110 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



course consisting of seventeen drew a considerable audience 

 among the educated and distinguished circles of Berlin, though 

 few ladies were present. It is a characteristic of the citizens of 

 Berlin to criticise what they have paid for ; so that, notwith- 

 standing the charm of these discourses of Schlegel, they were 

 subjected to animadversion, being condemned as antiquated, 

 trivial, and insipid, the ladies asserting that they had learnt 

 nothing, and had been addressed as if they were children; 1 

 meanwhile a man of power like Zelter found in them much to 

 interest and gratify. Humboldt, doubtless, attended most of 

 these lectures, and must have formed one of that * captious 

 audience ' of whom Zelter speaks, though to him they could 

 not fail to have been instructive. 



It is necessary to enter somewhat fully into Schlegel's under- 

 taking, since it exerted a powerful influence upon Humboldt, 

 stimulating him to commence the series of lectures which were 

 delivered the following winter. In his second lecture Schlegel 

 made a striking allusion to science, while ascribing to its 

 influence the present state of culture in Europe, and pointing 

 out that in modern civilisation it formed the chief charac- 

 teristic. Although the expression of such a sentiment might 

 be regarded as a compliment to Alexander von Humboldt, 

 recently arrived at Berlin, whose name was resounding in every 

 circle, in the same way as an allusion to literature had been 

 supposed to have reference to William von Humboldt, it is re- 

 markable, in view of the lecturer's known opinions, that after 

 lauding science as the characteristic study of the age, he 

 should subjoin the following censure : ' that, owing to the 

 exclusive contemplation of the finite and individual, our phy- 

 sicists have failed to seize the fundamental idea of nature.' 

 This would almost seem an unconscious appeal for the lectures 

 on physical geography, had not the speaker proceeded to dilate 

 in praise of the scheme of natural philosophy promulgated 

 by Schelling and Hegel. It is scarcely a subject of surprise 

 that, in the city where a disciple of Hegel had instituted 

 a university course for the elucidation of Groethe's theory of 



1 Varnhagen's < Blatter/ vol. iy. pp. 237, 244, 247, &c. ; see Zelter, vol. 

 iv. p. 340. 



