Whoever, during the summer months of the last ten
years, walked, about three o'clock in the afternoon, up the flight of
stone steps leading to old Frederick's (the Great) charming residence of
Sans Souci, near Potsdam, might see a royal carriage rounding the
castle-hill, and driving up at the opposite side of the stone steps. The
carriage, passing the famous windmill, ascends the steep way to the
castle, and stops at the large middle glass-window door, opening on a
semicircular ground, surrounded by a portico of Ionian pillars. A
servant, in the royal livery, hands out an old, age-bent gentleman, in
blue frock with red collar, as the royal chamberlains wear it. It is
adorned with a large, silvery star, that of the red eagle, and, round
his neck, the old courtier wears the Ordre pour le Merite, Peace
Class, suspended from a black and white riband. This man is
Alexander von Humboldt, coming to the royal dinner-table. He is clad in
this apparel, to enable him, according to court etiquette, to be a daily
dinner-guest at the royal table. Eighty years or more have made his
crown bald, his hair snow white, his forehead wrinkled, his features
small and contracted, and even his figure a fourth' shorter than it used
to be of yore. But his lips are still smiling kindness, and his eyes
sparkle sprightly, like those of youth. He is ushered into the large and
splendid saloon, past sundry Greek deities, and enters the drawing-room,
with immense chimney and many pictures, reminding one more of the time
when Voltaire haunted these rooms than of the present royal proprietors'
taste. Here a choice company receives him with every sign of esteem;
among high military officers, ministers of state, chamberlains, and here
and there a minister of the Church, he is the one preferred, whose
attention is considered an honour, and to whom everybody bears a sort of
filial affection and respect, especially the ladies of the court—at
their head, the fair maids of honour to the queen are respectfully
courting his kindness, and receiving from him a kind of parental
tuition. There is, perhaps, a known traveller from India or Africa
honoured with a royal invitation, or a missionary from remote lands, or
an artist, or a learned man from a university, amidst the crowd
respectfully waiting for the royal pair—all under Humboldt's special
protection, and he has to introduce them to the king and queen. After
some talk between those present, the folding-doors from the saloon of
the deities are opened, and the serene and kind face of Frederick
William IV. hushes them to silence, only the
old man continuing his pleasant chatting with his neighbour, a young
countess. On the king's arm hangs the queen, a kind but thoughtful
princess. Both are going round the company, and separately addressing
the foreigners, or those who are not daily guests. These latter take
that side of the room where light is coming in, and where the
short-sighted king cannot well recognise faces. Now the king approaches
one of the men of science or literature, and Humboldt is at his side,
and takes the part of introducer or interpreter, though it is
astonishing with what fulness of knowledge his majesty speaks of
pictures, architecture, military exploits, recondite geographical facts,
or even of Sanscrit.
Into all these regions the old nobleman is following
his king, and shews himself at home everywhere. At dinner, which is soon
announced, he is placed opposite to his sovereign, in order to be
distinctly heard when he begins telling anecdotes, or dwelling on
discoveries in physical science, or on the surface of the globe. He is
inexhaustible in such talk, for his mental powers, of the most
comprehensive sort, are not in the least impaired by old age; and he has
lived in France and Italy, in Spain and England, in Russia and
Switzerland, in Central Asia and the New World. He has sojourned in
Paris during the most exciting years of revolution, of the directory,
the empire, the restoration, the kingdom of July—has lived at courts and
in academic circles, as well as in the splendid saloons of old and new
nobility—and his study is still like a large reservoir, whither, from
all parts of the globe, news, books, pamphlets, and draughts are
pouring, like so many rivers and rivulets into a wide lake. No person,
perhaps scarcely any public body, has such a collection of local
literature from every land, particularly from South and Central America,
as that which Alexander von Humboldt has bequeathed to his valet-de-chambre.
