Guyot on Carl Bitter. 35 



chair, the first, it is believed-, devoted to that Bpecial branch of 

 knowledge in any German University, was created for him ; a 

 public acknowledgment both of Bitter's merit and of the 

 scientific character that had been imparted to Geography by 

 his labors. This appointment was due to the enlightened and 

 far-seeing Minister of Public Instruction, William von Hum- 

 boldt, the highly gifted brother of Alexander, and to his suc- 

 cessor, Von Altenstein, and reflects no little credit on the wis- 

 dom of these distinguished men, to the liberal and discrimi- 

 nating patronage of whom the cause of learning in Prussia is 

 otherwise so much indebted. 



Bitter has now found the appropriate scene of action and 

 of further progress ; the field prepared for him by Providence, 

 as he often gratefully acknowledged, for doing the work to 

 which he felt called. Here, in the largest of the Universities 

 of Germany, surrounded by a crowd of young men eager for 

 knowledge and ready for every new light, for every new ad- 

 vance, he met with a most welcome opportunity for an appli- 

 cation on a grand scale of the plenteous stores of learning and 

 of scientific experience which he had been so long accumulat- 

 ing. To impart to minds thus prepared the new truths that 

 he possessed, was to him not only a duty, but a delight. 

 Moreover, living in the midst of an intellectual atmosphere in 

 which reigned a most intense life, one of the first and blessed 

 fruits of returning peace after the long disturbed condition of 

 Europe ; a member by his very position, and by his universal- 

 ly acknowledged merit, of that circle of highly cultivated men, 

 the 4lite of intellectual Germany, gathered in Berlin, his rich 

 powers expanded to their natural limits, and the fruits of that 

 long and laborious period of preparation which had preceded, 

 came to full maturity. We may say that after the first ten 

 years of his residence in Berlin, in the midst of such favorable 

 circumstances, Bitter's mind had grown to its full stature, and 

 his scientific views had taken that definite form which they 

 preserved to the end of his life. These constituted, indeed, 

 the noble share of light allotted to him. Nearly thirty years 

 more were found too short to execute the grand conception 

 that was before him as the goal to be attained. 



Bitter entered upon his new duties with his usual ardoi 

 and -cheerfulness. He was bent at the same time with no less 

 earnestness on the continuance of his publications. In the 

 same year, 1820, he had published a volume under the title, 

 Vorhatte Europaeisoher Voelkergeschichten vor Herodotus am 

 Kaukasus und an den Gestaden des Pontus, or Vestibule to 



