78 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



different character. For where there are no events to narrate, 

 history has lost her office ; to chronicle inaction is simply an 

 absurdity. In the period now before us, we have but few 

 marked epochs to assist us in the arrangement of our subject ; 

 namely, the Eevolution of July, the Accession of Frederick 

 William IV. in 1.840, and the stirring events of the Revolution 

 of 1848. Yet the few years occupied in the transition from a 

 life of activity to one of retirement that is to say, the years 

 included between the autumn of 1826 and the summer of 

 1830 call for a bolder treatment and greater minuteness of 

 detail, inasmuch as, unlike the nine months' expedition into 

 Asia, it is a period that has never yet been fully depicted. 



The change of residence from Paris to Berlin has not unfre- 

 quently been represented as a voluntary act on the part of 

 Humboldt, to account for which he has been supposed to have 

 had the impression, if not the clear conviction, that the con- 

 cluding work of his life could best be accomplished amid 

 the surroundings of his own home, and ' that the production of 

 " Cosmos " was possible only upon the intellectual soil of Ger- 

 many.' But this view, although it has arisen from a correct 

 appreciation of the connection between the activity of his 

 latter years and the circumstances by which he was then sur- 

 rounded, will not stand close investigation ; for at the time of 

 his arrival at Berlin he had formed no very distinct conception 

 of his future sphere of labour. If we seek for the true motive 

 of his return, we shall find it in the exhaustive answer he him- 

 self gives in the autographic notice he furnished for the c Con- 

 versations-Lexikon ' : e The wish of the king to retain Hum- 

 boldt in his vicinity, and secure his permanent settlement in 

 his native country, was not realised until the spring of 1827.' 



In point of fact, the cause of this important change in Hum- 

 boldt's mode of life is not to be found in any wish of his own, 

 but in the earnest desire of his sovereign, Frederick William 

 III. The limited range of the king's intellectual powers did 

 not prevent him from appreciating genius in others, nor from 

 manifesting, as opportunity served, gratifying recognition of 

 superior talent. We have seen how he sought to distinguish 

 Humboldt from the first moment of his return to Europe. 

 The grant of a considerable pension, and the appointment to the 



