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Humboldt   /hˈəmbˌoʊlt/   Listen
Humboldt

noun
1.
German philologist noted for his studies of the relation between language and culture (1767-1835).  Synonyms: Baron Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt, Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt.
2.
German naturalist who explored Central and South America and provided a comprehensive description of the physical universe (1769-1859).  Synonyms: Baron Alexander von Humboldt, Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt.



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"Humboldt" Quotes from Famous Books



... remarks, that almost all the volcanoes of considerable magnitude in the old world, are in the vicinity of the sea; and in those where the sea is more distant, as in the volcanoes of South America, the water may be supplied from great subterranean lakes; for Humboldt states that some of them throw up quantities of fish. The author acknowledges, however, that the hypothesis of the nucleus of the globe being composed of matter liquefied by heat, offers a still more simple solution of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various

... itself was Memphis, and, as preliminary, the fortified points on the river above it. But Memphis had large railway connections. The direct road to Nashville was cut at its crossing over the Tennessee River, but at Humboldt it intersected the Mobile and Ohio, which joined Columbus with Mobile. The Memphis and Charleston, running nearly due east to Chattanooga, also intersected the Mobile and Ohio at Corinth. The Mississippi ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... have already given you several reasons for my wish that you should retain, in classifying birds, the now rejected order of Picae. I am going to read you a passage from Humboldt, which shows you what difficulties one may get ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human being; in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the mineral kingdom. Each atom or ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... exploring these mountains, with a view to measurement, had ascended to the height of 19,600 feet, being 400 feet higher than Humboldt had ascended on the Andes. The latter part of Captain Gerard's ascent, for about two miles, was on an inclined plane of 42 deg., a nearer approach to the perpendicular than Humboldt conceived it possible to climb ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... not much variety in the landscape. All along is this monotonous desert of Gobi with the heights of the Humboldt mountains on the right reaching on to the ranges of Nan Chan. The stations are few and far between, and consist merely of an agglomeration of huts, with the signal cabin standing up among them like a monument. Here the tender fills up with water and coal. Beyond the Kara Nor, where a ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... age Christopher left school and went to sea; from this time until 1487, very little is known of his career. It is interesting to give the remark of Humboldt on this subject, as reported by M. Charton; he said, "that he regretted the more this uncertainty about the early life of Columbus when he remembered all that the chroniclers have so minutely preserved for us upon the life of the dog Becerillo, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... didactic tone, wherein all persons are exhorted to early rising, to resolute abridgment of the hours of sleep, and the like. That Sir Walter Raleigh slept but five hours in twenty-four; that John Hunter, Frederick the Great, and Alexander von Humboldt slept but four; that the Duke of Wellington made it an invariable rule to "turn out" whenever he felt inclined to turn over, and John Wesley to arise upon his first awaking: instances such as these appear on parade with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... of May, is good and abundant upon this road as far as the South Pass, from whence there is a section of about 50 miles where it is scarce; there is also a scarcity upon the desert beyond the sink of the Humboldt. As large numbers of cattle pass over the road annually, they soon consume all the grass in these barren localities, and such as pass late in the season are likely to suffer greatly, and oftentimes perish ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... George was a flower of slow growth. At thirty-seven he was just reaching mental manhood. According to all reasonable tables of expectancy, he should have rivaled Humboldt and been in his prime at eighty. His brain was the brain of Ricardo; but instead of sticking to his boos, he got caught in the swirl of politics, and was matched up with the cheap, the selfish, the grasping. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... extremity of America use signs continually. Captain Hooper, commanding that steamer, is reported by Mr. Petroff to have found that the natives of Nunivak Island, on the American side, below Behring Strait, trade by signs with those of the Asiatic coast, whose language is different. Humboldt in his journeyings among the Indians of the Orinoco, where many small isolated tribes spoke languages not understood by any other, found the language of signs in full operation. Spix and Martius give a similar account of the Puris and Coroados ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... Tree of Oratava, of which Humboldt has given so interesting an account. He saw it in all its greatness; I drew it after it had lost half its top to ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... reverence for science. That he had this so early was due, as has been already seen, to the influence of Professor Woodrow at college. In "Tiger Lilies" he said, in commenting on Macaulay's idea of poetry declining as science grows: "How long a time intervened between Humboldt and Goethe; how long between Agassiz and Tennyson? One can scarcely tell whether Humboldt and Agassiz were not as good poets as Goethe and Tennyson were certainly good philosophers." "The astonishing effect of the stimulus ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... only in the seeds of hatred which it sowed, of which there is now a harvest of blood past precedent, but also in the development of an arrogant pride which has profoundly affected to its prejudice the noble Germany of Luther, Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Humboldt, ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... represented to this Department that a band of robbers has obtained such a foothold in the section of country between Humboldt and Lawrence, Kans., committing depredations upon travelers, both by public and private conveyance, that the safety of the public money collected by the receiver of the land office at Humboldt requires that it should be guarded during its transit from Humboldt to Lawrence. I have therefore ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... name of truth and common-sense alike, we indignantly reject them. We have a vision of a sturdier manhood: of the genial, open countenance of an Irving; of the homely, honest strength that shone in every feature of a Walter Scott; of the massive vigor of a Goethe or a Humboldt. How much, too, is said of the physical degeneracy of our own people,—how the jaw is retreating, how the frame is growing slender and gaunt, how the chest flattens, and how tenderly we ought to cherish every octogenarian among us, for that we are seeing the last of them! If this is intended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... are still very interesting. I preserve this anecdote as it has long come down to us; but Carreri, it has been recently ascertained, met the fate of Bruce—for he had visited the places he has described; Humboldt and Clavigero have confirmed his local knowledge of Mexico and of China, and found his book useful and veracious. Du Halde, who has written so voluminous an account of China, compiled it from the Memoirs of the Missionaries, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... great deliverers. Baron von Stein. His financial genius. His intense hatred of Napoleon. His great reforms. Disgrace of Stein. Prince Hardenberg. Baron von Humboldt. Scharnhorst. New military organization. Frederick William III. German Confederation, Diet of Frankfort. Reaction of liberal sentiments. Influence of Metternich. Frederick William IV. Rise of Bismarck. Early days. Politician. His unpopularity. Diplomatist at the Diet of Frankfort. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... is, however, little necessity for any argument on the subject: For, leaving out of the question the highest and most sacred of authorities, almost all respectable writers upon ethnology, including Buffon, Volney, Humboldt, &c., agree in assigning a common origin to all nations,—though the last deduces from many particulars, the conclusion that the American Indian was "isolated in the infancy of the world, from ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... language, which, like some of the other great secrets of nature,—the origin of birth and death, or of animal life,—remains inviolable. That problem is indissolubly bound up with the origin of man; and if we ever know more of the one, we may expect to know more of the other. (Compare W. Humboldt, 'Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues;' M. Muller, 'Lectures on the Science of Language;' Steinthal, 'Einleitung ...
— Cratylus • Plato

