316 Humboldt's scientific life. 



often to the author himself. A man at a table writing, 

 or, as Miss, who doats on his books, fancies, a pale and 

 spiritual genius in his study at night, his brain labouring 

 with thought, which his fingers are not swift enough to 

 jot down — let the picture be as romantic as possible, the 

 world will never think it equal to a battle-field, although 

 it reiterates complacently, 



" The pea is mightier than the sword." 



As with the author, so with the man of science, or rather 

 worse with him, for his life, while it is similar to the 

 author's, is generally less interesting, which makes the 

 writing of his biography more difficult. Fortunatelv, 

 however, Humboldt was more than a mere man of 

 science, and his life in the main was a stirring one. 

 There were intervals of comparative quiet in it, chasms 

 of scientific and literary labours, yawning, as it were, 

 between epochs of travel and adventure ; but these once 

 bridged over, all is well. We shall bridge over, in this 

 chapter, Humboldt's scientific life in Paris. 



We left him at Berlin in the autumn of 1805. There 

 was no reason for his quitting Albano where he was so 

 happily situated, except that he needed more solitude 

 than he could find there. He was, doubtless, too hap- 

 pily situated to work as he washed. He remained at 

 Berlin two years, writing, and pursuing his scientific 

 researches. He continued his magnetic observations, and 

 the result of his experiments w T as, that mountain chains 

 and even active volcanoes exercise no perceptible force 

 on the magnetic pow T er, but that it deviates gradually 

 with its distance from the equator. 



He wrote largely at this time, working up different 



