e apparatus which the
ingenuity of that age could contrive for the advancement of astronomical
pursuits. Uniting the case of a rich nobleman's existence with every aid
to science, including special erections for his instruments, and a
printing establishment that worked under his own immediate direction, he
lived far enough from the capital to enjoy the most perfect
tranquillity, yet near enough to escape the consequences of too absolute
isolation. Aided in all he undertook by a staff of assistants that he
himself had trained, supported in his labor by the encouragement of his
sovereign, and especially by his own unflagging interest in scientific
investigation, he led in that peaceful island the ideal intellectual
life. Of that mansion where he labored, of the observatory where he
watched the celestial phenomena, surrounded but not disturbed by the
waves of a shallow sea, there remains at this day literally not one
stone upon another; but many a less fortunate laborer in the same field,
harassed by poverty, distracted by noise and interruption, has
remembered with pardonable envy the splendid peace of Uranienborg.

It was one of the many fortunate circumstances in the position of the
two Humboldts that they passed their youth in the quiet old castle of
Tegel, separated from Berlin by a pine-wood, and surrounded by walks and
gardens. They too, like Tycho Brahe, enjoyed that happy combination of
tranquillity with the neighborhood of a capital city which is so
peculiarly favorable to culture. In later life, when Alexander Humboldt
had collected those immense masses of material which were the result of
his travels in South America, he warmly appreciated the unequalled
advantages of Paris. He knew how to extract from the solitudes of
primaeval nature what he wanted for the enrichment of his mind; but he
knew also how to avail himself of all the assistance and opportunities
which are only to be had in great capitals. He was not attracted to
town-life, like Dr. Johnson and Mr. Buckle, to the exclusion of wild
nature; but neither, on the other hand, had he that horror of towns
which was a morbid defect in Cowper, and which condemns those who suffer
from it to rusticity. Even Galileo, who thought the country especially
favorable to speculative intellects, and the walls of cities an
imprisonment for them, declared that the best years of his life were
those he had spent in Padua.

LETTER II.

TO A FRIEND WHO MAINTAINED THAT SU