OF BAEON HUMBOLDT. 155 



impression. The exact manner of Humboldt's 

 conception of nature enabled him to portray the 

 great features of her phenomena in a most 

 attractive manner.* Repossessed the rare capa- 

 city of avoiding all rhetorical embellishments. 

 His views concerning the great waters of our 

 earth ; his descriptions of the prairies of Central 

 America, the immense forests, the desert, and 

 the ravines of the mountain-chains of Mexico 

 and Peru ; the lofty peaks covered perpetually 

 with snow/ and void of all traces of vegetable 

 life ; the craters of numerous volcanoes ; are 

 the faithful reflex of nature. Humboldt, in 

 describing any isolated object, a phenomenon, 

 or a discovery, never indulges in poetical excla- 

 mations or possible exaggerations, but brings 

 us face to face with reality. He not only sustains 

 but increases our interest in the great pictures 

 of the united life and activity of our earth. To 



* " When genius arrives, its speech is like a river, it has 

 no straining to describe, more than there is straining in 

 nature to exist. When thought is best, there is most of it. 

 Genius sheds wisdom like perfume, and advertises us that it 

 flows out of a deeper source than the foregoing silence, that 

 it knows so deeply and speaks so musically because it is 

 itself a mutation of the thing it describes. It is sun and 

 moon and wave and fire in music, as astronomy is thought 

 and harmony in masses of matter." (fi. W. Emerson 1 s 

 Oration, " The Method of Nature") 



