WEIMAE AND JENA. 207 



of Mines, and afterwards sent to England to acquire a more 

 extensive knowledge of technical chemistry. 



At Weimar Humboldt was always the welcome guest of the 

 prince, and his chosen companion during the prince's visits to 

 the court of Berlin. It was therefore a source of mutual gra- 

 tification that Karl August passed his last days at the court of 

 Berlin in almost constant companionship with Humboldt. ' Even 

 here in Berlin,' writes Humboldt to the chancellor Miiller, 1 c he 

 wishes to have me constantly with him. I never saw this great 

 and benevolent prince more animated, with a clearer intellect 

 or occupied more tenderly and earnestly on the improvement of 

 his people, than during the last few days of his life that he 

 spent here. I often remarked to my friends with anxiety and 

 foreboding that this activity of mind, this mysterious clear- 

 ness of perception, accompanied with such complete physical 

 prostration, was to my mind a very alarming symptom. As for 

 himself, he seemed to vibrate between the hope of recovery and 

 the anticipation of his end. The day before his death, I sat 

 with him on the sofa for several hours alone at Potsdam. He 

 drank and slept alternately, got up to write to his consort, 

 and then fell again into a doze. He was cheerful, but very 

 exhausted. In the intervals he plied me with questions on many 

 of the unsolved problems in physics, astronomy, meteorology, 

 and geology upon the transparency of a comet's nucleus, the 

 existence of a lunar atmosphere, the colours of the double stars, 

 the influence of the solar spots upon the temperature, the 

 evidence of organic life having existed in the primeval world, 

 and the internal heat of the earth. He then touched in a 

 desultory manner on religious subjects. He bemoaned the 

 spread of pietism, and the connection between this fanaticism 

 and the political tendency to absolutism and the suppres- 

 sion of all free thought. "Then arise false fellows," he ex- 

 claimed, " who fancy that they will thereby gain the favour of 

 princes, and so win for themselves decorations and places of 

 honour. They have insinuated themselves into favour by a 

 professed predilection for the poetry of the middle ages." He 

 dozed repeatedly during our conversation, and was often very 



1 Eckermann, ( Gesprache,' vol. iii. p. 258. 