So every royal dinner, when he is present, becomes the most pleasant
lecture, delivered in the way of easy talk, and far from anything like
methodical teaching. Occurrences of his travels in the Andes, or in the
valleys of the giant rivers of South America, or on the heights of Ural
and Altai, such as have never been printed in his many volumes or
essays, are occasionally coming forth, besides lively sketches of Paris
life, or anecdotes from the Spanish court. Between these fragments from
science or society, the praise of a new scientific book, or of a young
man of talent in the field of arts is heard from him, and clever
observations may indicate that the benevolent talker has royal
protection or assistance in view, which he will afterwards propose at
the right place. When, after dinner and coffee, their majesties have
disappeared, Humboldt is seen returning to his lonely study in the
town-castle of Potsdam, where the court is residing only some weeks in
spring and autumn, whereas summer is spent at Sans Souci, and also
partly in the large, heavy castle of Berlin, or at Charlottenburg a mile
off.
This study of Humboldt's, in one of the aisles of
Potsdam castle, where, at the king's desire, he has his summer
residence, is the most retired thing ever seen, and shews a choice
library and some comfortable rooms, but is nevertheless a sort of
nuisance to a man who sleeps only four or five hours in twenty-four,
takes no walks whatever, and spends all his time in studying, except
those short absences from home to join in society. The real home of
Humboldt is his winter residence in the Oranienburg Street at Berlin,
which a benevolent and wealthy merchant of Berlin has bought only to
protect Humboldt from the trouble of changing his dwelling. There the
chief collection of his books, maps, and drawings are arranged on
hundreds of shelves and dozens of tables, in six large rooms, in one of
which he is sitting day and night at a writing-table, which is covered
with books and draughts; for he does not write on a desk, like common
people—his paper rests on a paste-board upon his knees, and so he writes
the master-works that astonish the whole scientific world, and sends
forth the thousands of small billets flying out from his study to the
learned members of the Academy and the University of Berlin, to princes
and princesses throughout Europe, and even to men of science in remote
Asia, or far-distant America. He is still the traveller seated on a rock
of the Cordilleras, or on the steep bank of a river, and taking his
notes. Therefore all hi3 manuscripts are odd and crooked, the lines not
running horizontally, but diagonally over his paper. Those small scraps
are thanking for an important communication, or requiring a special
research of chemistry or astronomy, of geology or mineralogy, of botany
or geography, of anatomy or physiology, of ethnology or history, from
some of the world's great thinkers and workers. All the learned men of
Berlin are gladly at his command, and he has become a king of science,
especially by his disinterested kindness. The object of not a few of his
letters is succour and furtherance for talented young men of science, of
whom thousands in Germany, France, Russia, or even America, are indebted
to him for whatever they have got of acknowledgment, and of laborious
ease. We cannot, however, deny that his kindness towards the poor and
suffering of this and other classes was often misplaced, that he was
often deceived, and that even his acuteness of mind did not sufficiently
guard him against such mistakes.
We ask by what concurrence of happy circumstances a
man of genius could climb up to that summit of universal affection and
respect ? Universal it was, as not only the city of Berlin was proud to
call him its citizen, and adorn public places and buildings with his
popular name ; but universities were contending with each other to
honour themselves by bestowing on him their diplomas, and academies by
admitting him among their members, while sovereigns from one end of
Europe to the other conferred on him their crosses and stars, ladies of
the highest rank were sitting at his feet to learn science, and even the
world beyond the ocean bestowed on him what it had to give of honours.
His cradle stood very near to where his tomb is
lying, though between both he has wandered over three continents and
outlived two generations. Among his most intimate friends were kings, as
well as democratic foes of kingship, like the late astronomer, M. Arago.
