188 SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS 



perceived every indication of a rapid decline of 

 his physical powers : they could no longer keep 

 pace with his ever-youthful mind. From various 

 sources we learnt that he was prepared to re- 

 turn his weary body to its mother- earth. He 

 too like his friend Gothe who acknowledged, 

 in his old age, that existence had been to him 

 little else than weariness and unrest, " the 

 eternal rolling of the stone/' longed for rest. 

 And how affecting is his request in the journals 

 of the spring 1859, in which he asks the general 

 public to excuse him now, in the late hours of 

 the evening of his, life, with their numerous 

 demands of all kinds ; and not to consider any 

 longer his house " a public office for general 

 inquiry. >J How significant is his request to 

 allow him, after an annual correspondence with 

 about 2,000 persons, a little time for his own 

 work. 



It is evident that if such an active and ever 

 willing servant of science and humanity, after a 

 self-imposed activity of more than half a century, 

 at last complained of his burden, he must have 

 been convinced that his time was but short. 

 A further sign was that the contents of his 

 letters were shorter, less sure, and less intelli- 

 gible. Another symptom was his great exhaus- 

 tion, and the peculiar nature of his disease, which 



