112 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



covered how completely we were made one for the 

 other ? To be without a friend, what an existence ! 

 And where can I hope to find a friend whom I 

 could place by your side in my affections ! " 



These words seem like those of a lover, or an 

 affectionate woman, but they come from a mind 

 that now, as in after years, towered like a giant oak 

 in the trees of a forest. Beautiful union of brain 

 and heart ! Such only makes an ideal character. 



Humboldt had already met Willdenow, and begun 

 to love botany. Again he writes to Wegener : " I 

 have just come in from a solitary walk in the 

 Thiergarten," he was for a short time in Berlin, 

 "where I have been seeking for mosses, lichens, 

 and fungi, which are just now in perfection. How 

 sad to wander about alone ! And yet there is 

 something attractive in this solitude, when occu- 

 pied with nature. ... I am collecting materials for 

 a work on the various properties of plants, medi- 

 cinal properties excepted ; it is a work requiring 

 such great research, and such a profound knowl- 

 edge of botany, as to be far beyond my unassisted 

 powers, and I am therefore endeavoring to enlist 

 the cooperation of several of my friends. . . . Pray 

 do not imagine that I am going to appear as an 

 author forthwith ; I do not intend that shall hap- 

 pen for the next ten years, and by that time I 

 trust I shall have discovered something startlingly 

 new and important." 



Gottingen was now at the height of its glory. 

 Humboldt attended courses of lectures on archse- 