The place of his birth was Berlin, where he was baptized in the same
cathedral where his coffin was placed before being brought to his last
resting-place at Tegel. He was born September 14, 1769, and baptized
Fried-rich Heinrich Alexander. He was two years younger than his
illustrious brother, Carl Wilhelm, the great statesman, diplomatist,
linguist, and philosopher. His father, Alexander George von Humboldt,
was of old lineage, his ancestors having been great proprietors near
Cammia, in Pomerania. After this duchy had become a province of Prussia,
he held several civil and military appointments. He had been a major in
the army of great Friedrich II., adjutant to
Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick after the peace, chamberlain to Princess
Elizabeth of Prussia, who resided first at Potsdam, then at Stettin. He
had acquired the small domain and castle of Tegel, five miles to the
south from Berlin, now the property of Wilhelm von Humboldt's daughter,
widow of Minister von Billow, once Prussian ambassador at the court of
London. He was a favourite of Prince Wilhelm, who, as King Friedrich
Wilhelm II., visited him once a year at Tegel.
Before this prince ascended the throne (1706), the English ambassador
had written to his court: ''Amongst those who likely will become
ministers, is Herr von Humboldt, once an officer of the allied army, a
man of plain intellect and fair character." His lady was one Von Colomb,
cousin of Princess Blucher. She had been united in first marriage to a
Baron Holwede. Tegel was the scene of Alexander's childhood—Tegel,
celebrious by some witty verses in Goethe's immortal " Faust," jeering
at an old bookseller and writer at Berlin, named Nicolai, a man who
professed enlightened infidelity, but who nevertheless had given credit
to a ghost-story of the old castle. Since 1775, Joachim Heinrich Campe
was the tutor of the two young brothers; Campe himself a more than
German celebrity by his pedagogic writings, particularly the remodelled
"Robinson" of Defoe, a book not only retranslated into English, but also
published in most other European languages. He was one of the loudest
heralds of so-called rational education, supposing that man is good by
nature, and that everything in education was to be done in the way of
moral reflection. He was unable to lead his pupils to the eternal
sources of revealed truth. Whatever else he could impart, he no doubt
gave clear notions of things got by intuition. The Holy Spirit was, in
his view, not required for religious cultivation of mind. Alexander, in
those frivolous days of the age before the French Revolution, was
scarcely led to look at the works of Divine grace in the inner world of
man, but sedulously taught to perceive the laws of God's wisdom and
power in visible nature and history only. Perhaps Campe's pictures of
foreign lands, particularly of tropical America, imbued his talented
pupil with the first love of geographical knowledge, and gave him the
bias to discovery in that sphere. On the other hand, Campe was a
linguist, and published grammars and dictionaries of his mother tongue,
which were highly valued. So he may have become the origin of Wilhelm
von Humboldt's taste for linguistic research, and for philosophy of
language. When Campe left, his well-chosen successor was a student of
twenty, M. Kunth, to whose strenuous and faithful assiduity during
eleven years the brothers owed much of their mental wealth. The father
had died in 1777. Botany was the first sphere of attraction to
Alexander. He had in it the teaching of such excellent masters as Heim
and Willdenow. As a schoolboy he exerted himself to compete with his
elder brother, though doubts existed whether he would be able to choose
a scientific career. In religious things he was instructed by Dr Loefler,
afterwards an authority in the school of German rationalism, and also in
politics, history, and philosophy. Engel and Dohm were his leading
stars. Humboldt's early religious teaching from Campe and Loefler had
been miserably deficient, or rather perverted. The brothers went to the
then existing University of Frankfort on the Oder, where Loefler had
become professor of divinity, Alexander being then already resolved to
live and die in physical research. He shared with his brother the
warmest enthusiasm for their native country, and for its great king,
whom both youths had seen in the evening of his brilliant life,
Gottingen was their next university, at that time the first seat of
learning in Germany. There they found, besides Heyne, the great linguist
and antiquarian, and Blumenbach, the famous naturalist, one of the most
eminent travellers of the age, George Fathe, who, with Captain Cook, had
circumnavigated the globe. In company with this Fathe, Alexander visited
for the first time the Rhine countries, Holland, and England. The fruit
of this first scientific trip was his first book, an essay on basaltic
rocks near the Rhine. During the first thunders of the French
Revolution, he merged deeper into his chosen science, choosing the
mining department for his public career, and then preparing himself,
first at Basch's commercial school at Hamburg, and then, together with
his friend Leopold von Bach, under the guidance of Abraham Werner, the
first geologist of the age, and nearly the father of geology, at
Freyberg, in Saxony.