... led to group the natives of the Archipelago under two radically distinct races. In this I differed from most ethnologists who had before written on the subject; for it had been the almost universal custom to follow William von Humboldt and Pritchard, in classing all the Oceanic races as modifications of one type. Observation soon showed me, however, that Malays and Papuans differed radically in every physical, mental, and moral character; and more detailed research, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... did. Oliver accepted the situation so completely that although he must have sorrowed over many of his trials, he never complained—that is, he never complained but once. He, two others, and myself, started to the new silver mines in the Humboldt mountains—he to be Probate Judge of Humboldt county, and we to mine. The distance was two hundred miles. It was dead of winter. We bought a two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred pounds of bacon, flour, beans, blasting-powder, picks and shovels ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in many parts of America: Humboldt met with them on the tableland of Mexico, and the Jesuit Falkner and other authors state that they occur at intervals over the vast plains extending from the mouth of the Plata to Rioja and Catamarca. (Azara "Travels" volume ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery. Franklin on The Peopling of Countries. Ramsay's Essay. Botham's Sugar Cultivation in Batavia. Marsden's History of Sumatra. Coxe's Travels. Dr. Anderson's Observations on Slavery. Storch's Political Economy. Adam Smith. J. Jeremies' Essays. Humboldt's Travels, etc., etc.) ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... K. BOLTON, author of "Poor Boys who became Famous," etc, Short biographical sketches of Galileo, Newton, Linnaeus, Cuvier, Humboldt, Audubon, Agassiz, Darwin, Buckland, ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... interest was confined to a small number of students, and in a few cases only could Indian literature attract the eyes of men who, from the summit of universal history, survey the highest peaks of human excellence. Herder, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Goethe, discovered what was really important in Sanskrit literature. They saw what was genuine and original, in spite of much that seemed artificial. For the artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... and where the possession of a bicycle fails to awaken that degree of enthusiasm that it does on a smooth, hard road. At Wadsworth I have to bid farewell to the Truckee River, and start across the Forty-mile Desert, which lies between the Truckee and Humboldt Rivers. Standing on a sand-hill and looking eastward across the dreary, desolate waste of sand, rocks, and alkali, it is with positive regret that I think of leaving the cool, sparkling stream that has been my almost ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... an individual phenomenon (is not that sentence a true scientific one in its magniloquence?) that you can discover any glimpse of the significance of the universal. Even men of boundless knowledge, like Humboldt, must have had once their speciality, their pet subject, or they would have, strictly speaking, no knowledge at all. The volcanoes of Mexico, patiently and laboriously investigated in his youth, were to Humboldt, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... the East came thundering down the head of the Humboldt Valley, just as morning brightened over the earth—refreshing eyes wearied with yesterday's mountains and canons, by a vision of green willows and ash trees, a stream that was not a torrent, and a ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... [Footnote: Humboldt ("Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne," Vol. II, Lib. III, cap. VIII, p. 50): Nearly all the old authors describe the pueblo buildings as surrounded by pleasure-grounds or ornamental gardens. It is very striking that, the pueblo having been founded in 1325, and nearly a century having been spent ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... he was happy in a kindly connexion with many other estimable men, both in literary and in active life. Dalberg, at a distance, was to the last his friend and warmest admirer. At Jena, he had Schuetz, Paul, Hufland, Reinhold. Wilhelm von Humboldt, also, brother of the celebrated traveller, had come thither about this time, and was now among his closest associates. At Weimar, excluding less important persons, there were still Herder and Wieland, to divide his attention with Goethe. And what to his ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... the Greeks looked on Nature with their minds more than with their hearts, nor ever clung to her with outspoken admiration and affection. And Humboldt, asserting (as I would do) that the portrayal of nature, for her own sake and in all her manifold diversity, was foreign to the Greek idea, declares that the landscape is always the mere background of their ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... Siddons. He became intimate with Lord Byron and Thomas Moore; and had the honour of frequent invitations to the residence of the Princess of Wales, at Blackheath. In 1814, he visited Paris, where he was introduced to the Duke of Wellington; dined with Humboldt and Schlegel, and met his former friend and correspondent, Madame de Stael. A proposal of Sir Walter Scott, in 1816, to secure him a chair in the University of Edinburgh, was not attended with success. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... of the Klamath River and Humboldt Bay, accompanying Vocabularies of their Languages. ...
— Catalogue Of Linguistic Manuscripts In The Library Of The Bureau Of Ethnology. (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (Pages 553-578)) • James Constantine Pilling

