146 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



Grauss securing to the Academy ' another Lagrange ; ' but the 

 state of the public finances was never such as to render the 

 prosecution of his plan feasible. ' The frigid zone,' he com- 

 plained, f extends much farther south than anyone would 

 suppose from Cousin's flattering description.' 'In the mare 

 coenosum,' as Schumacher ingeniously remarks in reference to 

 this subject, c everything suffers shipwreck upon the silver 

 rocks.' He was therefore obliged to be satisfied with consti- 

 tuting himself the friend of Gauss. And when on one occasion 

 he had reason to sigh over the ' display of a pettiness and 

 illiberality common to an irritable character,' in a matter con- 

 nected with ' the imperishable fame of the great geometrician,' 

 the method of taking magnetic observations he speedily gave 

 way, with his customary gentleness, and, ' glad as he usually 

 was to oppose the aristocracy of science and to endeavour to 

 accustom its most distinguished members to live in less haughty 

 isolation, he yet subjected himself to the reproach of hastening 

 to the help of the mighty.' He begs Schumacher ' to make up 

 Che breach, should our irritable friend, for whom, in spite of 

 all, we both entertain such a high regard, fire upon me with his 

 heavy ordnance.' When renewing his personal intercourse with 

 Grauss at the Grottingen Jubilee in 1837, Humboldt remarked 

 in his friend ' not merely the conspicuous grandeur of an intellect 

 which could boldly grasp and master any subject brought within 

 its reach, but also a striking gentleness, cordiality, and warmth 

 of character.' These days constituted for Humboldt ' brilliant 

 points in his career ; ' ' there is something grand,' he exclaims, 

 6 in being brought into contact with the greatest man of the 

 age.' Such was the relationship existing between these distin- 

 guished men, the sanguine temperament and versatile intellect 

 of the one contrasting with the rigid earnestness and power- 

 ful genius of the other ; and yet these strong differences 

 formed the chain which bound them indissolubly together. A 

 contrast of a similar if not of an identical character was to be 

 noticed in the friendship between Humboldt and Bessel. 



The personal interchange of thought with so many men of 

 science, some of whom were in the fall freshness of a youthful 

 enthusiasm, afforded to Humboldt, by the meeting of the 

 Association at Berlin in September 1828, gave him the oppor- 



