Ocean, "made me bid farewell to my property near Vienna, the villa built to suit my fancy. There I had hoped to end my days in tranquil work, surrounded by the great remembrances of my stirring life, and by the charming witnesses of my wanderings, the plants I had brought home." But duty called him to take once more to affairs. "What was important," he says elsewhere, in the same work, "was to raise a barrier against the dissolution of society, to prevent the break-up of all that was great and noble, of all that had been shaped and hallowed in the course of centuries, that is to say, to serve justice and order,—in one word, to serve the Emperor[1]."
The bust of Charles von Hügel which has just been unveiled will remind numberless visitors of a great promoter of horticulture; but he who has studied more closely the abundant activity of this remarkable man, and has come to know the core of his personality, will see in him, as well, an ardent enquirer, a model of the noblest manhood and of the deepest patriotism.
- ↑ See Notes (18).
