EESIDENCE AT BERLIN TO THE REVOLUTION OF JULY. 79 



office of chamberlain, were undoubtedly meant as inducements 

 to enter the service of his sovereign as well as that of his 

 country, for to the royal mind there was but small distinction 

 between the two. The strong sense of duty inherent in 

 Frederick William led him to expect from others services 

 which should be in some degree proportionate to the privileges 

 they enjoyed. The practical tone of his mind would not allow 

 him to view Humboldt's protracted absence, though freely 

 admitting its necessity for the publication of his great work, 

 in any other light than as a leave of absence granted to his 

 chamberlain, which he had on many occasions generously 

 renewed and graciously facilitated. When once the necessity 

 was removed, it appeared to the king as a matter of course 

 that a power emanating from Prussia and sustained by himself 

 should exclusively belong to him and to his country. More- 

 over, Humboldt was doubtless an agreeable companion to the 

 king, who, as is well known, was ever attracted towards those 

 whose docile and pliant dispositions caused him to feel least 

 the oppression of his own shy embarrassment. That Humboldt's 

 character was of this nature he had received many proofs, 

 not only in Paris and at Aix-la-Chapelle, but during the jour- 

 ney to England and Italy. Humboldt on his part was far from 

 being in a position seriously to oppose the express wish of the 

 king, for, since expending his own fortune upon the publica- 

 tion of his great work, he was wholly dependent upon the pension 

 and liberality of his sovereign. The repetition of generous 

 gifts, from a monarch who exercised in other matters a some- 

 what rigorous economy, cemented no doubt a bond of gratitude 

 which Humboldt would have been scarcely disposed to break, 

 even had the dissolution of such a tie lain within his power. 

 There is, however, no reason to suppose that he would have 

 viewed the severance of this bond as a matter for congratula- 

 tion. Throughout the remainder of this biography, it will be 

 evident that, keenly as he felt the constraint of his position at 

 court, of which he frequently made bitter complaints, yet the 

 intimate relationships which he was able to maintain by this 

 means with the highest circles of the land became to him a 

 second nature, almost a necessity. Nor was he even at this 

 epoch indifferent to the favour of the king, any more than 



