THE LAST TEN YEARS. 413 



his name has been attached. Still less are we called upon to 

 repeat the exulting strains of the Centenary Festival of Sep- 

 tember 14, 1869, as, in following the march of the sun, it was 

 celebrated over the whole globe. It well becomes us, however, 

 to seek to dispel as far as possible the cloud of adulation that 

 even yet envelopes this mighty intellect, and expose to view 

 the permanent renown that posterity will accord ; which, as 

 the reflection of that adulation, lies as a covering of eternal 

 snow on all who rise into sue 11 lofty eminence. The centenary 

 of remarkable men who have been cut off in early life, or even 

 in middle age, occurs at a sufficient lapse of time for their 

 fame to have become free from every fictitious quality ; in 

 Humboldt's case, however, his centenary came so shortly after 

 his death that it was celebrated by those who had been his 

 friends and associates, and it has been impossible' hitherto to 

 separate the fame that future generations will yield him from 

 the glory that is to some extent adventitious. To point out 

 this distinction has been one of the chief aims of this bio- 

 graphy, but a more precise attempt to mark the separation will 

 doubtless not be deemed inappropriate. 



In proof of the extravagant estimation in which Humboldt 

 was held by his contemporaries, it is unnecessary to bring for- 

 ward 1 the enthusiastic expressions of September 14, 1869; the 

 following facts speak with greater force. The remarkable 

 letter 2 written by Jacob Grimm on May 29, 1862, in which he 

 contests the propriety of placing in juxtaposition the statues 

 of Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller, concludes with these memo- 

 rable words : ' Near Goethe no one should stand unless it were 

 Humboldt.' Kaulbach too, in his frescoes in the Museum at 

 Berlin, has painted Germania as the representative of modern 



1 It is peculiarly interesting to observe the enthusiastic speeches reported 

 in the account of the festivities at Mexico ( f Boletin de geografia y estadistica, 

 dedicado a la memoria del ilustre Alejandro de Humboldt;' special num- 

 ber, Mexico. 1869) and Caracas (Vargasia, ' Bol. de la Sociedad de Ciencias 

 fisicas y naturales de Caracas/ 1869, No. 6). In an article of the ' Opinion 

 Nacional ' of Caracas of September 14, Humboldt is described bv Vicente 

 Coronado as ' el sabio que mas se ha acercado a la Divinidad por el poder, 

 el caracter y la estension de su inteligencia/ 



2 H. Grimm's ' Zur Begriindung des in der Sitzung des Goethe-Comite"3 

 eingebrachten Antrags ' (Berlin, 1862), p. 11. 