We will not detain our readers with sketching
Humboldt's short official course at Berlin, and at Bayreuth, the now
Bavarian capital of one of the two southern Margraviates of Brandenburg,
or the various results of his physical study and observations, spread in
more than half-a-dozen German and French scientific journals, or his
travels in Germany. The eagle was feathering himself. A glorious flight
was already in view. ''I was longing to see," as he himself says,
"strange shores, to traverse unknown regions of the earth, and to cross
boundless oceans." He had left his public career; and all his thoughts,
whether he was studying at Vienna, travelling in the Alps, or musing in
Italy, were bent on the same object. But he could not leave home without
bidding a last adieu to his dear brother, who now, with his excellent
wife, lived in philosophical quietness at Jena, surrounded by the then
aspiring circle of great minds —Goethe and Schiller the poets, Fichte
and Schel-ling the philosophers, Woltmann and Schutz the historians,
Loder and Hufland the famous naturalists and physicians. It was from
this circle that Humboldt started, having first sold his landed property
in Brandenburg in order to travel with his brother and his family, first
in Germany and the Austrian Alps, then to Paris, as Italy, whither they
were bent, was closed by the war. In Paris he lived in the midst of
intellectual society; he examined, with Gay Lussac, the composition of
the atmosphere, and projected a voyage with Captain Baudin to the
southern Polar Sea, which, however, never came to pass. His greatest
gain from this plan was the friendship of M. Aimé
Bonpland the botanist, who afterwards was his companion to America. The
commotion of Europe by war frustrated another plan to go to Africa,
either to Algiers or to Egypt, and then through Arabia, to traverse the
body of Asia, till he reached India. He learned Arabian and Persian. But
he was not permitted to see any of these countries, nor even tread on
the soil of the long-desired African continent. A sudden resolution
brought him, with Bonpland, to Spain, whence old Columbus had departed
for the New World. After having done a great deal for physical discovery
in Spain, they left Madrid, and, well provided with letters of
recommendation from the king to all his governors in the New World, they
stole out of the blockaded port of Corunna, and took their course direct
for the West Indies. The voyage gave plenty of opportunities for
research; and. from it, for more than five years, the central and
southern part of the western continent was the sphere of his constant
investigation of science in every department. Never did a man, in so
short a period, examine such a variety of objects. From the atmosphere
and the lofty summits of Alpine giants, down to the dark holes of
volcanic craters, and into the crust of the globe, far across wide
extents of land and ocean, of deserts and grassy plains, among streams
and lakes, his clear eye looked into the workshop of earthly existence.
Now the stirring world of animal life in swamps and wastes, in water and
forest, by day and night, in the rainy and burning season, was the
object of his minute inquiry, and of his picturesque pencil; now he
seemed only to have for his aim to observe and compare the tribes and
families of animals and vegetables, or to analyse and classify minerals.
At another time he was seen with his azimuth and Borda's circle, his
sextant and telescope, his thermometer and barometer, his hygrometer and
electrometer, busy to get from the starry sky fixed points on the
earthly surface, in order to draw a net of lines on his map, or to know
the height and depth of this surface, or the climatological changes on
it. On other days you find him wandering between the ruins of primeval
cities and overgrown palaces, the inmates of which were centuries ago
buried in a premature grave ; or you hear him pitying, in elegiac
strains, the dark fate of extinguished nations, whose tombs he
discovered in the dense forest at the river's side, and the last sounds
of whose language, no longer heard among mortals, are renewed and
repeated only by the solitary parrot of the Appures. But the same
traveller you meet again in Mexico, pondering over statistical riddles,
and studying the political conditions of large empires, as that of New
Spain, or making mining experiments, devising new plans for their
working, or collecting whatever he can get of the remnants of dead
languages. In short, it is astonishing what a rich and varied booty,
like that from a great warlike expedition, this single man has brought
back from his travels.
