THE FUNERAL AT TEGEL. 425 



and artists: and then the people of the village, who 

 showed their affection for the dead man's memory by 

 following his body to the grave, singing hymns and 

 psalms as they went. The solemn procession wonnd its 

 way through the grounds until it reached the monument 

 which William had erected for his wife. It stood at the 

 end of an alley of cypress, in a spot of the park to 

 which Frau Caroline had been partial, and which she 

 had chosen for a resting-place. Upon the summit of 

 this monument, stood a statue of Hope, by Thorwaldsen. 

 Under this divine angel, by the side of his dead wife, the 

 great scholar was laid with prayers and many tears. 



" You should have known my brother William," 

 Alexander used to say in after years : "he was always 

 the cleverest of us two brothers." 



There is a period in our lives when we think that 

 grief will kill us. It is in youth when we are ignorant, 

 not in age when we are wise. . Age teaches us many 

 things, not the least of which is our power of endurance. 

 Humboldt felt that he was desolate after his brother's 

 death, but he also felt that he could endure his desola- 

 tion. He had many consolations left him still, — his 

 friends, his books, his inextinguishable thirst for know- 

 ledge. As we have given a glimpse of his private life, 

 *let us reverse the medal, and show him as he appeared to 

 the public at this time. 



" When, in the years 1834-5," says the author of Ber- 

 lin and the Berliner s, " we young students thronged into 

 lecture room No. VIIL, at eighjt o'clock on winter morn- 

 ings, to hear Bockh on Greek literature and antiquities, 

 we used to see in the crowd of students in the dark cor- 

 ridor, a small, white-haired, old, and happy-looking man, 



