394 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



letter in which he appeals, not in vain, shortly before Humboldt's 

 death, for his interposition to obtain the exhibition of the for- 

 gotten cartoons of Cornelius. But numerous as are the letters 

 containing some appeal, these are far outnumbered, strange as 

 it may seem, by those expressive of thanks. We have seen his 

 zeal in benevolent acts ; but even when he was powerless to 

 bring relief, he had always the wish to be of use. In prompti- 

 tude in the despatch of business, and especially in the conduct 

 of his correspondence, he had few equals. He calls to mind the 

 punctiliousness characteristic of the reigning House of Prussia, 

 in particular of Frederick the Grreat, whose habit of making 

 marginal notes finds a counterpart in the humorous com- 

 ments with which he inscribed all letters and books that 

 came in his way. His love of order was as remarkable as his 

 promptitude ; he often boasted that since his travels in Ame- 

 rica, he had never lost a scrap of manuscript. In this respect 

 his letters and notes, though very faulty in style, are worthy 

 of admiration. Late into the night he would prosecute his 

 correspondence, his replies being courteously worded, very 

 complete, and always written in his own hand. The brevity 

 of his letters was to be ascribed to the same cause as their 

 defective composition, namely, the extent of his correspon- 

 dence, and the rapidity with which it was conducted. With 

 "his handwriting everyone is familiar; from about 1835 he 

 adopted, for sake of ^ clearness, the Latin character ; badly as 

 he wrote, with no distinctiveness in the form of the letters, 

 his writing was still not so illegible as that of his brother 

 at the close of life, and it was only for about the last eighteen 

 months that it degenerated into a mere' scrawl. In Hilde- 

 brandt's small water-colour drawing, he is represented writing, 

 according to his usual custom, upon his knee a habit neces- 

 sitated by the injury to his arm, brought on by ' sleeping among 

 the damp vegetation of the Orinoco.' This accounts for the 

 closely written lines sloping upwards towards the right, and 

 frequently running one into the other, diminishing from be- 

 low in the manner of perspective. The blank page to the left 

 was made use of for isolated remarks, anecdotes, or jokes, written 

 in all directions. Blots of ink were there apologised for under 

 the designation of the ' Caspian Sea,' or the ' Sea of Aral,' and 