And most admirable it is to notice how this man, lost
as he seems in the endless regions, and the huge multiplicity of nature,
invariably keeps in sight man as the crown and king of this earthly
world; so that all his labour in this wilderness of facts, endeavours to
form one centre which unites the rays of light, and concentrates them on
the human mind, its feelings and impulses. Humboldt is a student of
humanity, even in chemistry or geology. Mankind is to him the eye and
soul of the universe. "He is," as was said in a lecture delivered in
Berlin in January last, in memory of him and Professor Bitter, "the man
who constantly brings nature into contact with man's mind and feelings.
He always considers the physical world in a teleological view, and as a
schoolmaster of mankind to train it for manhood. So his geographical and
natural research ever leaves the low ground of earthly knowledge, and is
elevated into the higher light of the Lord's kingdom."
When, in 1804, Alexander von Humboldt, then a young
man of thirty-five, again trod his native ground, he was greater than a
conqueror, having exposed his life a thousand times for the sake of
humanity, and among naturalists, doubtless the first. After a visit to
his brother, then. Prussian ambassador at Rome, where he embraced the
opportunity, with Gay Lussac and Leopold von Buch, to search Vesuvius,
comparing that volcano with its huge brethren in the western world, he
went to Berlin, and resided there some years before making Paris his
abode, where opportunities for pursuing science were all at his command.
His works were successively published in German and French, and shew him
a master of style and picturesque language. At an expense of £40,000,
these splendid volumes—three large folios, and twenty-three quartos—were
printed. A complete set of them cost £400. With Bonpland, Oltmans,
Laticille, Cuvier, Kunth, and others of the first men of science, he
mastered the immense matter before him. From this fertile ground grew
up, year after year, the scientific ideas and actions which have become
a common treasure of the civilised world.
When the University of Berlin was established,
chiefly by the advice of Wilhelm von Humboldt, his brother Alexander was
requested to become Minister of Public Instruction, which, however, he
declined, intending to traverse Asia by way of Kashgan to Tibet, in
consequence of a kind invitation from the Emperor Alexander of Eussia.
But again the ambition of Napoleon was in the way of Humboldt's plans;
the war against Russia broke out (1812), and Humboldt remained at Paris
studying meantime the orography of Asia. In 1818—after all the great
changes in Europe, during which Humboldt, as almost belonging to the two
contending nations of the continent, was deeply merged in his
researches, though full of interest in public affairs — he made a trip
to London, where his brother resided as ambassador, and to
Aix-la-Chapelle, where his king, at the great European congress, wished
to see him. In 1822, he accompanied the king to Italy. Once more he
returned to Paris; but from 1827, at the king's desire, he took up his
constant residence at Berlin. Here, besides sundry other lectures before
the Academy of Science, he gave a course on physical cosmography, which
were attended by so large a crowd of auditors, that he was constrained
to repeat them. All persons of rank, either in society or in science,
including the royal family, were his hearers. It was hitherto an unseen
spectacle, a nobleman, who had devoted to the disinterested service of
science the whole of his time and fortune, and who was gifted with such
eminent descriptive and oratorical talents, that his lectures became the
point of attraction to all noble things, not to the great city alone,
but also to the whole country. For many went to Berlin only to hear him.
