742 REPORT — 1895. 



an endowment for research, and it was then that he accumulated that vast miscel- 

 laneous Imowledge so valuable to the intellectual pioneer. It is not unimportant in 

 connection with Eitter's later theories to observe that, at this time, Cuvier and Franz 

 Bopp were applying the comparative method to anatomy and philology. Nor did 

 he fail to cultivate that hah-artistic perception of land-forms, the early exercise 

 of which seems to be to the geographer what youthful training in pronunciation is 

 to the linguist. While travelling with the young Hollwegs, he caused astonish- 

 ment in Switzerland by the accuracy of his delineation of a mountain range. Add 

 that fortuue brought Humboldt and Pestalozzl across his path, and we understand 

 the influences which shaped Karl Ritter into the greatest modern professor of geo- 

 graphy. 



Ritter produced both books and men. He had the personal charm of the born 

 teacher, and the Prussian officers of 186(5 and 1870 were as truly his intellectual 

 offspring as was the Erdkunde, of which Schlegel said that it was the Bible of 

 Geography. Nor did his classes fail to bring ibrth professed geographers, such as 

 Guthe, and historians with the geographical eye, such as Curtius. But Ritter did 

 not stand alone. Pie was one of a group of four men, who together made the 

 geography of the nineteenth century as distinctively a German science as that of 

 the eighteenth century had been French. One is almost tempted to draw a com- 

 parison, man for man, between Humboldt, Ritter, Bergliaus, and Perthes, and tbat 

 great group of later Germans — Bismarck. Moltke, von Roon, and AVilliam I. The 

 coincidence is not quite so fortuitous as might at first sight appear; for Berghaus, 

 the cartographer, and Perthes, the capitalist employer of cartographers, were as 

 necessary to the earlier combination as, to the later, were von Roon, the organiser, 

 and William, the kingly employer of statesmen and generals. 



In 1827 Humboldt, who, on his mother's side, was French by descent, left Paris, 

 which had been his home for nearly twenty years, to join the Prussian Court at 

 Berlin. In the winter of 1827-28 he gave a course of brilliant lectures before the 

 University, in which was contained the nucleus of the subsequent Kosmos. In 1829, 

 at the invitation of the Russian Government, he spent twenty-five weeks on a rapid 

 journey to the mines of the Ural and Altai, and received the impressions which 

 led to the Asien. TLieuce onward Humboldt and Ritter lived at Berlin, mutually 

 appreciative, and complementing each other in mental characteristics. They died 

 in the same year, 18.59, just before those great political events which changed the 

 whole aspect of German life. 



The influence of the new school was early felt beyond Germany. Petermann, 

 the pupil of Berghaus, came to our islands to help Keith Johnston with the 

 English edition of Berghaus's great Physical Atlas, whilst Arnold Guyot, the Swiss 

 disciple of Ritter, after teaching for a time at Neuchatel, crossed the Atlantic to 

 lecture at Harvard, and afterwards to accept a chair at Princeton. 



No sooner, however, were the two great masters at Berlin dead, than German 

 geography passed into a new phase, a phase of wliicli the ty|iical representative was 

 Oscar Peschel, tlie critic of both Humboldt and Ritter. The facts of Peschel's life 

 are soon told. He began as a journalist, he became a geographical writer, and 

 died a professor of geography. From 1849 to 1854 he was assistant editor of the 

 Augsburg Allffemeine Zeitting. Then until 1870 he was solo editor of the weekly 

 Ausland. From 1871 until his death in 1875 he occupied a chair in Leipzig 

 University. The titles of his books may serve as an index to his mind. The 

 * Age of the Discoveries' appeared in 1858, and the 'History of Geography ' 

 in 1865. Be then turned his attention to physical questions, and produced in 1870 

 his striking ' New Problems for Comparative Geography.' Finally, in 1874, came 

 the Volkei-lamde, a title not easily translatable into English. After his death 

 his pupils, acting apparently under the inspiration of Professor Kirchhoff' of Halle, 

 collected his essays and lectures, which were published in a series of volumes edited 

 with varying degrees of merit. 



Peschel's criticism of Humboldt was of the rarest kind. He appreciated the 

 good, detected the errors, and, above all, suggested the remedies. Humboldt's 

 later works, the Asien and the Kosmos, both exhibit striking excellences, and 

 for a time enjoyed great vogue, yet both, like Newton's Optics, helped to delay the 



