XII. CORA AND KRONOS. 239 



the less tormented with these insoluble problems of 

 the distribution of beings." 



15. Insoluble — yes, assuredly, poor little beaten 

 phantasms of palpitating clay that we are — and 

 who asked us to solve it? Even this Humboldt, 

 quiet-hearted and modest watcher of the ways of 

 Heaven, in the real make of him, came at last 

 to be so far puffed up by his vain science in 

 declining years that he must needs write a 

 Kosmos of things in the Universe, forsooth, as 

 if he knew all about them ! when he was not 

 able meanwhile, (and does not seem even to have 

 desired the ability,) to put the slightest Kosmos 

 into his own ' Personal Narrative ' ; but leaves one 

 to gather what one wants out of its wild growth ; 

 or rather, to wash or winnow what may be 

 useful out of its debris, without any vestige either 

 of reference or index ; and I must look for these 

 fragmentary sketches of heath and grass through 

 chapter after chapter about the races of the Indian, 

 and religion of the Spaniard, — these also of great 

 intrinsic value, but made useless to the general 

 reader by interspersed experiment on the drifts 

 of the wind and the depths of the sea. 



16. But one more fragment out of a note (vol. iii., 

 p. 494) I must give, with reference to an order of 

 the Rhododendrons as yet wholly unknown to me. 