Some words in a letter of his brother's give an idea
of the effect which these lectures had. "Alexander," he writes, "has
become a puissance, and has earned a new sort of glory. His
lectures are unsurpassable. He, however, is quite self-possessed; yet it
is an old trait of his •character to shew a sort of timidity and fear in
exhibiting himself." From these lectures sprang his last great literary
work, the "Cosmos." But before he could write it, the time came when his
Asiatic journey was to be undertaken. After due preparation, in 182S, a
year sadly important to him by the decease of Wilhelm's excellent wife,
he departed in company with Professors Ehrenberg and Rose, both
well-known names in the scientific world. The task was distributed
between them, so that Humboldt undertook the observations in astronomy
and terrestrial magnetism, and further, reserved to himself the physical
features of northern Asia, whereas Ehrenberg was to do the botanical and
geological part, Rose the chemical and mineralogical, besides keeping
the travellers' journal. The first region that the noble sexagenarian
illustrated by his inquiry was the Ural mountains, whence he traversed,
with much bodily exertion, the large wastes of Barabiask to Barnaul at
the Altai. An excursion to the Chinese frontier, in central Asia, was
very interesting, and the return by the way of Orenburg and Astracan,
finished a journey of eight and a half months. After some laborious
years, partly spent at Paris, in order to prepare the multifarious
information acquired by this journey for publication, he returned for
the last time to Berlin as his permanent residence, where his brother
was still in vigour. It was a touching spectacle to see these two
brothers, each of whom had done a great work in his time, one in
wrestling with his nation and his king against the oppressive power of
Napoleon, and afterwards opposing the spirit of political
narrow-mindedness exhibited in the name, and under pretence of Holy
Alliance, by striving to gain for Prussia and Germany more of public
liberty; the other by describing hitherto unknown continents, and
bringing unknown truths into certain knowledge. But such a pleasing
sight was not to be long enjoyed. Wilhelm von Humboldt died in 1835, and
Alexander, who had never been married, remained alone. Among the last
words of Wilhelm were these: "Do not remember me in sorrow. I am very
happy, for love is the best; soon I shall be with our mother, and shall
have an insight of a higher divine order of the universe." Alexander
wrote to Arago: "C'était une haute
intelligence, et une ame pleine d'élévation
et de noblesse. Je reste bien isolé."
Five years later—a time filled up by publishing his
brother's last great work on language, and a collection of his smaller
writings, and by that of his own researches of the historical
development of discovery in the New World—the king died, to whose
kindness and esteem Humboldt was indebted for his ease. His successor,
King Friedrich Wilhelm IV., was more to
Humboldt than a gracious king; he requested him to be his friend, and
his daily familiar guest. He was marked by him as the first man of
learning in Europe, by being made chancellor of the new Ordre pour le
Mérite, which was to be bestowed upon only
thirty elect chieftains in science. It was his consolation in loneliness
to be the companion of this pious and generous sovereign, whose
sufferings, both moral and physical, were, and are still, uncommon in
their intensity, and whose genius surpassed by far that of the average
of crowned heads. The last task which Humboldt had proposed to himself
was to write his " Cosmos." This work, not quite finished at his death,
shews the hero of intellect in his entire power. He was past seventy
when he began, and was near ninety when he laid down his pen to die ! It
was in autumn, 1857, when the king was first attacked by the sad
disease, preying on his life, that Humboldt, leaving the large hall of
the university, after celebrating the king's birthday, predicted his own
near end to one of his friends. "The last time," he said, "that I shall
be here!" On his friend replying, that one to whom God had given so long
a life, and who was still in full vigour, might as well be spared longer
by the same Almighty will, he replied: "No; I have nothing more to do
here since the king is away." He spoke as if his love for his
king-friend had been a main-spring in his life.
