THE LAST TEN YEAES. 337 



CHAPTER IV. 

 THE LAST TEN YEARS. 



Uneventful Character of Huinboldt's Closing Years Revolution and 

 Anarchy Reactionary Period and the Regency Relationship with 

 the Royal Family Continuation of t Cosmos ' Other Literary Labours 

 Appearance and Reality Position at Home and before the World- 

 Death and Funeral Celebrity and Permanent Fame Attempt to an- 

 ticipate the Verdict of Posterity. 



THE closing years of Alexander von Humboldt, which he was 

 accustomed to designate as his ' antediluvian ' or 6 improbable 

 age,' was characterised more than any previous period by its 

 unbroken routine, and absence of remarkable events. The 

 course of politics, in which previous to 1848 he had been so 

 far interested as to direct from time to time a warning or a 

 guiding voice to those at the head of affairs, was now per- 

 mitted to flow past unnoticed ; he contented himself with the 

 expression of opinion, which, delivered with all his former 

 boldness and freedom, sounded like the cry of the storm-petrel 

 announcing the tempest, which was so soon to burst over the 

 political horizon. The monotonous ' pendulum oscillations ' of 

 the court, from which all intellectual life was fast ebbing away, 

 were followed by him with many heavy sighs, like the groaning 

 of some old clock, wearily carrying out its appointed task : his 

 position at court began to appear with greater force in a de- 

 grading aspect, but he had become so accustomed to the life, 

 that from mere habit the discomforts had ceased to be felt as 

 such, and had become to him almost agreeable. Life appeared 

 to him increasingly in the light of Dante's celebrated simile, 

 as a race to death, an expression he loved to quote. To his 

 VOL. n. z 



