370 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



tion is the register of scientific facts.' ] In a similar spirit 

 Brandes, in presenting Humboidt with the second volume of his 

 ' Aristotle,' calls him 6 the greatest living maestro di color chi 

 sanno.' Of the third volume of ' Cosmos,' in which there was 

 scarcely anything strictly original, an astronomer like Arge- 

 lander could, from his own peculiar standpoint, give expression, 

 without supposed exaggeration, to the following opinion : 

 ' The book is described by your Excellency as a popular treatise 

 on astronomy ; popular, certainly, in the sense of being well 

 adapted for spreading a love of astronomy and an admiration 

 for the wonders of creation among the people, but not popular 

 in the sense of those popular writings which would at once be 

 laid aside by the initiated from the conviction that they con- 

 tained nothing new. Apart from the magnificent arrangement 

 of the mass of material, in which, by a judicious grouping and 

 discrimination of facts, you display, to an unrivalled degree, 

 the art of fascinating the reader, and alluring him to deeper 

 thought, your book contains so much new matter, and old 

 matter not generally known, that in this branch of science it 

 must yield to every astronomer a vast amount of information : 

 I at least have learned a great deal from your work, and have 

 received many suggestions for new fields of research, concerning 

 which I can only regret that I am unable to follow them up.' 



Humboidt strongly insisted upon the difference between 

 his own ' popular astronomy ' and the ordinary made-up book 

 compiled at second or third hand. To Jacobi, who had re- 

 proached him for quoting too frequently from Madler, he 

 replied : 6 1 have ventured upon so much self-praise, because I 

 set too much store by your opinion not to be glad to show that 

 my book is not a compendium from Madler and Sir John 

 Herschel, but contains original matter.' He never looked with 

 favour upon any popularisation of this work ; on seeing the 

 announcement that Madler had been giving twelve lectures 

 on the third volume of ( Cosmos ' at Dorpat, ' before an enthu- 

 siastic audience,' he remarked : ' Such executions, dissections 

 of the living subject, are not a cheering spectacle ! Few books 

 can stand it.' With yet greater severity does Leopold von Buch 

 satirise, in writing to Humboidt from Amsterdam, October 19, 



1 ' Kosmos/ vol. v. p. 127. 



