200 ALEXANDER YON HUMBOLDT. 



he enjoyed the sense of keen sympathy. There was yet another 

 circumstance to be considered. We have already remarked of 

 Humboldt that though, as a man of science, he could not be- 

 considered cosmopolitan, he was at all events international in 

 feeling. With the French, who always eagerly welcome a 

 fellow-labourer, this formed no barrier to his being at once 

 received as one of themselves ; but in the English he en- 

 countered a nation reserved in itself, and exclusive with 

 regard to the rest of the world, accustomed to admire, even 

 in foreigners, the principle of nationality more than inter- 

 national sympathy. An interesting evidence of this feeling: 

 is to be found in a letter from Sir John Herschel, in which 

 he comments to Humboldt upon his adoption of the French 

 language in corresponding with him. The passage occurs in 

 a letter dated June 10, 1844, in reply to some apologies 

 from Humboldt for the illegibility of his handwriting : 

 * Whatever apologies you may see fit to make for the writing,. 

 I will only remark, that there is sure to be a sense worth 

 digging for in every line that drops from your pen, though it 

 were buried deep as the most recondite hieroglyphic. There 

 is only one thing I cannot so easily reconcile myself to in its- 

 perusal that you should write in French in place of your own 

 noble German, which you admit to be more your -own than the- 

 other. You do me only justice in believing me partial to the 

 German language. English is the language of busy practical 

 men, dense, powerful, and monosyllabic German of deep 

 thinkers and massive intellects, binding the Protean forms of 

 thought in the many-linked chain of expression French of 

 vivacious talkers, whose words outrun their ideas by mere 

 volubility of organ and habit. However, write as he will, a 

 letter from V. Humboldt can never be anything else than an 

 intellectual feast. A mind so stored with the ideas of all ages- 

 and nations will find a richness (or create one) in any language 

 it may use as its outlet.' Seldom, if ever, have the charac- 

 teristics of these three languages been described in a manner 

 more forcible and striking, although the French is dealt with 

 rather too severely ; scarcely could the want of national pride 

 confessed with so much naivete by one of the first intellects of 

 Germany have been animadverted upon with greater delicacy. 



