30 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



the society of one to whom I owe my taste for meteorology and 

 physical geography. I shall have a bed prepared for you at 

 the Observatory. You will arrive in Paris just at the com- 

 mencement of my course of lectures on astronomy. I am 

 almost scandalised by the surnptuousness of my new amphi- 

 theatre.' 



At the time when this letter, so youthful in its freshness of 

 feelings, was penned, Arago was fifty-five years of age and 

 Humboldt seventy-two ; and yet with what eagerness they both 

 anticipated those happy evenings amid the retirement of the 

 family circle, and the nights occupied upon objects of interest 

 at the Paris Observatory ! A touching proof of the affectionate 

 character of this friendship occurs in a letter of an earlier date, 

 in which Humboldt makes anxious enquiries concerning a sick 

 child, and expresses the liveliest sympathy with the sufferings 

 of the little one. In a friendly spirit of conciliation, Humboldt 

 wrote once to Hittorf, the celebrated architect, to whom Arago 

 in his impetuosity had been somewhat unjust : ' M. Arago is, 

 indeed, rather hasty in temper, but he is thoroughly kind and 

 generous at heart.' 



Among Humboldt's astronomical friends, Biot, the cele- 

 brated physicist, has perhaps the best claim to be ranked next 

 to Arago, who, when but a youth of twenty, was associated 

 with him in 1806 in the measurements for the Spanish 

 portion of the French meridian line. Born in 1774, Jean- 

 Baptlste Biot rose to the highest distinction as a mathemati- 

 cian, a physicist, and an astronomer, and became one of the 

 most noted men in France, to whom Humboldt was early 

 attracted from the similarity of their pursuits. 



In immediate succession to Biot may be mentioned the name 

 of Jean-Claude La Metherie, born in 1743, since his works 

 form a connecting link between those of Biot and the labours 

 of chemists, physicists, and other scientific experimenters 

 using the term in the most restricted sense of the word. His 

 ' Theorie de la Terre ' excited considerable attention in the 

 year 1795, and his ' Journal de Physique,' of which he was sole 

 editor from the year 1785 till his death in 1817, did much to- 

 wards the spread and development of physical science. His early 

 studies were directed to theology, subsequently to medicine, 



