COLLEGE LIFE. 53 



Berlin. 'The happy days spent at Frankfort are over. I can 

 never think without emotion of that place ; we can never again 

 enjoy such intimate communion. Yet who knows what plea- 

 sures may not be awaiting us ? .... If God only spare us, no- 

 thing can break the bond between two friends who are to each 

 other more than brothers.' And again later : ' How quickly 

 last winter passed away ; how long will this one seem ! How 

 happy we used to be, talking for hours together in your old 

 tattered chair by the stove. No day passed without our seeing 

 each other once or twice at least during its course. How com- 

 pletely has the past disappeared ; where are all our old friends ! 

 Albinus in Silesia, Metzner and you in the New Mark, Herz- 

 berg in Halle, I in Berlin, and soon to be still farther away ! ' 



Although the instruction furnished by the University of 

 Frankfort was of such a character as to fulfil the requirements 

 at that time needed for the service of the State, and could thus 

 accomplish the principal object contemplated by Frau von Hum- 

 boldt in the choice of this university for her sons, yet it offered 

 no facilities for satisfying their thirst for scientific knowledge. 

 The youths remained, therefore, scarcely more than six months 

 at Frankfort, and in Easter 1788, William went to the University 

 of Gottingen, while Alexander returned to Berlin. 



In his short autobiographical sketch, 1 Alexander von Hum- 

 boldt remarks that he passed the next summer and the follow- 

 ing winter at Berlin, 'in order to study the technology of 

 manufactures, and to apply himself, in emulation of his indus- 

 trious brother, more assiduously to Greek. At this time Hum- 

 boldt formed an intimate friendship with Willdenow, already 

 a distinguished botanist though young in years, and soon 

 became an ardent student of cryptogamia.' During this resi- 

 dence at Berlin Humboldt maintained his connection with 

 Frankfort, which he frequently visited, attracted apparently 

 by sympathy with Keitemeier, who had just completed his prize 

 essay on the ' History of the Mines and Smelting Works of the 

 Ancients,' and was then publishing his ' Analecta ad historian! 

 rei metall. veterum.' To his intimacy with Keitemeier may 

 probably be ascribed the interest manifested by Humboldt in 



1 Brockhaus' ' Conversations-Lexikon' (10th ed.) j ' Gegenwart ' (1853), 

 vol. viii. 



