124 ALEXANDEE VON HUMBOLDT. 



to direct the attention of educated circles to the less severe 

 subjects of history, archaeology, jurisprudence, and political 

 economy. The effect was immediately apparent, and two other 

 courses of public lectures one upon Greece, and another on 

 French literature were announced for the following winter. 1 

 How great the change that has since been gradually wrought 

 in the intellectual life of Grermany! Even as late as 1842, 

 at the very time that Friedrich von Eaumer was founding in 

 Berlin a Scientific Society for the delivery of lectures on 

 scientific subjects, henceforth to constitute a permanent feature 

 in the intellectual world of the capital, Savigny considered it 

 as undignified and indeed utterly useless to address himself 

 on scientific subjects to the crowd of the uninitiated. But 

 the present race of scientific men act on an entirely opposite 

 conviction. It might be almost said in jest that the sons of 

 Grod had come down to the daughters of men. For by no 

 means the least important result of these efforts is the sym- 

 pathethic interest now evinced by ladies in intellectual subjects. 

 Oral instruction presents the most efficacious means for reach- 

 ing the lower classes of society the labourer and the artisan. 

 We have but to refer to the various associations of this kind 

 established for the purpose of holding popular lectures upon 

 scientific subjects. Nor should the reactionary effect be over- 

 looked, which was visible in the literature of the day, whether 

 of a scientific or purely literary character. Since that period 

 it has become a noble ambition with scientific men to popu- 

 larise the results of their labours ; it is no longer considered 

 that to write in a clear, concise, and forcible style is the dis- 

 tinctive mark of an amateur. The practice of -writing essays 

 has already become general in Grermany, and has been produc- 

 tive of powerful results. A model of this kind of writing has 

 been given by Humboldt in his ' Aspects of Nature,' while his 

 elaboration of c Cosmos ' affords a masterpiece of popular 

 scientific writing ; in his lectures upon the physical structure 

 of the universe he gave the first impulse to the development 

 of the intellectual life of Grermany, at a time when the present 

 glorious position of the nation was hardly to be conceived. 

 That Humboldt was fully aware of the significance of the 



1 Varnhagen, < Blatter/ vol. v. p. 241. 



