386 ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 



the Institute. The suggestion was acceded to, and Humboldt 

 declared himself willing to sit to Kauch, upon whose death the 

 work was completed by one of his pupils. In September, 1858, 

 it was placed in the vestibule of the Institute, near the busts 

 of Chateaubriand, Arago, &c. Although we may to some 

 extent sympathise with Humboldt in his acquiescence to this 

 proposition notwithstanding the inconsistency such a course 

 involved we cannot but deeply regret that in a letter to 

 Valenciennes he broke out in the bitterest complaints con- 

 cerning the unworthy place that had been accorded him. 

 While laying the chief stress upon the value of Kauch's sculpture 

 as a work of art, which rendered it unsuitable to be placed 

 among a number of mediocre productions, there is no disguising 

 the feeling of wounded vanity dictating the complaints. 

 Eventually the matter was arranged according to Humboldt's 

 wishes ; at a private sitting of the Institute convened by Elie 

 de Beaumont, a resolution was passed by which the bust was 

 placed in the library ' in one of the cabinets of the Academy, 

 as the portrait of a valued and illustrious friend.' Valenciennes, 

 when writing on November 26, 1858, to inform his patron of 

 the circumstance, adds, after various complimentary phrases, 

 that beautiful as the bust may be as a work of art, it yet fails 

 to do justice to Humboldt's intellectual expression : indeed, so 

 far does he push his unworthy flattery, that he concludes with 

 the exclamation : ; Phidias alone could reproduce the Grod of 

 Olympus ! ' 



Nor were civic communities behind scientific societies in 

 the honours they showered upon Humboldt. In 1849 he was 

 elected a citizen of Potsdam, and in 1856 was presented with 

 the freedom of the city of Berlin. According to his custom, he 

 expressed his acknowledgments in both instances in a cere- 

 monious address. 1 In view of his well-known aversion to 

 Berlin, it is scarcely possible to restrain a smile while reading 

 such expressions as : ' Words fail me to express the deep 

 gratitude I feel towards this noble city, which has raised itself 

 to be a worthy capital of this kingdom not only by its com- 

 mercial industry but by its love of art.' But during the closing 

 years of his life, in which he was the recipient of so many 



1 See 'Briefe an Varnha^en/ No. 371. 



