T5E LAST TEN YEARS. 373 



termed,' with their 'superficial education, as well as for the 

 fashionable world,' * Cosmos ' was premature ; to later genera- 

 tions, who, according to the views expressed by Humboldt and 

 Bessel in 1828, shall have received a more 'judicious educa- 

 tion,' is reserved the privilege of fully appreciating a work of 

 which not the least merit consists in its having, from its 

 attractive form, created the need of elementary instruction 

 worthy of the present century in philosophical and practical 

 science. Of the union of these elements of instruction desired 

 by all interested rn- education, whether practically or theoreti- 

 cally, ' Cosmos ' presented a model hitherto unrivalled. 



It is worthy of remark that of the other writings of Hum- 

 boldt that date from this period, there are none that can lay 

 claim to- the freshness so noticeable in 'Cosmos.' Through 

 Cotta he brought out, in 1853, a volume of 'Miscellaneous 

 Writings,' to be followed by a second volume, which however 

 never made its appearance. The work consists, as the title sug- 

 gests, of a reprint of former treatises upon geology and physics, 

 written between the years 1805-43, but which, according to 

 Humboldt's usual custom, he had brought up to the modern 

 state of science, partly through his own indefatigable industry 

 as in the paper upon the Mean Height of the Continents, re- 

 printed from the ' Asie centrale,' and partly through the as- 

 sistance of friends, as in the treatise upon the Distribution of 

 Heat. This work, published in the form of a moderately thick 

 octavo, met with a warm reception from the public ; the geo- 

 logical description of the volcano of Pichincha, occupying the 

 first hundred pages, was entirely new matter, and of the other 

 papers few had enjoyed more than a limited circulation in 

 various French and Grerman periodicals ; the work possessed 

 besides the additional attraction of a small atlas, containing 

 nine magnificent outlines of the volcanoes of the Cordilleras of 

 Quito and Mexico, of which the first represented the beautiful 

 Cerro del Altar, drawn from a sketch of Humboldt's by Schinkel, 

 the last work of this noted artist ' before his- premature and 

 much lamented death.' l The work, together with the atlas, was 

 dedicated by Humboldt in January 1853 'to- the greatest geolo- 

 gist of his day, the ingenious investigator of Nature, Leopold von 



1 ' Kleinere Schriften/ p. 462. 