... her a long career; she discovered no less than seven comets herself, and her patient labors preserved her to the age of ninety-eight.—And Mrs. Somerville, to whom we owe the English translation of Laplace's Mecanique celeste, of whom Humboldt said, "In pure mathematics, Mrs. Somerville is absolutely superior." Like Caroline Herschel, she was almost a centenarian, appearing always much younger than her years: she died at Naples, in 1872, at the age of ninety-two.—So, too, the Russian Sophie Kovalevsky, descendant of Mathias ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... moody thoughtfulness—in stubborn determination—yes, under God, by blood and iron! There float before us many noble names, poets, prophets, soldiers who aid in stimulating "German national faith"—Fichte, Arndt, Kleist, Roon, Moltke, Scharnhorst, Humboldt—and in the historical twilight big with mutterings and rumblings of the New Time to come with all its glory, taking the place of the Prussian ruin between 1806 and 1813, is Queen Louise, her gentle spirit a veritable evening-star, luminous ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... great service of placing anthropo-geography on a secure scientific basis. He had his forerunners in Montesquieu, Alexander von Humboldt, Buckle, Ritter, Kohl, Peschel and others; but he first investigated the subject from the modern scientific point of view, constructed his system according to the principles of evolution, and based his conclusions on world-wide inductions, for which his predecessors did ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... the volume, those on Humboldt, Landor and Sydney Smith, though readable, contain little to supplement the biographies and correspondence that have long been before the world; while the one on "Suleiman Pasha" (Colonel Selves) suggests a doubt whether Lord Houghton has always taken pains to sift the information ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... the newly opened Humboldt region came the wildest reports. The mountains there were said to be stuffed with gold. A correspondent of the "Territorial Enterprise" was unable to find words to picture the ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the fact that Humboldt discovered in Mexico a small statue which he supposed represented an Aztec priestess. This statue had sculptured upon its forehead a row of pearls, worn in the same manner as is represented in this pipe. This is another pipe of great interest, and is supposed ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... than that of the correlation of organs, but Darwin's most characteristic contribution was not less fundamental,—it was the idea of the correlation of organisms. This, again, was not novel; we find it in the works of naturalists like Christian Conrad Sprengel, Gilbert White, and Alexander von Humboldt, but the realisation of its full import was ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... up at the stony lineaments of Professor Delande, her marble-browed and flinty-hearted sire, locked in the cold chill of a steel engraving. He was as neutral as the busts of Buffon, Cuvier, Laplace, Humboldt, and Pestalozzi, which coldly furnished forth her sanctum. She thought of the eloquent eyed young Major and sadly sighed. She proceeded to enshrine him in her withered heart, and then wrote a crossed letter of many tender underlinings to her distant sister. And ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... than the level of the present ocean; others, again, of similar character, rest upon the tops or sides of the highest mountains. In Europe, the tops of the highest of the Pyrenees, rising 11000 feet above the level of the sea, are of limestone, containing numerous fossil remains, while Humboldt found a rock, similarly characterized, among the Andes, at the height of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... which he carried out barometric, thermometric and hygrometric observations, also collecting samples of the air at different heights. In 1803 the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, entertaining the opinion that the experiments made on mountain-sides by J. A. Deluc, H. B. de Saussure, A. von Humboldt and others must give results different from those made in free air at the same heights, resolved to arrange a balloon ascent. Accordingly, on the 30th of January 1808, .Sacharof, a member of the academy, ascended in a gas balloon, in company with a French aeronaut, E. G. Robertson, who ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... what was said by Wilhelm von Humboldt, that "it is worthy of special remark that when we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself." We carry each day nobly, ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden

... peculiar species belonging to European genera occur. On the highest mountains of Brazil, some few European genera were found by Gardner, which do not exist in the wide {375} intervening hot countries. So on the Silla of Caraccas the illustrious Humboldt long ago found species belonging to genera characteristic of the Cordillera. On the mountains of Abyssinia, several European forms and some few representatives of the peculiar flora of the Cape of Good Hope occur. At the ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... problem; and books, places, and people were laid under contribution unsparingly. He started on his tour carrying letters of introduction to some of the famous men in Germany, including the great traveller and scientist, Alexander von Humboldt. Of a younger generation was the philologist Max Mueller, who was a frequent companion of Morier in Berlin, and gave up his time to nursing him back to health when he was taken ill with quinsy. He found friends in all professions, but chiefly among politicians. A typical instance is von Roggenbach, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... called for on Dr. Walker's second Report, it is fair to state, that in certain Russian towns which he names, he found that the medical men and others were convinced that the cholera was brought to them "somehow or other," an impression quite common in like cases, as we learn from Humboldt, and less to be wondered at in Russia than most places which could be mentioned. It will not be a misemployment of time to consider now the next document laid before the College, to enable them to form their opinion,—the ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... correlation of serpent poison and the septic ferments of certain tropical and infectious fevers, they are not necessarily always contagious. It may be interesting to note that one Doctor Humboldt in 1852,[9] in an essay read before the Royal Academy of Medical Sciences at Havana, assumed their proximate identity, and advocated the inoculation of the poison of one as a prophylactic of the other. He claimed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... Almost with the last words of this sketch, the second part of Kosmos, by Alexander von Humboldt, came to my hand. Evidently the great author (who so well deserves immortality for his contributions to science) views the world also as a whole; and wherever in ancient or modern times, even a glimpse of this doctrine can be found, he quotes it and brings it to light. But yet, in a ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... SECONDARY EDUCATION. Alongside this elementary- school system for the masses of the people, the older secondary and higher school system for a directing class (p. 553) also was largely reorganized and redirected. The first step in this direction was the appointment, in 1809, of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), "a philosopher, scholar, philologist, and statesman" of the first rank, to the headship of the new Prussian Department of Public Instruction. During the two and a half years he remained in charge important work in the reorganization of secondary ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... a solemn occasion, and a scene of indescribable grandeur, with the almost eternal glacier of Greenland—the great Humboldt glacier— shedding its bergs into the dark blue sea, the waters of which had by that time been partially cleared to the northward. On the left was the weird pack and its thousand grotesque forms, with the wreck in its iron grasp; on ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... of all their perjuries." The Scandinavian nations practised baptism of new-born children; and when we turn to Mexico and Peru we find infant baptism there as a solemn ceremonial, consisting of water sprinkling, the sign of the cross, and prayers for the washing away of sin (see Humboldt's Mexican Researches ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... Almirante.' In Spanish America, says M. de Humboldt, when El Almirante is pronounced without the addition of a name, that of Columbus is understood; as, from the lips of a Mexican, El ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... passes through the intermediary chain of the Andes. Hereabouts are a few waterfalls, were it not for which the river would be navigable from its mouth to its source. As it is, however, according the Humboldt, the Amazon is free ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... approved history of philosophy. So for physical science and natural history, those who have not the leisure to read Aristotle (again), or Pliny, or Brunetto's Tresor, may get from the fourth book of Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, and from parts of Humboldt's Cosmos, some idea of the way in which Dante would ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... Appealing to Congress, they were granted authority to remove its eastern offices from New York City to Boston. The next appearance in Congress was made necessary by a dispute with the Central Pacific Company over the point of connection. The Union Pacific Company claimed their grade extended to Humboldt Wells, five hundred miles west of Ogden, while the Central Pacific in reprisal claimed the line to the western end of Weber Canon some thirty miles east of Ogden. The facts were the two completed lines met at Promontory Point fifty-three miles west of Ogden, April 28th, 1869. By act ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey

... "Humboldt, the great geologist, relates cases of tribes in South America which live for at least three months at a time on this substance, without any apparent ill effect, but from all the analyses made there does not seem ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... Among the many points of interest to be seen are the picturesque Columbia River Bar, the beautiful Ocean Beach at Clatsop, the towering heights of Cape Hancock, the lonely Mid-Ocean Lighthouse at Tillamook Rock, the historical Rogue River Reef, Cape Mendocino, Humboldt Bay, Point Arena, and last, but not least, the world-renowned Golden ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax

... ardour united with the highest genius, the most comprehensive knowledge, and the rarest qualities of perseverance, prudence, and enduring patience. This generation will not leave behind it two names more entitled to the admiration of after ages than Burckhardt and Humboldt. The former purchased this pre-eminence at the cost of his life; the latter lives, and long may he live ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... of the earth's surface convulsed by this earthquake is estimated by Humboldt to have been four times greater than the whole extent of Europe. The shocks were felt not only over the Spanish peninsula, but in Morocco and Algeria they were nearly as violent. At a place about twenty-four miles from the city of Morocco, there is said to have occurred a catastrophe ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... to have read somewhere," Felix said, turning it over in his mind, "that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of South America he found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which, the Indians assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe, incomprehensible then by any living person. If I recollect ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... who will acquaint himself with the names of Lamarck, Darwin, Lyell, Lavoisier, Huxley, Haeckel, Virchow, Tyndall, Fiske, Wallace, Romanes, Helmholtz, Leibnitz, Humboldt, Weismann, etc., in science, and Marx, Engels, Lafargue, Labriola, Ferri, Vandervelde, Kautsky, Morgan, Ward, Dietzgen, etc., in sociology, and learn what those names stand for, such a lecturer, other things being equal, has a great and useful ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis

