Humboldt was one of those wonders of the world, like Aristotle, like
Julius Cæsar, like the Admirable Crichton, who appear from time to
time, as if to show us the possibilities of the human mind, the force
and the range of the faculties,—a universal man, not only possessed of
great particular talents, but they were symmetrical, his parts were well
put together. As we know, a man’s natural powers are often a sort of
committee that slowly, one at a time, give their attention and action;
but Humboldt’s were all united, one electric chain, so that a university,
a whole French Academy, travelled in his shoes. With great propriety, he
named his sketch of the results of science Cosmos. There is no other such
survey or surveyor. The wonderful Humboldt, with his solid centre and
expanded wings, marches like an army, gathering all things as he goes.
How he reaches from science to science, from law to law, folding away
moons and asteroids and solar systems in the clauses and parentheses of
his encyclopædic paragraphs! There is no book like it; none indicating
such a battalion of powers. You could not put him on any sea or shore
but his instant recollection of every other sea or shore illuminated this.
He was properly a man of the world; you could not lose him; you could
not detain him; you could not disappoint him, for at any point on land
or sea he found the objects of his researches. When he was stopped in
Spain and could not get away, he turned round and interpreted their
mountain system, explaining the past history of the continent of Europe.
He belonged to that wonderful German nation, the foremost scholars in
all history, who surpass all others in industry, space and endurance.
A German reads a literature whilst we are reading a book. One of their
writers warns his countrymen that it is not the Battle of Leipsic,
but the Leipsic Fair Catalogue, which raises them above the French.
I remember Cuvier tells us of fossil elephants; that Germany has
furnished the greatest number;—not because there are more elephants in
Germany,—oh no; but because in that empire there is no canton without
some well-informed person capable of making researches and publishing
interesting results. I know that we have been accustomed to think they
were too good scholars, that because they reflect, they never resolve,
that “in a crisis no plan-maker was to be found in the empire;” but we
have lived to see now, for the second time in the history of Prussia, a
statesman of the first class, with a clear head and an inflexible will.