THE ROYAL REUNIONS. 431 



thing of interest, as the day brought it to notice, was 

 there discussed. The drawing of a beautiful live oak, 

 near Charleston, which a fair friend had made for me, 

 was taken by Humboldt to that circle, where it attracted 

 so much attention that he begged me to leave it, and he 

 told me that the volume describing our aqueduct, which 

 my friend, the author, now the President of our College, 

 had given me at the time of its publication, and which I 

 had then sent him, had furnished the topic of discussion 

 for an entire week. We collected, he said, all possible 

 works on ancient and modern aqueducts, and compared, 

 discussed, and applied, for many successive evenings. Is 

 there, then, a royal road to knowledge after all, when a 

 Humboldt can be retained ? 



"May I extend your supposed permission of giving 

 personal anecdotes, provided they are of a sufficiently 

 biographical character, such as Plutarch, perhaps, would 

 not have disdained to record ? I desire to show what 

 interest he took in everything connected with progress. 

 I have reason to believe that it was chiefly owing to him 

 that the King of Prussia offered me, not long after my 

 visit, a chair to be created in the University of Berlin, 

 exclusively dedicated to the science and art of Punish- 

 ment, or to Pcenology. I had conversed with the 

 Monarch on the superiority of solitary confinement at 

 labour over all the other prison systems, when he con- 

 cluded our interview with these words : ' I wish you 

 would convince Mr. Yon Humboldt of your views. He 

 is rather opposed to them. I shall let him know that you 

 will see him.' 



" Humboldt and prison discipline sounded strange to 

 my ears. I went and found that he loved truth better 



