58 INDOOR STUDIES 



of his want of " physico-mathematical knowledge;" 

 he was not sufficiently content with the mere dead 

 corpse of nature to weigh and measure it. Lucky 

 for him and for the world that there was something 

 that had a stronger attraction for him than the al- 

 gebraic formulas. Humholdt was not content tiU 

 he had escaped from the trammels of mechanical 

 science into the larger and more vital air of litera- 

 ture, or the literary treatment of nature. What 

 keeps his " Views of Nature " and his " Scientific 

 Travels " alive is not so much the pure science 

 which they hold as the good literature which they 

 emhody. The observations he records upon that 

 wonderful tropical nature, that are the fruit of his 

 own unaided perceptions, betraying only the wiser 

 hunter, trapper, walker, farmer, etc., how welcome 

 it all is ! But the moment he goes behind the beauti- 

 ful or natural reason and discourses as a geologist, 

 mineralogist, physical geographer, etc., how one's 

 interest flags! It is all of interest and value to 

 specialists in those fields, but it has no human and 

 therefore no literary interest or value. When he 

 tells us that "monkeys are more melancholy in pro- 

 portion as they have more resemblance to man;" 

 that "their sprightliness diminishes as their intel- 

 lectual faculties appear to increase, " — we read with 

 more attention than when he discourses as a learned 

 naturalist upon the different species of monkeys. 

 It is a real addition to our knowledge of nature to 

 learn that the extreme heat and dryness of the sum- 

 mer, within the equatorial zone in South America, 



