FROM REVOLUTION OF JULY TO DEATH OF THE KING. 209 



from the agitating questions of politics, how can the duties 

 which belong to men individually be ignored when a necessity 

 for united action arises in an association of the first men of 

 the age ? On this point he thought unworthily even of his 

 Parisian friends. When, after the usurpation of Louis Napoleon, 

 Ranke, in conversing with Humboldt, expressed his opinion 

 that the Institute would not acknowledge the head of the 

 new regime, Humboldt contemptuously replied that he had 

 witnessed the cringing of this Assembly to Josephine, and that 

 he had no doubt it would again be capable of a similar humili- 

 ation. So little confidence had he in human constancy ! The 

 Institute, however, which, during the late German war, evinced 

 perhaps a too prominent sympathy with national politics, never 

 wavered in its determined opposition to the second empire. In 

 Humboldt's mind, all confidence in the political development of 

 the characters of his day was destroyed by the fact that he had 

 become, as it were, deadened to political events by the vast 

 changes he had witnessed during the period of the French 

 Revolution and the career of Napoleon. It was during these 

 convulsions that his mind became impressed with f that gloomy 

 vision of the perpetual struggle of races, the interminable war 

 of nations, the wearied and troubled existence,' which 'man 

 prepares for himself amid the false splendours of a high civili- 

 sation ; ' it was chiefly through these scenes that he became 

 imbued with that doubting and almost despairing mood cha- 

 racteristic of Rousseau, which is traceable in these and many 

 similar passages in the ' Aspects of Nature ;' it was in conse- 

 quence of this melancholy experience that he renounced any 

 belief he might have shared with his brother in the genuine 

 progress of enlightened ideas in the world's history ideas which 

 can only flourish when entertained by men who live for them.'! 

 alone, and who, if need were, would for them willingly die. 



We gladly now turn from this sad aspect in the life of our 

 hero to the consideration of the scientific labours with which 

 he was occupied during the ten years now before us from 

 1830 to 1840. Foremost of these stand his two works upon 

 Asia, published by Gide in Paris, the first of which, 'Frag- 

 ments de Geologic et de Climatologie asiatiques,' appeared in 

 1831, in the form of two octavo volumes, while the larger and 



YOL. II. P 



