THE LAST TEN YEARS. 393 



What a countless number of poetical effusions, including 

 some even in Greek and Hebrew ! ' To the Dante of the Mate- 

 rial Universe ' ' Aspirations of an Investigator ' ' Ode from 

 the Georgians to Alexander von Humboldt ' ' Words of Glowing 

 Love addressed to A. v. H.' ' To Baron von Humboldt, the king 

 of science, the latchet of whose shoes other kings are not 

 worthy to unloose.' Next come a legion of begging letters, from 

 the most delicately worded to the most outspoken ; to these we 

 will spare the reader any further reference. Then follow various 

 plans and propositions, dictated either by folly or madness, half 

 ridiculous, half sad. 1 But of this enough ; the instances 

 have adduced suffice to show the positioii occupied by this 

 4 throned monarch in the world of science.' ' . 



Not that Humboldt stood as the ruler of science itself, -f JrJ 1 V* 7 

 science could never acknowledge any one absolute sovereign ; the 

 possession of Truth, and the search after her, is the natural right 

 of all humanity. It was not as the oracle of theoretic science 

 that Humboldt was appealed to in those thousand letters ; for 

 one query that was addressed to him he directed a hundred 

 questions to others, especially during the latter years of his life. 

 The royal position accorded to him may be said to have re- 

 sembled that acquired by Cromwell as a statesman, and Napo- 

 leon as a conqueror, for it is through his achievements as a man 

 of science that he rose to a position of distinction and influence 

 among his contemporaries, enjoyed by few except those to whom 

 it has come as a prerogative of birth. In this sense his kingdom 

 stretched beyond the confines of any political monarchy until it 

 compassed the whole civilised world. He was the object of 

 universal homage, which found expression in words by those 

 gifted with rank or intellectual superiority, and was felt in the 

 hearts of all the educated classes; by a natural impulse, they 

 laid before him all they had to bestow, whether rewards or 

 marks of distinction, their achievements in art or science, or 

 the thousand trifles usually given in token of goodwill. In him 

 all the world had some practical or ideal interest. So much so 

 that he came to be considered as 4 the last resource in intel- 

 lectual matters,' as Hermann Grimm strikingly puts it in the 



1 Several examples of these are given in the closing pages of Varnhagen's 

 correspondence. 



