gcls_courant_010 3

THE COURANT; A SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL. 75
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Several circumstances had led me to suppose that Maria
was attached to Harvey. This evening I was confirmed
in my belief, and by some singular coincidence, just as
this assurance was forced upon me, I looked up and met
my cousin's eyes. She had made the same discovery,
and a scornful smile flashed over her features. A mo-
ment after, there was no trace of emotion in her com-
posed countenance. Then the truth darted through my
mind. Harvey meant, if possible, to excite her jealousy.
The thought seemed ridiculous. What did that proud,
cold, heartless woman know of jealousy? One week
passed. I saw no alteration in Blanch, save that now and
then she frowned heavily. My uncle had invited Mr.
Haughton's family to dine with him. It was his birth-
day, and some other intimate friends were present. Of
course, Harvey Young came also. I was not well, and
took my dinner in my own room. I knew that Blanch
was quite indisposed; she took cold at a party, and had
suffered with fever for several nights. The physician
advised her not to appear at dinner, and she, too, re-
mained in her own room; this I knew, and sent to ask
if I might come and sit with her. She declined, plead-
ing a headache. I went down to the library, expecting
to meet Harvey there. After a while he came in.
"Blanch is sick to-day," said I carelessly.
"So I heard Judge Maxwell say, at the table. Is not
that her room, yonder, with blue curtains? I saw some
one pacing the floor as I passed."
"Yes. It is the first time I ever knew her to be ill;
I am uneasy about her."
He smiled gently; took up a flute, and played a beau-
tiful air, then threw it down with a force that snap-
ped two of the keys, and left me.
The evening was warm, and as the sun sank low in the
west, I drew my chair to the window, and looked out.
The library was a wing-room, and from the position I
occupied, I could see the door of Blanch's apartment,
which opened on a little portico. Two marble steps
led down to the terrace, covered with bermuda grass.
Before long I saw two figures walking slowly up and
down this terrace. Maria leaned on Harvey's arm, and
he seemed to be talking to her very earnestly. I was
thoroughly provoked and restless. Had he selected the
terrace, hoping that Blanch might chance to witness his
apparent devotion? Such motives were unworthy of
him; I tried to banish the contemptible supposition. Sud-
denly they paused, and while he clasped his companion's
hand in his, I distinctly heard these words:
"Then one month from to-day you will be my wife."
Her reply I did not hear, but saw him touch her
brow with his lips, and lead her back to the parlor.
I covered my eyes and groaned. Did he mean it, or
was it a last desperate attempt to wring concession from
my Cousin? I knew she must have heard what passed,
for they stood nearer her room than the library.
A few minutes elapsed, and then, as I removed my
hand from my eyes, I saw Blanch standing on the steps
of her room. I took my crutches, and passing out on
the terrace, approached her. The sun was just setting.
She stood quite still, unmindful of my presence, and if
I live a thousand years, I shall never forget the image
daguerreotyped on my mind. She wore a white muslin
wrapper, confined at the waist by a blue cord and tassel.
Her hair was unbound, and the glittering bronze waves
swept almost to the floor. The last rays of the sinking
sun fell upon that wealth of golden hair, and it flashed
back, in burnished lustre. She had tossed it all away
from her lofty brow, and the blue veins were swollen on
her white temples. Her hands were folded over her
heart, as if to still some fierce throbbing, and her bare
unslippered feet, gleamed pearly white, on the marble
steps. The large blue eyes were raised, and fixed va-
cantly on the sky, and the chiseled lips, usually so firm
and rosy, were white and fluttering, pale and quiet.
I looked at her, and knew then, that she had once had
a heart warm and loving; but now, and henceforth, it
was a blackened ruin. Then, for the first time, she
laughed. It was a low, quick, mirthless, mocking laugh,
and I thought it sounded like the snapping of a string
on some musical instrument. I touched her icy hands;
she drew back a step or two, and looked at me.
"Blanch, you are ill; come in."
"Edgar, my head aches and burns, burns, will you
do something for me?"
"Anything that I can do, Blanch."
"Bring me a pitcher of ice-water."
