DREAMS OF TRAVEL. 15 



duties, was spent in each other's society. "What conver- 

 sations they must have had of that eventful journey 

 round the world, and what schemes they planned for 

 the future ! The active imagination of the young student, 

 fresh from the reading of wonderful adventures in the 

 New World, the chronicles of Vasco Kunes de Balboa, 

 Pizarro, and the rest of those grand old Spaniards, was 

 fired with the thought of making new voyages and dis- 

 coveries, which should cast the old ones for ever in the 

 shade. Voyages in the long swell of tropic seas, under 

 constellations that never shine to European eyes : sailing 

 along the dim outlines of the western continent, dark 

 with the long belt of the pathless forests, or ragged with 

 the peaks of inland mountains, capped with eternal 

 snow : or up great rivers a thousand leagues in length, 

 on, on, into the heart of the New World, the primeval 

 solitudes of Nature ! The best hours of a man's life are 

 those that he wastes in dreams, and happy is he who 

 can make them true, as Humboldt did. 



But this was recreation rather than study, and as he 

 went to the University to study, a graver mood soon 

 succeeded. The University was rich in scientific collec- 

 tions, none of which were neglected by the earnest young 

 student. When not attending the lectures of Blumen- 

 bach and Heyne, which were generally given in their 

 own houses, he pursued his researches and experiments 

 in the University Museum. To-day in the laboratory 

 among its vials and crucibles, testing acids and gases, 

 or in the botanic gardens, theorizing over tropic plants 

 and trees: to-morrow in the anatomical room, sur- 

 rounded by casts and models ; and many a long night 

 in the observatory unwinding the dances of the stars. 



