Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 80.djvu/351

Rh material gathered and arranged in Volumes I. and II. will always be worthy of consideration and the methods employed in securing it will never fail to be suggestive and useful. That his opinions would require modification, and that some of them might be rejected altogether, is what Humboldt himself anticipated. He calls attention repeatedly to the fact that he and his fellow students were on the threshold of discoveries which might change the entire scientific outlook and furnish even the next generation with an immense advantage over his own.

Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was born at Tegel, near Berlin, on September 14, 1769. He died in Potsdam, where his house is still shown to visitors from every civilized country, on May 6, 1859. His elder brother, William, was distinguished as a statesman, diplomatist and linguist. As the founder, while minister of public instruction of the University of Berlin, he made a great contribution to the intellectual development of the German people. The father was a major in the Prussian army and had been chamberlain at the court of the king. The mother, Marie Elizabeth von Colamb, the widow of Baron von Hollande, was a woman of rare gifts. She devoted herself almost entirely to the training of her two sons, her only children, William and Alexander. As the father died when Alexander was but ten years old, the responsibility of their education fell upon her. Fortunately the family was wealthy, so that private teachers could be provided for the boys at Tegel, among them men like J. H. Camp, famous for his ability to impart knowledge; Christian Kunth, eminent in the educational world, and T. T. Engel. From Tegel the boys were sent to Berlin and put under the care of specialists, whence they were removed to the University of Frankfort on the Oder, thence to Göttingen, where Alexander studied philology and archeology under Heyne, and gave special attention to the philosophy of Kant. His natural love for science was deepened and strengthened by his association with Professor Blumenbach, one of the great men of the university. Destined for business, young Humboldt went from Göttingen to Hamburg and entered the commercial school of Bursch, where he studied modern languages with much zest and listened to lectures on banking and trade. But he soon found that his love for science was greater than his love for money-making, and for this reason, without wholly giving up the thought of a business career, he left Hamburg for the mining school at Freiburg, where he enjoyed the instruction of Werner, the geologist, of the equally famous Leopold de Buch and of Andre del Eio. In a single year he made such progress that in 1792 he was appointed director general of the mines in the district of Franconia and Aspach, with headquarters at Bayreuth. In this position he remained five years, but while faithfully discharging the duties of his official life he found time for brief visits to the Tyrol, Switzerland and Lombardy for the study of botany and geology. With George Foster, a friend of his student years.