She sat down on the steps, and I hastily procured the
water. As I approached her, she smiled and motioned
to me to pour it on her head. She leaned over, and I
slowly emptied the contents of the pitcher on the bowed
head. The dripping, curling hair trailed over the marble
steps, and as she raised her face, I saw a strange sparkle
in her eyes, and an unusual flush on her cheek. I was
alarmed; her mother's unhappy fate recurred to my
mind, and I took her hand. She withdrew it, and rose,
with a smile still on her lips.
"Tell Father I am coming to the parlor directly;
and tell him, too, that I request him to keep my Cousins
and Mr. Young, till after tea."
"Oh, Blanch! don't think of it; you are ill."
"No, I am perfectly well now; go, I am coming im-
mediately.
(CONCLUDED NEXT WEEK.)
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PAPER ON ALEXANDER HUMBOLDT.
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READ BY DR. FRANCIS LIEBER,
Before the American Geographical Society, New York, June 2, 1859.
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"The whole earth is a monument of illustrious men."
There are passages in the works of antiquity which, to
our ears and minds, have the sound and depth of inspi-
ration. They impress themselves on our souls, and hav-
ing faded in the lapse of years, they are restored to visi-
ble letters, by corresponding occasions on the paths of
our lives. Such seem to me these words of Pericles,
and such the occasion which has brought us together in
this place. What Pericles said in his funeral speech of
the men who had fallen not for the defence, but for the
glory of Athens, seems to apply in a double sense to
Alexander von Humboldt. Wherever death occurs, or
is remembered, there is solemnity, nor can we wholly
free ourselves even from mourning, when a revered man
has left us, however full his measure of a favored life
may have been. He lived so long and so large a life
that generations over the whole globe have grown up
familiar with his name, and we were so accustomed to it
that our very intellects feel a degree of discomfort at
presenting to our minds the world henceforth as existing
without him. There is a void without Humboldt. Yet
it is one of the noblest delights for those who reflect and
love to be grateful to trace the chief components of the
monument of illustrious men to their authors--to find
whence came the discoveries, inventions, conceptions,
institutions and endeavors of ages in the field of culture,
freedom and truth. Who has not enjoyed the pleasure
of finding the spots on the chart of human progress where
you put down your finger and say, here is Aristotle, and
here again, here is Hildebrandt, here is the conquest
of Constantinople traced even in the discovery of our
continent, even in Descartes and Bacon; here are the
causes and the effects of the University, and to trace the
lines of civilization in different directions from point to
point? And this delight we may enjoy when meditating
on the period of which Humboldt was one of the most
distinct exponents--we enjoy it even now, although he
has left us but yesterday; for God allowed to him days
so long that he passed into history before he passed
away from among us.
Many of my young friends have asked me as their
teacher, and, indeed, many other friends have repeated
the question, as I conversed with them on that news
which on its arrival attracted more interest than the
accompanying advice of the close approach of the con-
test in the plains of Italy--was he not the greatest man
of the century?
I do not believe it fit for man to seat himself on the
bench in the chancery of humanity, and there to pro-
nounce this one or that one the greatest man. How many
men have been called the greatest? But if it is an at-
tribute of greatness to impress an indelible stamp on an
entire movement of the collective mind of a race; if great-
ness, in part, consists in devising that which is good,
large and noble, in in perseveringly executing it by means
which in the hands of others would have been insufficient,
and against obstacles which would have been insurmount-
able to others; if the daring solitutde of lofy thought and
loyal adhesion to its own royalty is a constituent of great-
ness; and if rare and varied gifts, such as mark distinc-
tion when singly granted, showered by Providence on
one man; and if modest amenity, gracing these gifts
and encouraging kindliness to every one of every nation,
that proved earnestness in his pursuit, whether he had
chosen nature or society, the hieroglyphics or the liberty
of America, the sea and the winds, or the languages, as-
tronomy or industry, the canal or prison discipline, geo-
graphy or Plato; if, in addition, an organizing mind, a
power of evoking activity in the sluggish, and sagacity
and unbroken industry through a life lengthened far be-
yond that which the psalmist ascribes to a long human
existence; and if a good fame encircling the globe on its
own pinions and not carried along by later history--if
this makes up or proves greatness, then, indeed, we may
say, without presumption, that one of the greatest men
has been our own, one who was so favored an exemplar
of humanity that he would cease to be an example for
us had he not manifested through his whole life of nine-
ty years that unceasing labor, unvarying love of truth
and advancement, and that kindness to his fellow-beings
which are duties, and in which every one of us ought to
strive to imitate him.
