386 NINETEENTH CENTURY. tt. hi. 



undertaking his own special science) he published twenty- 

 eight large volumes, which contained the conclusions based 

 upon the facts he had learnt in his travels. 



In 1827 he returned to Berlin, and was then invited by 

 the Emperor of Russia to go on a journey into the Russian 

 provinces of Asia, where he spent nine months making the 

 same kind of observations that he had made in America. 

 In 1830 he was sent to Paris as Prussian ambassador, and 

 it was not till he returned to Berlin some years after, that 

 he began to publish the * Cosmos ' he had been preparing 

 for so long. 



In this grand work he gives a complete history of 

 astronomy, and all the discoveries in it made up till his 

 time ; and then taking our own world as part of the uni- 

 verse, he describes the changes which are going on now, or 

 have been going on in past time, on the face of the earth. 

 It is to Humboldt that we owe much which makes geo- 

 graphy interesting. The study of the surface of the globe, 

 of mountain-chains, table-lands, and rivers, the climates of 

 countries, the different winds which blow, and the currents 

 which cross the ocean ; the way in which plants and ani- 

 mals are distributed over the world ; the different races of 

 men, and how they have spread over the globe — all these 

 and other facts which make geography something more than 

 a mere list of names, Humboldt studied during his various 

 journeys, and related them with a freshness which had a 

 peculiar charm. 



It was not so much that he advanced any one branch 

 of science as that he led men to look upon the earth and the 

 universe as one vast whole, and to find a living interest in 

 every part of it. In 1858 the last sheets of the 'Cosmos' 

 were put into the publisher's hands, but Humboldt did not 



