- - “ 
Fuly 24, 1873] 
_ from study which mark his university career, and b 
“numerous essays on mathematical, physical, medical, 
_ physiological, and even classical subjects ; for by dint of 
hard work he had, during his attendance on Heyne’s 
Greek lectures at Gottingen, so thoroughly mastered hi- 
earlier deficiencies that he won from that learned pro 
fessor the distinction of being commended as “a bette: 
philologer than any who had left the class for many years.” 
_ The University of Gottingen to which the brothers hac 
migrated in 1789, and which had already begun to attract 
students from all parts, as the best school of pure and 
practical science, afforded the advantages that Frankfor: 
had failed to give them; and here, under Lichtenberg 
_ Gmelin, Osiander and Blumenbach, Alexander laid th” 
solid foundations of those varied acquisitions in the de- 
partments of physical and natural science, which justl) 
entitle him to rank as the greatest pioneer in the cause of 
modern research. Others may have very far surpassed him 
- in one or more domains of inquiry, but no one man in his 
time has done more than A. v. Humboldt in accumulating 
materials, testing evidence, repeating experiments and 
carrying on observations in almost every section of 
knowledge by which the labours of subsequent inquirers. 
have been lightened. To his latest years, Humboldt did 
justice to the benefit which he had derived from Géttin- 
gen, which he had entered with “ the wzwsua/ advantages,” 
as we are told by his former tutor, the mathematician, 
Fischer, “ of having received an excellent education, and of 
‘possessing a proficiency in mathematics which might 
have secured him distinction had he been able to devote 
his attention exclusively, or even partially, to that science.” 
Political economy had, however, already become the 
principal object of his studies, in consequence of his hay- 
ing made choice of the public bureaucratic service of the 
State as his future career. In 1790 his experiences of 
foreign travel were begun during a visit to England, made 
in company with George Forster, the friend whose adven- 
turous voyages and various books of travel had given 
Humboldt from his earliest boyhood the keenest desire to 
visit tropical lands, and see with his own eyes the exotic 
floras and faunas which he described in such glowing 
colours. The journal which records the experiences of 
this tour gives evidence of the astonishing range of infor- 
mation possessed at this time by Humboldt, who, true to 
his destined vocation, set himself steadily to work to ob- 
serve everything bearing upon the politico-economical 
aspects of English life, although his scientific tastes are 
perpetually cropping out in remarks upon the geological 
features of the country. To this first experience of 
English life and to the influence \exerted on his future 
pursuits by intercourse with George Forster and his 
friends, Humboldt long looked back with grateful 
pleasure. Soon after his return to Germany he went to 
Hamburg for the sake of attending lectures on currency, 
book-keeping, and other practical branches of commercial 
knowledge at the Academy of Commerce, which, under 
the management of its chief professors, the jurists Busch 
and Ebeling, was attracting the attendance of young men 
preparing for a political career. 
From Hamburg A. von Humboldt passed to the Frei- 
berg School of Mines, where, under Werner, he prepared 
himself for the special duties of the post of Assessor and 
Superintendent of Mines to which he had for some time 
NATURE 
239 
aspired, and which for a time after its attainment seemed 
to him the realisation of all his wishes. No employé had 
ever been more zealous, and all his reports were expansive 
geognostic treatises on the districts he was called upon to 
survey. The charm of novelty soon, however, wore off, 
and then the complete stagnation, the systematised red- 
tapeism, and the absolute dearth of intellectual or rational 
interests belonging to Prussian Public Service in those 
times, proved as unbearable to [Alexander as-they had 
already become to his elder brother, and both ceased 
their official connection with the State at the first moment 
they could do so. Society in Berlin was equally distaste- 
ful to them on account of the prejudice and etiquette by 
which it was regulated, and after a prolonged and happy 
sojourn at Jena and Weimar, the then active centres of 
the true intellectual, zesthetical, and literary life of Ger- 
many, Alexander proceeded, on the death of his mother 
in 1796, to carry out his long-cherished dream of visiting 
far distant. tropical regions. To prepare himself tho- 
roughly for this purpose had been for years the object of 
his studies, and few men were ever better fitted than him- 
self for the end he had in view. To his other qualifica- 
tions for becoming an efficient scientific traveller, he added 
the possession of an almost unparalleled range of know- 
ledge, including an intimate acquaintance with the cha- 
racter, history, and resources of his own country, un- 
bounded love of nature, unflinching perseverance, nearly 
inexhaustible capacity for work, wide sympathies with his 
fellow-men, a ready gift of pleasing and being pleased, 
and an ardent, almost ideal enthusiasm, which found ex- 
pression in his own favourite motto, “ Der Mensch muss 
das Grosse und Gute wollen” (Man must strive after the 
Great and the Good). 
After oft repeated disappointments and many shat- 
tered plans, A. v. Humboldt, in spite of the numerous 
obstacles arising from the disturbed political condi- 
tion of Europe at the time, achieved his long- 
cherished project of visiting the New World, and in the 
summer of 1799 he landed in South America. In the 
following year he and his companion and friend, 
Bonpland, plunged into the steaming forests of the 
Orinoco, and bidding farewell to civilisation, threw 
themselves into the work before them. An enormous 
mass of specimens collected from every kingdom of 
nature preceded A. v. H.’s return to Europe in 1804, and 
gave the scientific world at home a faint foreshadowing 
of the gigantic dimensions of the labours accomplished by 
that indefatigable explorer. Paris was at that time the 
only spot where a work such as he meditated could be 
produced, and accordingly thither he repaired, and after 
securing the co-operation of Cuvier, Latreille, and many 
of the other leaders of science, proceeded to elaborate his 
materials. The result of these combined labours was the 
appearance, in 1807, of the magnificent work known as 
“Voyage aux Régions equinoxiales du Nouveau 
Continent fait dans les années 1799 4 1804, par A. de 
Humboldt et A. Boupland.” The cost of bringing out 
this colossal xész#zé of his American observations involved 
Humboldt in pecuniary embarrassments, from which he 
can scarcely be said ever to have freed himself, and 
which had moreover the disastrous results of forcing him 
to accept help at a subsequent period from the King of 
Prussia ; and thus incur an obligation which he found 
