FKOM ACCESSION OF FEEDEEICK WILLIAM IV. TO 1848. 315 



in Tropical Kegions,' written while travelling in Peru and 

 dedicated to Goethe, was regarded by Humboldt as the ground- 

 work of ' Cosmos ; ' and the dedication to the poet is not less 

 characteristic of the early stage of the work than is the prepon- 

 derance of the ideal in the purely imaginative picture forming 

 the frontispiece. In the lectures delivered by Humboldt on 

 Physical Geography in 1827-8 he adopted a twofold course 

 of treatment, according to the intellectual standpoint occupied 

 by the different class of hearers he addressed : at the University, 

 where the sympathy of his audience was in favour of the modern 

 method of investigation, in contradistinction to the old philoso- 

 phy fast growing obsolete, the time devoted to the considera- 

 tion of individual sciences compared with that given to ideal 

 generalisation was as five to one ; while at the Music Hall, 

 where his auditors had received their ideas purely from litera- 

 ture, this proportion was reversed. Both these methods oc- 

 cupied at that time an equal share of Humboldt's attention, 

 although his preference was decidedly given to that part of his 

 undertaking in which , facts were arranged under general prin- 

 ciples a task which iie confessed to Varnhagen, in 1834, to 

 be the chief object of his work, and in which he doubtless dis- 

 played the greatest originality. The specific portion consists 

 mainly in the results obtained by a younger generation ; the 

 gradual expansion of the work from one to two volumes, and 

 again into a third, is a powerful witness to the increasing subju- 

 gation by modern science of the old aspiration after an ideal 

 conception. The appearance of the third volume of ' Cosmos ' 

 was at once felt by the public to destroy the unity of the work, 

 and to be in fact the commencement of an undertaking of an 

 entirely different character. We shall therefore confine our 

 observations for the present to the first two volumes published 

 during the period we are now describing, and which recur at 

 once to the mind at the mention of ' Cosmos.' 



The admirable table of contents prefixed to these volumes, 

 of which Humboldt once facetiously remarked that it was 

 drawn up for the greater convenience of finding out what was 

 not in them, affords valuable assistance in examining the 

 construction of the work, and clearly reveals the two elements 

 we have pointed out in the history of its compilation. These 



