صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

And while the pilot from the infinite main
Looks with calm eye into the infinite heaven,
I, dreaming of you only, seek to scan
And fathom all my soul's deep love for you,
Love sweet and powerful, and everlasting,-
And find that the great sea is small beside it.

-

MOURNING.

PATHS Over which long grasses wave!
Hill-sides and valleys! woods moss'd o'er!
Wherefore thus silent as the grave!

"Since he who came now comes no more."

Why no one at thy casement seen,
Thy flower-less garden why so bare?
O house! where has thy master been?

66

I only know he is elsewhere."

Watch, dog!" And why, around a home
Now empty, by no footsteps cross'd?"

Whom weep'st thou? Child!"My father." Whom
Sad woman! weepest thou ?-"The Lost."

Where is he gone? "Into the dark."

Wild waves, heard breaking in the gloom!
Whence are ye? "From the convict-bark."

And what bear ye from us?- "A tomb."

[ocr errors]

6369

FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.

HUMBOLDT, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEXANDER VON, a German scientist; born at Berlin, September 14, 1769; died there, May 6, 1859. He studied at the Universities of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Berlin, and Göttingen. His earliest work was an essay on "The Basalts on the Rhine" (1790). In 1791 he went to the Mining Academy at Freiberg, where he remained eight months, during which he wrote "Flora Subterranea Friburgensis." During several succeeding years he was employed in the mining department, during which he prepared a work relating to Galvani's discovery and its bearings upon the "Chemical Process of Life in the Animal and Vegetable World" (2 vols., 1797, 1799). He determined upon making a great scientific expedition, having in the meanwhile familiarized himself with such portions of astronomical science as would aid him in accurately determining geographical positions. He set out in 1797. His travels extended over a great portion of Central Europe, South America, Mexico, and the West Indies; those in America occupying about five years. In 1804 he returned to Paris, which was his residence for most of the time until 1827. There appeared his notable work, "Voyage aux Regions Équinoxiales du Nouveau Monde" (3 vols., folio, with an atlas, 1809--25). In 1829 began a new era in his active career. Under the patronage of the Russian Government he undertook an expedition to Northern Asia, the Chinese Dzungaria, and the Caspian Sea. The expedition, which was magnificently fitted out by the Russian Government, numbered several eminent scientists. This journey of more than 10,000 miles was made in nine months. The main results are embodied in Humboldt's "Asie Centrale: Recherches sur les Chaines de Montagnes et la Climatologie comparée" (2 vols., 1837, 1842). Besides the works already mentioned, Humboldt made important contributions to almost every department of natural science, especially to botany and zoology. In 1848 he took up his residence at Berlin, where he continued his scientific and literary labors to the close of his life. His great work, "Kosmos,” was begun in 1845, the fifth and concluding volume being published after his death.

THE BEAUTY AND UNITY OF NATURE.

(From "Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe.")

IN attempting, after a long absence from my native country, to develop the physical phenomena of the globe and the simultaneous action of the forces that pervade the regions of space, I experience a twofold cause of anxiety. The subject before me is so inexhaustible and so varied, that I fear either to fall into the superficiality of the encyclopædist, or to weary the mind of my reader by aphorisms consisting of mere generalities clothed in dry and dogmatical forms. Undue conciseness often checks the flow of expression, whilst diffuseness is detrimental to a clear and precise exposition of our ideas. Nature is a free domain; and the profound conceptions and enjoyments she awakens within us can only be vividly delineated by thought clothed in exalted forms of speech, worthy of bearing witness to the majesty and greatness of the creation.

In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection by which all natural forces are linked together and made mutually dependent upon each other; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles our enjoyments. Such a result, however, can only be reaped as the fruit of observation and intellect, combined with the spirit of the age, in which are reflected all the varied phases of thought. He who can trace, through bygone times, the stream of our knowledge to its primitive source, will learn from history how for thousands of years man has labored, amid the ever recurring changes of form, to recognize the invariability of natural laws, and has thus by the force of mind gradually subdued a great portion of the physical world to his dominion. In interrogating the history of the past, we trace the mysterious course of ideas yielding the first glimmering perception of the same image of a Cosmos, or harmoniously ordered whole, which, dimly shadowed forth to the human mind in the primitive ages of the world, is now fully revealed to the maturer intellect of mankind as the result of long and laborious observation.

