GROWTH AND DIFFUSION OF CRITICAL SPIRIT. 153 



of Greece, was, owing to his premature death whilst on 

 a visit to that country itself, frustrated, only prelim- 

 inary studies on the ' History of Hellenic Tribes and 

 Places ' having been published. 1 But this plan was to 

 some extent carried out in later years by his friend and 

 pupil Curtius, who was the first German historian after 

 Niebuhr to qualify himself for his task by spending a con- 

 siderable time away from the books and lecture-room of 

 the professor, on the very scenes where the great events 

 which he was narrating had taken place. In this respect 

 he may be compared with A. von Humboldt (1769-1859) 

 and Carl Eitter (1779-1859), who both in a peculiar 

 and original manner did more than any other of their 

 contemporaries to widen the horizon of the man of 

 science as well as that of the historian. 2 During his 



1 Vol. i., 'Orchomenos' (1820), 

 vol. ii., 'The Dorians' (1824) Eng. 

 trans. 



2 Ernst Curtius occupies a unique 

 position, as he was not only a his- 

 torian and an archaeologist, but 

 belonged to that small number of 

 scholars who combine with their 

 scholarship a poetical and artistic 

 comprehension of the totality of 

 the subject they treat. It is re- 

 markable that his important de- 

 scription of the Morea ('Pelopon- 

 nesus,' a historico - geographical 

 description of the Peninsula, 2 

 vols., 1851-52), which is considered 

 to be his greatest work, is little 

 known, having been out of print 

 for many years. In it he connects 

 himself with writers of an entirely 

 different order, such as Georg For- 

 ster, A. von Humboldt, and Carl 

 Ritter in Germany, in whom the 

 descriptive view and the artistic 

 conception of nature and landscape 

 is much more developed than the 

 critical. Through this rare mental 



gift he stands in close relationship 

 to many British travellers, notably 

 to William Martin Leake (1777- 

 1860), who on his military and 

 diplomatic visits to Turkey, Greece, 

 and Egypt during the early part of 

 the century had gathered a large 

 amount of topographical and anti- 

 quarian knowledge which he pub- 

 lished in a series of Works on 

 Athens (1821), Asia Minor (1824), 

 the Morea (1830), and Northern 

 Greece (1835). Of him Curtius 

 himself says ( ' Alterthum und 

 Gegenwart,' vol. ii. p. 319) : " Wil- 

 liam Leake occupies in the history 

 of science, indeed we may say of 

 modern civilisation, an important 

 position, which deserves so much 

 more acknowledgment as the man 

 himself was so modest and unas- 

 suming in his work. But we dwell 

 with peculiar interest on such 

 scholarly endeavours as stand ap- 

 parently in no connection with 

 the labours of others ; which origin- 

 ated through accidental circum- 