It was late in April last year, after some slight
attacks of paralysis, that a rumour was spread through Berlin that
Alexander von Humboldt was lying on his death-bed. It was confirmed by
his sending the son-in-law of his deceased brother Wilhelm, also an
octogenarian, the general of cavalry, Baron von Hedemann, (who, since
then, has found his last resting-place at the side of his uncle
Alexander,) to the Rev. Dr Hoffmann, chaplain to the king and minister
of the cathedral, whom he asked to give the address at his funeral, but
at the same time, requested that he should not pay him a visit on his
sick-bed, as he felt himself too weak. Humboldt had often met this
minister at court, and had often been a hearer of his sermons, which
ever fully and faithfully preached Christ and Him crucified. Humboldt
had several times expressed his assent to his teaching, and had,
besides, conversed with the preacher in a familiar way on religious
subjects, and even discussed matters of conscience, on which he was wont
ordinarily to forbear uttering his sentiments. Therefore, his testimony,
spoken at Humboldt's funeral, is of more weight as to his religious
views and way of feeling than the common talk, which, according to the
various parties in either Church or state, was either favourable or
unfriendly to Humboldt. There were such as called him a good Christian
on account of his moral conduct, and especially of his genius, holding
that genius never could be otherwise than Christian; and such as thought
him rather an Atheist, because in so large a work as his '' Cosmos, "he
never even mentioned the name of God or of Christ; "because," as Dr
Hoffman said, "he was too much accustomed to keep himself within the
limits of natural law." Let us hear the words of the funeral sermon
delivered at Humboldt's coffin, which was with royal pomp, and at the
royal expense, brought to the cathedral. There were, besides the
mourners of the families Von Humboldt, Von Hedemann, Von Bulow, &c, and
the whole royal family, the high functionaries of state and Church, the
court, many military officers, the whole body of the Academy of Science,
and of the University, hundreds of students, and a numerous audience of
all ranks. Even this sermon has received unjust criticism, and even
slandering, from opposite and extreme parties. The text was the words in
1 Cor. xiii. 8-10, "Charity never faileth: but whether there be
prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall fail;
whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part,
and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, then
that which is in part shall be done away."
"The thoughts from these apostolical words," so the
preacher began, "which I have to address to your hearts beside the
coffin of this deceased are suggested to me by a prominent
feature in his whole life.
"The news of Alexander von Humboldt's demise will
find a mourning echo throughout all regions of the civilised world. For
he was no longer the citizen of a single country, deeply rooted though
his heart was in his native soil. He was not only admired on account of
his unparalleled accomplishments in the empire of science, not only
revered in his high and dignified position, but he was loved in every
land, and hundreds of more than one vanished generation took with them
into eternity their grateful affection towards him, and thousands of his
contemporaries will shew it in generations to come. Love, however, is
only to be gained by love. That love he has manifested in a long career
of earthly life in so varied a manner, that, near the end of his
pilgrimage, he was obliged to decline receiving the too numerous proofs
of confidence in his kindness, which pressed themselves upon him from
far and near."
After a sketch of his life up to his return from
America, the sermon thus continues:—
''When the rich contents of these five American years
were gradually laid before the world, then the best men of his nation,
at their head the noble and long-suffering king with whom Prussia was
blessed, discovered the real gem in Humboldt's life, more valuable even
than his science. That gem was his heart's love, which shone over all
his works like a blue sky, and always pointed out the relation of every
natural discovery to the improvement and elevation of humanity, and
sought to gain every wide field of well-arranged knowledge, for the
moral and social interests of mankind."
After rehearsing the prominent features of Humboldt's
life, the sermon comes to the closing scenes of his career, and tells
us: "On April 21, he was confined to his bed by a cold, and now he was
seen so rapidly sinking, that only his powerful mind seemed to uphold
physical life. He lay tranquil and slumbering. When he awoke, his soul
was clear. On Friday the 6th of May, his voice failed. He lay silent the
whole forenoon, and, without a struggle, fell asleep at half-past three
o'clock, closing a pilgrimage of eighty-nine years and eight months.
"A loving and beloved heart has ceased to move amidst
us. Many tears, unknown to man, are following him. We shall not speak
out what we know about many who thus weep. His deeds of charity, which
were numberless, were done in secret, and he did not like them to be
discovered. But I have had peculiar opportunities of knowing them. They
are still better known to Him who does not forget even the cup of cold
water. But many know how he endeavoured to open paths of advancement to
youthful talent, and how he, with indefatigable kindness, used the whole
of his influence and a good deal of his means in that kind of charity;
everybody knows, too, how he gladly acknowledged what others had
discovered, and how generously he ever endeavoured to get the world to
appreciate the excellence of others. This may suffice, as we did not
come here to wreath earthly garlands, but to receive comfort and power
from God's Word in our pilgrimage.
"Charity never faileth! It does not fail because it
is emanating from the one eternal love that is shed on the world by the
eternal God in Jesus Christ our Lord.
