348 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



in the sad period immediately succeeding p the Revolution 

 which was spent by the princess, in the absence of her royal 

 consort, in complete retirement with her children at Potsdam. 

 During those unhappy days Humboldt was her intimate friend. 

 Ernest Curtius, who, since his appointment as tutor to Prince 

 Frederick William, had looked upoffi Humboldt as his good 

 genius at the court, by whom he was ever befriended with 

 fatherly sympathy in circumstances of difficulty, read aloud to 

 the princess in this sad time the ' Aspects of Nature,' and, 

 as an effort to alleviate the gloom of that distressing season, 

 composed the small poem on ' The Parrot of the Atures,' 

 which Humboldt introduced the following year into his new 

 edition of that work. The elevated tone of this select circle 

 is reflected in the following passage inscribed by Humboldt, at 

 the request of the princess, in an album presented to Curtius 

 as a birthday gift at Babelsberg, September 2, 1849 : 



6 Like the bird perched -above the foaming cataract, of which 

 you have so sweetly sung the last of the Atures so am I now 

 left the sole survivor of an extinct race. While it has been 

 your privilege, dear Curtius, to feast your gaze upon a classic 

 landscape, where forms of boldest contrast are gracefully blended, 

 where the rock-girt shore, luxuriant with the cypress and the 

 oleander, rises from a brilliant expanse of undulating sea ; 

 while your active mind and natural eloquence have received 

 inspiration from that eternal and unchanging aspect of nature 

 in which the past glories of Greece are reflected my wander- 

 ings have but led me to the banks of nameless rivers, through 

 the wild forests of the Orinoco, up snow-capped burning moun- 

 tains, and over the boundless grassy plains of the Irtysch and 

 the Obi. In solitude, I should have been left to the sad feeling 

 of being the last of my race, had not the consolations of friend- 

 ship been mercifully lavished upon me. From the laurel- 

 crowned slopes of this gentle eminence, in an atmosphere of 

 intelligence and refined culture, I am privileged on this festal 

 day, honoured by this distinguished commemoration, to dedicate 

 in unrestrained freedom, " cursibus obliquis fluentes," with 

 heartfelt gratitude and affection, these few lines to the poetic 

 delineator of Naxos.' 



These important years, during which every liberal movement 



