RESIDENCE AT BERLIN TO THE REVOLUTION OF JULY. 99 



revision, it might then become more widely circulated ; for a 

 retrospect of your early life, passed amid so much useful 

 activity, of which many incidents have almost been lost sight of 

 owing to the brilliancy of your subsequent career, would form a 

 very attractive and instructive picture. You must also pardon 

 us the vanity of our newspapers, which could not keep silence 

 concerning your visit and the inscription of your name in 

 the strangers' book, which has created a great sensation. 

 Both these facts are valuable in the history of the school of 

 mines, and therefore I have been the less disposed to interfere 

 with their extended publication. With unbounded respect, and 

 yet with unabated and undeviating affection, I remain, &c., 



' FREIESLEBEN.' 



From Freiberg the travellers proceeded through Chemnitz 

 to Weimar, where they spent several days. It was on this 

 occasion on December 11 that Humboldt paid the visit to 

 Groethe which produced in the great poet that ' state of joyous 

 excitement' in which he was found by Eckermann, whose 

 description of the visit, as narrated in Groethe's own words, has 

 found a place in a previous section of this biography. 1 On 

 the 13th they dined with Karl August. Even during this 

 hurried journey Humboldt did not omit to make some obser- 

 vations upon the inclination of the magnetic needle, similar to 

 those he had undertaken on his journey to Berlin and in the 

 garden at Bellevue during his sojourn there. Before leaving 

 Berlin he had, in November, delivered a lecture before the 

 Academy on the expedition of Ehrenberg and Hemprich, in 

 which he had taken occasion to remark, in his prefatory obser- 

 vations, upon the high value of the researches of the scientific 

 investigator as compared with the labours of the mere col- 

 lector. 2 



This visit to Paris, which he describes to De la Roquette as 

 * the last weeks in which I can be said to enjoy the happiness 

 of living in your noble country,' 3 must have been fraught with 



1 Vol. i. p. 175. 



2 ' Brief wechsel mit Berghaus/ Tol. i. p. 78 ; see ( Berliner Conversations- 

 blntt,' 1827, Nos. 31 and 32. 



3 De la lloquette, 'Humboldt, Correspondance, etc.' vol. i. p. 269. 



H 2 