... a braggart!" said the miller. "We've known that for a long time; we knew it when you wrote to the paper saying the Great Man was another Humboldt!" ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... his home environment; sever the cord that holds him to his "folks"; let him meet new faces, see new sights, hear new sermons, meet new teachers, and his efforts at adjustment will work for growth. Alexander Humboldt was right—one year at college is safer than four. One year inspires you—four may get you pot-bound with ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... from my barometer—but I may have made an inaccurate calculation, and I have not Humboldt by me—that the ridge of the highest is fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, so that it would be next to impossible to join the two seas at this point by a canal with water in it. However, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... considering that some low vegetable organisms grow in hot springs—cases of which have been collected by Prof. Wyman ('American Journal of Science,' vol. xliv. 1867). Thus, Dr. Hooker found Confervae in water at 168o Fahr.; Humboldt, at 185o Fahr.; and Descloizeaux, at 208o Fahr.) ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... of visible organization—a mere jelly to hold the invisible life power—carries within itself in that invisible spiritual element the destiny of myriads of animal beings, and according to the nature of that invisible spiritual element it may develop into a Humboldt or an oyster, an elephant, a humming-bird, or ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... whole empire of Montezuma, which is described by the earliest writers to have reached from Panama to New California. This, however, appears, from more recent researches, on the accuracy of which Humboldt relies with reason, to have been larger than the reality justified; and the whole of Tenochtitlan may be said to have been contained in the present states of Vera Cruz, Oaxaca, Puebla, Mexico, and Valadolid. In addition to the name given by Cortez, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various

... of the kind that he could hear of and obtain. He spoke of Wilson's book on the Himalaya Mountains as the most interesting of them. "It seems as if there was nothing that a cultivated Englishman could not and would not go through with," he said. I mentioned Humboldt. "Yes," he replied, "Humboldt certainly accomplished wonderful things, but the Germans are generally more cautious and prudent. A cultivated Englishman seems to be equal to anything." Among modern travellers however, Vambery, the Hungarian, takes ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... visit to Berlin came about in this way. In 1828 Frederick William III of Prussia requested the Berlin University to invite the most eminent natural philosophers to take part in a congress to be held in that city under the presidency of Alexander von Humboldt. Nicholas Chopin's friend Dr. Jarocki, the zoologist and professor at the Warsaw University, who had studied and obtained his degree at Berlin, was one of those who were honoured with an invitation. The favourable opportunity which ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... forced the weak body to do its bidding, and the best of Schiller's dramas, the greatest of his philosophical poems, were written in these years of illness. Thus Schiller proved himself the master of his fate, the captain of his soul. Only a few weeks before his death he wrote to Wilhelm von Humboldt, "Am Ende sind wir doch beide Idealisten, und wuerden uns schaemen, uns nachsagen zu lassen, dass die Dinge uns formten und wir nicht die Dinge." ("After all both of us are idealists and would be ashamed to have it reported of us that the things fashioned us and not we the things.") There was ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... artists as political and diplomatic advisers, and we should not let ourselves be crowded out of this profession, for which, thanks to our minds, we are not less fitted than the high-brow Lords and Counts. Men of our guild from Thucydides and Herodotus to Petrarch and Rubens, and our Humboldt and your Beaconsfield have ever shown themselves to be good intermediaries and peace advocates. And that, believe me, Bernard Shaw, is of more importance to our people, as well as to our Kaiser, who for over twenty-five years has avoided war like a poison, than all other bloody laurels. Here's ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... a term applied to all the wild tribes of Mexico; it was also used specially to designate the hunting and pastoral tribes in the northern provinces of the present country of Mexico—who, according to Humboldt (New Spain, Black's trans., London, 1811, i, p. 133), came to that country about 1170. See also G.P. Winship's Coronado ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson

