Recherches sur les chaines de Montagnes, et la Climatologie comparée." This work, dedicated to the emperor of Russia, led to the establishment of those magnetical and meteorological observations in various parts of the empire, and in the British colonies in Canada, Australia, South Africa, and St. Helena, by means of which our distinguished countryman General Sabine has been led to such important generalizations.—(See Sabine.) Between 1830 and 1848 Humboldt lived alternately at Berlin and Paris, and, though keeping aloof from politics, he was more than once charged with important missions from the Prussian to the French government. After the revolution of 1830 he was chosen to recognize, on the part of the court of Prussia, the new government of Louis Philippe. In April, 1835, he suffered a severe loss in the death of his brother William, who expired in his arms. In the beginning of 1842 he accompanied the king of Prussia to England, and was present at the christening of the prince of Wales. In 1843 and 1844, when in the seventy-fifth year of his age, he composed his remarkable work, dedicated to the king of Prussia, entitled "Cosmos: Essai d'une description Physique du Monde," which was published at Stuttgard and Berlin in 3 vols., 1847-51, and which was translated into English, under the patronage of its author, by Mrs. General Sabine, and also by Miss Otté, and into French in 1848-57 by MM. Faye and Goluski, under the auspices of M. Arago.
The intellectual services of Humboldt, which our limited space has enabled us but imperfectly to record, were honoured with rewards seldom conceded to the cultivators of literature and science. Among the decorations which he received from different sovereigns, that of grand officer of the legion of honour was doubtless the most welcome. In 1850, on the death of our illustrious countryman Mr. Cavendish, he was elected one of the eight foreign associates of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France, and he was an honorary or corresponding member of all the leading scientific institutions in the Old and New World. He was chancellor of the Prussian order pour le Merite, founded by Frederick the Great, the decorations of which have been, on his recommendation, bestowed on several of the most distinguished of our countrymen. In 1858, while occupied with the completion of his latest work, Humboldt was reminded of his own mortality by the death of his friend and fellow-traveller, Aimé Bonpland (see Bonpland), who, after escaping from the tyranny of Dr. Francis, died at San Borgia in Brazil, in the eighty-sixth year of his age. In a short time after the intelligence of this event had reached him, Humboldt was seized with an illness which carried him off at Potsdam on the 6th of May, 1859, when he was within a few months of his ninetieth year. The loss of such a man, who was beloved by all ranks of society at Potsdam and Berlin, was felt as a public calamity, and every honour was paid to his venerated remains. On the 10th of May the coffin which contained them, open to the public view, was laid out in state in his library, surrounded by those precious but scattered materials which he had embodied in his physical history of the universe. The people passed in crowds to see the man whom his neighbours loved, and whom the world of intellect acknowledged as their chief. The remains were followed by six hundred students of the university of Berlin, headed by their marshals, a band of music, and eight protestant clergymen. The funeral car was followed by members of his family, preceded by the knights of the order of the black eagle, having at their head Field-marshal Von Wrangel, Prince Radziwill, and Count Groeben; by the ministers, generals, high court dignitaries, and the members of both chambers; by the professors of the university, the members of the Royal Academy, and a deputation from the civil authorities, &c. When the procession reached the cathedral it was received by the prince regent. Prince Frederick William, the other princes of the royal family, and all foreign princes then in Berlin. The services over the coffin, placed at the altar, were performed by M. Hoffman. On the evening of the same day the body was conveyed to Tegel his country seat, near Berlin, where it was placed by the side of that of his brother, under a granite column surmounted by the statue of Hope. Humboldt was succeeded as one of the eight associate members of the Institute of France by his friend and fellow-traveller M. Ehrenberg.
