418 



CONCLUSION. 



CHAPTER 



xxvin. 



I/Bctures at 

 Paris and 

 Berlin. 



a small work bearing the title of Ansichten der NattiVy 

 whicli I published soon after my return from Mexico. 

 In the work on the Cosmos on which I am now en- 

 gaged, I have endeavoured to show that a certain de- 

 gree of scientific completene.'^s in the treatment of indi- 

 vidual facts, is not wholly incompatible with a picturesque 

 animation of style." 



The substance of these comprehensive speculations 

 was originally delivered in the form of lectures, first in 

 the French language, at Paris, and afterwards in German, 

 at Berlin. In this profound and comprehensive work, 

 the author has condescended to the necessities of the 

 ordinary student, without sacrificing any of the higher 

 objects he had in view, and has produced a work scarcely 

 less acceptable to the profound man of science, than to 

 the ordinary popular student of natural philosophy The 

 remarks with which he has introduced it are peculiarly 

 interesting as a fragment of auto-biography, and may not 

 unfitly serve as a conclusion to this slight abstract of 

 some of his earlier and most laborious researches. He 

 has been, in a peculiar sense, the author and the con- 

 troller of his own life, and has marked out a path for 

 himself, which will remain, after his career shall have 

 terminated, as a monument of intellectual greatness, 

 more enduring than the passes of the Simplon which 

 memoi-ialize the physical power of a great contemporary. 

 Far above all such form of ambitious self-aggrandize- 

 ment as distinguish the world's conquerors and heroes, 

 Alexander Von Humboldt will be remembered as one of 

 the greatest ornaments of an age peculiarly remarkable 

 ill the world's history. 



EDINBL'UGII: TKIN'TED BV T. NELSOS AND SONS. 



