454 BAYARD TAYLOR AT BERLIN. 



suit of knowledge. He has brought to this pursuit a 

 rare susceptibility to the charms of nature, a heart capa- 

 ble of feeling, and a head of generalizing. His fortune 

 and rank have ever given him the best advantages of 

 every kind. If he had not been a savant, he might have 

 been an artist or a poet, for his works show taste and 

 imagination of the most exquisite perfection. Most of 

 his writings will compare in elegance with the purest 

 classics of Germany. In short, he is one of the most har- 

 moniously developed characters the world has ever seen, 

 and posterity will reserve for him a higher niche in the 

 temple of fame, than for the bloody heroes who have 

 dazzled the world for a moment by their engineer talent 

 of manoeuvring masses of troops." 



Some years later there came to Berlin a young Ameri- 

 can traveller, who, younger than Humboldt, when he 

 made his great American journey, had already travelled 

 extensively in four continents, and written several books 

 of travel, which the world had pronounced unequalled 

 of their kind. He lacked Humboldt's universal know- 

 ledge of science, for what traveller, ancient or modern, 

 ever possessed it ? but in word-painting — in the power 

 of making the landscapes that he had seen, glow on his 

 pages, as on a painter's canvass, he had no need to fear 

 a comparison with that great master of the picturesque. 

 From his early youth he had venerated the name of 

 Humboldt, and being in Germany, he made a pilgrimage 

 to Berlin to see him. The homage that he brought to 

 the great traveller was alike honourable to both. It 

 becomes youth to reverence age, and it becomes age to 

 accept the reverence of youth. 



" I came to Berlin," says Bayard Taylor, writing 