The title of Humboldt to such distinguished honours will be acknowledged by all who have followed him in his brilliant career as a traveller and naturalist; and those who have known him only by the voice of fame will recognize in his works, especially in his "Cosmos," a mind richly gifted by nature; deeply versed in the science and literature of the age; stored with the varied knowledge which study and observation can supply; exercising the highest powers of combination and analysis; intensely alive to the beauty and grandeur of the material world; and thus qualifying its possessor to be the historian and interpreter of inorganic nature, the expounder of her phenomena and laws, the high priest of her holiest mysteries, and the most enthusiastic yet humblest worshipper at her shrine.—D. B.
HUMBOLDT, Wilhelm, Baron von, the elder of two illustrious brothers, and eminent as a statesman, diplomatist, scholar, and philosopher, was born at Potsdam on the 22nd June, 1767. At Berlin he received the rudiments of an education which was continued at Göttingen and completed at Jena. Young Humboldt thus began his career with rank, fortune, and one of the most accomplished and well-balanced intellects of his time. A slight incident which occurred during his student life has been preserved in a singular manner, and serves to show what a pure vein of sensibility and affectionateness accompanied the endowments of a highly-gifted mind. While at Göttingen with his brother Alexander, Wilhelm being then in his twenty-first year, he spent three days' at Pyrmont Spa, where he formed a casual acquaintance with a German pastor in easy circumstances who was accompanied by his daughter. Charlotte (such was the lady's name) and Wilhelm were happy companions in the walks and amusements which filled up his short stay, and at his departure the former obtained the common German compliment of a few words written by Humboldt in her album. The impression of these three pleasant days was more lasting than had been anticipated. Twenty-six years later, when Humboldt was Prussian minister at the congress of Vienna, he received a long and affecting letter, dated "Brunswick," from his fair companion at Pyrmont, inclosing the album leaf which bore his autograph, and soliciting his counsel and aid. Charlotte had married, had suffered great reverses, and was in sore need of a friend. The prompt kindness with which the busy minister responded to this appeal was evidence of a goodness of disposition possessed perhaps by other men; but the vivacity and delicacy with which, in his reply, he paints the feelings he experienced on receiving the lady's letter reveal a heart of no common kind. The correspondence thus begun was continued during a period of twenty-one years, until the death of Humboldt. The letters were published by Charlotte (Frau von Stein), who survived her friend some years, and were subsequently, in 1849, translated and published in England. To return to Humboldt's early life—the years he passed at Jena were made pleasant and profitable to him by the friendship of Schiller, with whom he enjoyed daily intercourse. The poet was very frank with his friend. In one of his letters he says, "In many respects I cannot call you a genius, while I allow that in other points you are one. For your mind is so peculiar that you are sometimes exactly the opposite of all who are conspicuous, either through their reasoning faculties, their learning, or through abstract speculation. You will not attain perfection in the sphere of mental creation, but in the sphere of reasoning." The justice of this prediction is manifest in all Humboldt's literary productions, from the "Æsthetical Essays," which he published in 1799, to the work "On the Kawi Language in Java," which he left unfinished at his death. His observations on Göthe's poem of Hermann and Dorothea equally testify to the extent of his studies in epic poetry, and to his friendship for the poet Göthe. After his marriage with a lady of wealth and consideration, Fraulein von Dacherode, to whom he was sincerely attached, he was sent by the king in 1800 to Rome as Prussian ambassador; and while there, published a poem entitled "Rom," which was reprinted in 1824, and again in his collected works. On his return thence in 1808 he was created councillor of state and appointed chief of the department of public instruction. His ideas, however, not being in accordance with those of his superior, the minister of the interior, Humboldt very soon after retired to his estate—Tegel, near Berlin. In 1810 he was summoned from his retirement to assume the then arduous and responsible duties of ambassador to Vienna. Three years later he was appointed plenipotentiary at the congress of Prague, where his efforts to induce Austria to quit her neutral position and unite with Prussia and Russia against Napoleon were crowned with success. During the campaign which ensued he was in attendance on the sovereigns at head-quarters, took part in the conferences at Chatillon,
