396 JoUn Bachman. 



How vast those resources were, and how usefully 

 they were employed, may be seen in his works. He 

 lived to a great age. He was born in 1769, and died 

 1859, having reached the unusual age of ninety 

 years. The whole of his long life was devoted to 

 studies and labors calculated to benefit mankind. 

 His last work, the " Cosmos," is a monument of 

 meditation and research, unequaled in all the labors 

 of science. Even when the weight of fourscore and 

 ten years lay upon his head, he toiled whilst others 

 rested, and it is asserted by those who knew him 

 most intimately, that the morning's dawn often sur- 

 prised him at his desk. 



He had a brother, Karl Wilhelm, two years his 

 senior, who became almost as eminent as himself in 

 many of the sciences. 



In the many conversations I had with Humboldt 

 he often alluded to his attachment to the American 

 nation, and spoke of himself as half an American, 

 inasmuch as some of his earliest labors had com- 

 menced in America. 



He had no time to devote himself to minor points 

 in the sciences. His mind dwelt upon the great 

 laws of nature, comprehending the whole circle of 

 the sciences. 



In the knowledge of genera and species, and in the 

 particular sciences, he had many superiors. Thus 

 in the Department of Botany, Linnteus and De 

 Candole were fuller. Cuvier and even Buffon had 

 entered more minutely into the study of the quad- 

 rupeds ; and other authors who devoted them- 

 selves to the study of the birds, fishes, insects, 

 etc., surpassed him in minute description, but in 

 general knowledge he surpassed them all. It is 

 not to be wondered at that a man who, by his 

 intellectual greatness, towered above the loftiest 

 of his contemporaries, and by his simplicity, gen- 



