The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1869-08-27
ALEXANDER Won H1MBoLDT.-The LAT

of September next will be the centenary
anniversary of the birth of Alexander Won
Humboldt (the tenth since his death), and
will be commemorated by our citizens in
manner worthy of that great man. AL
though essentially German in his mode of
thought, yet there is no man Of the past
century in whom there was purer, truer,
deeper sympathy for the entire universe
than Alexander Won Humboldt.
Born before the French Revolution, when
that political earthquake had upheaved
every nation of continental Europe, Won
Humboldt left the Old World in l799 and
set sail for the New, where he remained
until 1904. The empire that he founded
for himself in those five years, and which,
by his long life, he was enabled firmly to
establish and perfect, was of more cx-
tcnsivc area, and will be of more last
ing duration, than any founded by the
military chieftains of that or any
preceding age. With II mind in which
was treasured up every observation or con-
lecture Of preceding philosophers, whether
ancient or modern, he set out measuring the
heights Of mountains, noting temperature,
collecting plants, dissccting animals, and
everywhere pressing forward TO penetrate
the meaning of the relations which he
found to subsist between the different pOr-
tons of the organic kingdom and man,
until, to use his own words, "the pcrsua-
sion of the existence of an harmonious sys-
TEN Of fixed laws, which was long the OBJ
icct of vague intuition, gradually acquired
the certainty Of q rational truth, and man,
as our immortal Schiller has said, amid
ceaseless change seeks the unchanging
pole"
SucM den ruhenden Pol IN der ErSchein-
ungen FiucH.
His Cosmos was the work of his sunset
of life; and who else, it is justly asked
could have achieved-who but he could
have attempted-the Atlantean service ?
Like the dying of the king of day, during
these last years of the great naturalist and
philosopher the shekinah of universal
knowledge seems to have rested upon his
brow and to have woven around his name
the diadem Of immortality. The clear,
concise, simple, and sublime, delineation
that he gives in his Cosmos of Creation,
wherein, as lie says, there is that unity
in diversity, and of connection, resem-
blance, and order, among created things
most dissimilar in their form-one fair,
harmonious WHOLE" is one OF the grandest
symphonies to the Creators praise since
the morning stars sang together
It'll the dlating soul, cnrapt, tranSfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-therc
AS in her natural FORM swellcd vast to Heaven
1t is not in this limited space to speak Of
the great, sublime Won Humboldt, farther
than to recall the memory of his name. Let
one and all unite together in celebrating
the anniversary of that day whose light
first looked on the birth Of that mighty
soul. In America did he lay the first foun-
dation of his fame, let us now unite with
the whole Ineligible world and place our
garland on his brow. The writings of von
Humbolt were Revelation and, without
profanity, it may be said that he did for
science and natural philosophy what the
great Apostle to the Gentilcs did for re-
ligion-hc pointed out clearly and distinctly
the harmonious system Of fixed laws which
govern alike the animal, vegetable, and
physical kingdoms of the universe.