68 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



days at Magdeburg most agreeably, for I met there my friend 

 La Koche, a man in whom nature has for once condescended 

 to unite a noble intellect with a handsome and attractive ex- 

 terior. What happy hours we spent together in our walks 

 along the secluded banks of the Elbe ! l . . . From Magdeburg 

 I visited the salt works of Schonebeck, Grossensalza, and 

 Frosec, as well as the new colony of the Moravians at Grnadau 

 in Saxony. High as my expectations had been raised concern- 

 Ing this institution, they were far surpassed by the reality. 

 The architecture of the houses, their cleanliness, their excellent 

 state of repair, the industry of the inhabitants, their considera- 

 tion for the poor the entire management of the colony in fact, 

 forms a complete ideal of a small, well-ordered state. Grottin- 

 gen, a University, that is to say, an emporium of wisdom (where 

 wisdom is to be had for the fetching, there ought to be no lack 

 of it), where probably half a dozen lectures on physics are 

 going on at a time, yet leaves the college library without a 

 lightning conductor ; while at Grnadau, a colony of superstitious 

 enthusiasts, there are no fewer than five conductors, though the 

 whole town consists only of some twenty houses ! ! ! And there 

 is besides a lightning conductor to the church.' 



At Helmstadt he was much interested in the celebrated 

 museum, formed by Professor' Beireis, who, on account of his 

 extraordinary acquirements and peculiar habits, was called 

 the Alchemist of Helmstadt : c Beireis does not himself know 

 the full extent of his treasures. At home he is always engaged 

 in prosecuting discoveries, and just now, as Crell assures me, 

 he spends sixteen hours a day in reading, on various subjects. 

 Besides the European languages, he speaks Egyptian, Chinese, 

 Japanese, as well as some of the dialects of Northern India, 

 and he read out to me, with facility, in Grerman, some passages 

 from a Japanese book, yet many people venture to doubt 

 whether he knows Hebrew! He is in short a most extraor- 

 dinary man, who with the most profound knowledge of chemistry 

 and numismatics, combines the charlatanry of the most cun- 



1 Humboldt here alludes in very favourable terms to Gurlitt in Kloster 

 Bergen, to Fimke in Brunswick, and to other men of learning in Helm- 

 stadt, and then proceeds to matters of a personal nature which are irrelevant 

 to the present subject. 



