HOME LIFE. 361 



years. I met his brother in the West Indies. Maclean is in 

 Danzig still ; wealthy, industrious, and as noble-hearted as ever- 

 I live in hopes of meeting you once more. 



6 Ever yours, 



6 HUMBOLDT.' 



As the insertion of these letters has somewhat disturbed the 

 chronological order of events, it will be well to give a glance 

 at the occurrences which had transpired. Gray-Lussac had 

 returned to Paris in the spring of 1806, 1 and Bonpland had 

 paid a short visit to Berlin ; the printing of Humboldt's great 

 work was meanwhile progressing satisfactorily, both in Paris 

 and Stuttgart. Then burst forth the frightful political cata- 

 strophe, which scattered even the circles of the learned. The 

 disastrous battle of Jena had been fought. Prussia was an- 

 nihilated ; the king put to flight ; Napoleon, as conqueror,, 

 was seated at Berlin. 



Humboldt found himself, on all sides, called upon to act as- 

 mediator between the Prussians and their inexorable foes ; it 

 was an office for which he was peculiarly fitted by his know- 

 ledge of languages, his courtly manners, his personal acquaint- 

 ance with the parties with whom he had to treat, his influential 

 position, and his sincere patriotism. Yet the circumstances- 

 of the time were too strong, even for him. 



The following letter to Frederick Augustus Wolf 2 gives some 

 account of his fruitless efforts to save the University of Halle 

 from impending dissolution : 



< Berlin : November 18, 1800. 



6 1 hasten, my dear friend, to reply to your welcome letter of 

 the 14th, which reached me safely. I hope you will receive 

 my answer, which is to be committed to the post unsealed, soon 

 enough to relieve me from the reproach of having remained 

 inactive at a crisis so important for the happiness of mankind 

 and the cause of intellectual culture. No, my dear friend, at. 

 the time your letter reached me I had been engaged upon 



1 At least it is so stated by Arago in his eloge of Gay-Lussac ; but 

 Humboldt, in his Autobiography in Brockhaus' ' Conversations-Lexikon/ 

 mentions his return as having taken place in the winter of 1805-G. 



2 Korte, * Leben und Studien Friedrich August Wolf's,' vol. i. p. 359. 