Each of those epochs of the contemplation of the external

world the earliest dawn of thought, and the advanced stage of civilization has its own source of enjoyment. In the former, this enjoyment, in accordance with the simplicity of the primitive ages, flowed from an intuitive feeling of the order that was proclaimed by the invariable and successive reappearance of the heavenly bodies, and by the progressive development of organized beings; whilst in the latter, this sense of enjoyment springs from a definite knowledge of the phenomena of nature. When man began to interrogate nature, and not content with observing, learnt to evoke phenomena under definite conditions; when once he sought to collect and record facts, in order that the fruit of his labors might aid investigation after his own brief existence had passed away, -the philosophy of Nature cast aside the vague and poetic garb in which she had been enveloped from her origin; and having assumed a severer aspect, she now weighs the value of observations, and substitutes induction and reasoning for conjecture and assumption. The dogmas of former ages survive now only in the superstitions of the people and the prejudices of the ignorant, or are perpetuated in a few systems, which, conscious of their weakness, shroud themselves in a veil of mystery. We may also trace the same primitive intuitions in languages exuberant in figurative expressions; and a few of the best chosen. symbols engendered by the happy inspiration of the earliest ages, having by degrees lost their vagueness through a better mode of interpretation, are still preserved amongst our scientific terms.

Nature considered rationally—that is to say, submitted to the process of thought is a unity in diversity of phenomena; a harmony, blending together all created things, however dissimilar in form and attributes; one great whole (rò Tâv) animated by the breath of life. The most important result of a rational inquiry into nature is therefore to establish the unity and harmony of this stupendous mass of force and matter, to determine with impartial justice what is due to the discoveries of the past and to those of the present, and to analyze the individual parts of natural phenomena without succumbing beneath the weight of the whole. Thus, and thus alone, is it permitted to man, while mindful of the high destiny of his race, to comprehend nature, to lift the veil that shrouds her phenomena, and, as it were, submit the results of observation to the test of reason and intellect.

In reflecting upon the different degrees of enjoyment presented to us in the contemplation of nature, we find that the first place must be assigned to a sensation which is wholly independent of an intimate acquaintance with the physical phenomena presented to our view, or of the peculiar character of the region surrounding us. In the uniform plain bounded only by a distant horizon, where the lowly heather, the cistus, or waving grasses deck the soil; on the ocean shore, where the waves softly rippling over the beach leave a track green with the weeds of the sea: everywhere the mind is penetrated by the same sense of the grandeur and vast expanse of nature, revealing to the soul by a mysterious inspiration the existence of laws that regulate the forces of the universe. Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free air, exercises a soothing yet strengthening influence on the wearied spirit, calms the storm of passion, and softens the heart when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths. Everywhere, in every region of the globe, in every stage of intellectual culture, the same sources of enjoyment are alike vouchsafed to man. The earnest and solemn thoughts awakened by a communion with nature intuitively arise from a presentiment of the order and harmony pervading the whole universe, and from the contrast we draw between the narrow limits of our own existence and the image of infinity revealed on every side; whether we look upwards to the starry vault of heaven, scan the far-stretching plain before us, or seek to trace the dim horizon across the vast expanse of ocean.

The contemplation of the individual characteristics of the landscape, and of the conformation of the land in any definite region of the earth, gives rise to a different source of enjoyment, awakening impressions that are more vivid, better defined, and more congenial to certain phases of the mind than those of which we have already spoken. At one time the heart is stirred by a sense of the grandeur of the face of nature, by the strife of the elements, or, as in Northern Asia, by the aspect of the dreary barenness of the far-stretching steppes; at another time softer emotions are excited by the contemplation of rich harvest wrested by the hand of man from the wild fertility of nature, or by the sight of human habitations raised beside some wild and foaming torrent. Here I regard less the degree of intensity, than the difference existing in the various sensations that derive their charm and permanence from the peculiar character of the scene.

« السابقةمتابعة »