"It is an all-important question, whether our
deceased had deeply entered into that fountain of love, and whether he
knew in power that peace from forgiveness of sin which he too was in
need of? He has not made an answer to this question easy, from his
almost timid silence on subjects of spiritual life. Not in every form in
which that love is manifested on earth could he recognise its glory. On
the contrary, he was easily repelled by any declaration regarding the
severity of Divine love. The embodiment of this into an authoritative
doctrine made him rather anxious and doubtful as to how far this was not
the mere expression of human thought, rather than of Divine truth. The
eye of his mind, wont to dwell on the visible world and its laws, was
more open to the wonders of God's creating and animating breath in
nature than to His wonders of eternal, pitying grace in human hearts.
If, however, a friendly hand shewed him the kernel in the shell, and let
him see the essence, behind human notions of Divine things, he never
shrank back, but, in his full love of truth, acknowledged that the holy
world of spiritual wonders was not his familiar home in the same degree
as that of nature's marvels. Nevertheless, this higher world never
ceased to exercise its power on him, all his physical contemplation
constantly pointing to its heavenly background. More than once, in quiet
talk, I was aware of this higher influence fully on him, and marked it.
But his lips gave only rare and isolated witness of his looking up to an
eternal grace, that brings salvation to sinners.
"To God's love and mercy we look up from this coffin!
He who has ever loved our deceased brother, and has been dealing with
him in his silent work, may now beam as the Sun of righteousness through
the blue sky of his human affection. May he have received never-failing
charity as Divine mercy! "With us may there abide grateful remembrance;
in us may there grow the charity which believeth all things, hopeth all
things; and may earthly charity be hallowed by the eternal love
wherewith we are loved; and, in the fading away and ceasing of what is
most beautiful and noble on earth, let us hold fast the consoling
watchword, 'Charity never faileth.'"
In the night the remains of Alexander von Humboldt
were conducted to Tegel, and there buried, on the following morning, in
the park of the castle, at the foot of a granite column, bearing a
victory, and erected by Wilhelm von Humboldt over the tomb of his wife.
The graves of daughters and grand - daughters surround the resting-place
of Wilhelm; and now Alexander has entered the narrow railing. After the
usual prayers, singing, and Scripture passages, the same minister (Dr
Hoffmann) gave a short address to the mourners, of which we quote only a
few fragments. "It was here," he said, "that, five years ago, we saw the
last glimpse of a youthful figure vanishing in the earth—when he, whom
we are now laying into this grave, said to me, 'Where you are now
standing, I shall soon lie.' He could not guess that he should be spared
to conduct another dear member of his family on the last journey. Of all
the mental gifts, the strength, the charms, and sweetness, that adorned
these departed in life —of all their glory and brilliant lustre—to-day
we see only the graves, and remember the mourning and tears under which
they were closed."—"Our dear departed brother, too, though his life on
earth has been so great, and though the Lord bestowed many years on him,
will take with him into the world of light only what in him was from
God, and will gladly see sunk into that tomb whatever was of this world.
To lay down all the wreaths of honour which earth has offered at the
feet of the Lamb of God is real happiness."—"And earthly names! alas!
they vanish soon away—a few only are outlasting the coming of a thousand
years; and, amidst an abundant world of new appearances, they will be as
sounds half understood—as dim marks of long-vanished things and
generations. And even the most radiant ones, which history preserves
longest, what are they, if compared with the only name in heaven and on
earth by which we are to be saved ? When once, in His glory, our Chief
Shepherd, Jesus Christ, will appear, and when only one name—the one
saving name—will sound through all souls of ail generations either to
salvation or judgment, then how will great human names be covered and
extinguished ! and none will desire to be called by another name than
the new one given by the Lord himself."
We finish this article, wishing it to be an appeal to
readers to study Humboldt's works, and to bring the contents of them
into the light of the eternal Word which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world. This will be the due and right honour done to the memory
of a philosopher, and a truly noble man. H.
Potsdam, March 1860.