



weary and hypochondriacal, perhaps from his arduous work. 

 He was ceaselessly engaged in finding amusement for me, 

 and kept every one else away, so that he might talk to me 

 alone. And talk we did, about every conceivable subject 

 in physiology and physics. ... In the morning I generally 

 went to the Anatomy Department with Ludwig, and looked 

 at experiments, instruments, and collections ; in the afternoon 

 we went out into the country, except on one day when it 

 rained/ 



From here Helmholtz set out on his first Swiss journey, 

 and went to all the places he afterwards revisited so many 

 times. In the letters to his wife he gives his impressions 

 with youthful vigour and enthusiasm, along with many a 

 scientific and aesthetic appreciation, such as we find so 

 frequently later in his papers and lectures. 



After climbing the Rigi, he wandered on by Fluelen over 

 the Gothard and the Furka Passes to the Rhone Glacier, 

 whose blue ice-slopes made a deep impression on him. ' By 

 glacier you must not picture the snow-covered tops of moun- 

 tains, but masses of ice that have slidden down into the valleys, 

 to melt there while they are perpetually renewed from above. 

 Picture the Brauhausberg in Potsdam made of ice, and packed 

 into a narrow valley between gigantic peaks of rock, above 

 that another precipice of 1,000 feet, on which the ice-blocks 

 are piled up, and tumble thence to renew the lower masses, 

 while the whole is pierced with innumerable sky-blue rifts, 

 and then you have a picture of the Rhone Glacier/ He 

 rejoiced in the enchanting loveliness of the Rosenlaui Glacier, 

 where the sun streams through the ice into heavenly blue 

 caverns and fissures; climbed the Faulhorn; visited the 

 upper Glacier at Grindelwald ; and then stayed a few days 

 in Interlaken, where he resumed the scientific correspon- 

 dence with his friends du Bois-Reymond, Briicke, and 

 more particularly Ludwig, with whom his stay in Zurich 

 had united him more closely than ever. One of his letters 

 to Ludwig is interesting from its reference to a candidate 

 for the Chair of Physics at Zurich : ' On the contrary I 

 think you might do great things by joining forces with 

 Kirchhoff; he is extraordinarily clear-headed and perspica- 

 cious in the most complicated questions ; I much wish for 