What an amount of thinking, observing, writing, trav-
eling and discovering he has performed, from that juve-
nile essay of his on the textile fabrics of the ancients to the
last line of his Cosmos, which reminds us of Copernicus
reading the last proof-sheet on his death-bed, shortly be-
fore his departure, or of Mozart, who directed, with dy-
ing looks, the singing of a portion of that requiem which
he had in part composed, conscious that his ears were not
to hear it. Let us, one and all, young and old, symbol-
ize by the name of Humboldt, the fact that, however
untrue assuredly the saying is, that genius is labor, it is
true that the necessary factor or co-efficient of genius
and of any talent is incessant diligence. We are ordained
not only to eat the bread of our mouth in the sweat of
our brow, but to earn in the same way the nourishing
bread of the mind. This is no world of trifling, and
Humboldt, like the Greeks, whose intellectuality he
loved to honor--whose Socrates loved to say:--Arduous
are all noble things--was a hard-working man, far harder
working than most of those who arrogate the name to
themselves. He ceased to work, and to work hard only,
when he laid himself down on that couch from which he
never rose again.
It is not considered inappropriate, I believe, on occa-
sions like this, to give distinctness to the picture by sta-
ting personal observations. Allow me, then, to relate a
very simple, yet characteristic fact. I visited Humboldt
at Potsdam in the year 1844, when he had reached,
therefore, the age of seventy-five; for you know that he
was born in that remarkable year of 1769, in which Cu-
vier was born, and Wellington, and Chateaubriand, and
Napoleon, and Canning, and Walter Scott, and Mackin-
tosh--just ten years after Schiller; just twenty after
Gœthe. Humboldt told me at that time that he was
engaged in a work which he intended to call Cosmos;
that he was obliged chiefly to write at night, for in the
morning he studied and arranged materials, or received
visitors, and in the evening he was expected to be with
the King from 9 o'clock to about 11. After his return
from the King he was engaged in writing until 1 or 2
o'clock.
Humboldt, when in Berlin or Potsdam, was retained,
if we may use a professional term, to join the evening
circle of the King for the indicated hours. It was all, I
believe, he was expected actually to perform in return
for the titles, honors and revenue which he was enjoying,
except that the monarch sometimes selected him as a
companion on his journeys. Humboldt described to me
the character of these royal evening reunions. Every-
thing of interest, as the day brought it to notice, was
there discussed. The drawing of a beautiful live oak
near Charleston, which a fair friend had made for me,
was taken by Humboldt to that circle, where it attracted
so much attention that he begged me to leave it; and
he told me that the volume describing our aqueduct,
which my friend, the author, now the President of our
College, had given me at the time of its publication, and
which I had then sent to Humboldt, had furnished the
topic of discussion for an entire week. We collected, he
said, all possible works on ancient and modern aqueducts,
and compared, discussed and applied for many succes-
sive evenings. Is there, then, a royal road to knowledge
after all, when a Humboldt can be retained?
May I extend your supposed permission of giving per-
sonal anecdotes, provided they are of a sufficiently bio-
graphical character, such as Plutarch, perhaps, would not
have disdained to record? I desire to show what inter-
est he took in everything connected with progress. I
have reason to believe that it was chiefly owing to him
that the King of Prussia offered to me, not long after
my visit, a chair to be created in the University of Ber-
lin, exclusively dedicated to the Science and Art of Pun-
ishment, or to Pœnology. I had conversed with the
monarch on the superiority of solitary confinement at la-
bor over all the other prison systems, when he concluded
the interview with these words: "I wish you would con-
vince Mr. von Humboldt of your views. He is some-
what opposed to them. I shall let him know that you
will see him."
Humboldt and prison discipline sounded strange to
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