88 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



to accord to its scientific men the same appreciative recog- 

 nition they were accustomed to meet with in the drawing- 

 rooms of Paris. 



To this difference Goethe was also keenly alive; from a 

 diligent perusal of the ' Globe,' a journal described l by Hum- 

 boldt in 1826 as 'the only one characterised by any elevation 

 of sentiment, or conducted in a noble spirit of independence/ 

 he had formed a high idea of the elevated character of the in- 

 tellectual culture of Parisian society. The fine passage he wrote 

 on this subject to Eckermann on May 3, 1827, though well 

 known, may here be cited, since it includes a pointed reference 

 to Humboldt : ; Truth to say,' bemoans the poet, ' we all lead a 

 miserably isolated existence. We meet with but little sym- 

 pathy from the common herd around us, and our men of 

 genius are scattered over Germany. One is at Vienna, another 

 at Berlin, a third at Konigsberg, a fourth at Bonn or Diissel- 

 dorf all separated by some hundreds of miles, so that personal 

 intercourse and a viva voce interchange of thought is a matter 

 of rare occurrence. I am vividly impressed with the keen en- 

 joyment this would yield when in the company of men like 

 Alexander von Humboldt, who in one day carry me farther 

 towards all I am seeking and yearning to know than I could 

 attain during years of solitary study. Only imagine, however, 

 a city like Paris, where the cleverest heads of a great kingdom 

 are grouped together in one spot, and in daily intercourse incite 

 and stimulate each other by mutual emulation ; where all that 

 is of most value in the kingdoms of nature and art, from every 

 part of the world, is daily open to inspection ; and all this in 

 a city where every bridge and square is associated with some 

 great event of the past, and where every street-corner has a page 

 of history to unfold. And withal not the Paris of a dull and 

 stupid age, but the Paris of the nineteenth century, where for 

 three generations such men as Moliere, Voltaire, and Diderot 

 have brought into play a mass of intellectual power such as 

 can never be met with a second time on any single spot in the 

 whole world.' . . . 



This was the Paris which Humboldt was expected to leave, 



1 De la Ptoquette, 'Humboldt, Correspondance inedite/ vol. ii. p. 76. 

 Letter to Guizot, see p. 44 of the present volume. 