... of South America, so extensive that, as Humboldt observes, whilst their northern extremity is bounded by palm-trees, their southern limits are the eternal snows ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... activity which God gives to exertion directed to a comprehensible end. The feeblest mind is capable of assimilating knowledge with a satisfaction the same in kind as that which rewarded the maturest labors of Humboldt or Newton. There are sequences of facts every one of which, imparted in its natural order, brings an immediate interest. It is no nebulous scheme of combining instruction with amusement which is to be sought. One might as well look after the Philosopher's Stone ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... stopped, too. We heard that Guizot had suppressed the paper and ordered Karl and some of the other writers to be expelled from France. It was Alexander von Humboldt who persuaded Guizot, so it was said. I got a letter from Karl to say that he had settled in Brussels with his wife and that there was a baby, a little Jenny, eight months old. Our little Barbara was ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo

... say that I am told by everybody that my sisters are lovely in English, and charmantes in French. Last night was their debut at Lady Granard's—a large assembly of all manner of lords, ladies, counts, countesses, princes, and princesses, French, Polish, and Italian: Marmont and Humboldt were there. I was told by several persons of rank and taste—Lady Rancliffe, the Countess de Salis, Lady Granard, Mrs. Sneyd Edgeworth, and a Polish Countess, that my sister's dress, the grand affair at Paris, was perfection, and I believed it! Humboldt is ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... months indebted for our greatest comfort.—Mr. Bohn continues his good work of supplying excellent books at moderate prices. We are this month indebted to him for publishing in his Scientific Library the third volume of Miss Ross' excellent translation of Humboldt's Personal Narrative of his Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, which is enriched with a very copious index. In his Classical Library he has given us Translations of Terence and Phaedrus; and in his Antiquarian Library, the second volume of what, in spite ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various

... industry carried on in Silesia, combining so much of ingenuity and utility, as to render a summary of the information very acceptable to those who are seeking for new sources of employment or of profit. It appears that in the neighbourhood of Breslau, on a domain known as Humboldt Mead, there are two establishments alike remarkable: one is a factory for converting the leaves or spines of the pine-tree into a sort of cotton or wool; in the other, the water which has served in the manufacture of this vegetable wool, is made use ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various

... nowhere develop to anything like California dimensions. A height of fifty feet and diameter of twelve or fourteen inches would probably be found to be above the average size of those cut for lumber. On the margin of the Carson and Humboldt Sink the larger sage bushes are called "heavy timber"; and to the settlers here any tree seems large enough ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... Alexander von Humboldt, has yielded to the great law of humanity, as inexorable as any that he found in nature. His researches in South America, though mainly confined to the valley of the Oronoco, were most thorough, and his array ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... exhausted, L'Isle lounged in the library at C——d Hall, with half a dozen open but discarded volumes before him, revolving in his mind all possible means of occupation. At one time he would resolve to travel the world over, and get up a personal narrative, attractive as that of Humboldt, and views of nature, that should look through nature's surface to the recognition of Nature's God, whom the philosopher seems never to have found in all his works. At another time, in order more effectively ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... for Mr. Savage. For if he had kept but one eye on this world, as Humboldt said every well regulated chameleon and priest is in the habit of doing, he would have known that every word of this "No. 3," above quoted, is exactly wrong: To wit: The other kind of Nationalism, which is not military despotism, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... [6] Indeed, Humboldt speaks of Brazil Isle as appearing to the west of Ireland in a modern English map-Purdy's; but I do not know its date. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... which, in our own day, grudged and delayed due honors at the tombs of Copernicus and Galileo among Catholics, and of Humboldt among Protestants, was still bitter against the great Venetian scholar and statesman. It could not be forgotten that he had wrested from the Vatican the most terrible of its weapons. But patriotic pride ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... this gigantic animal are abundantly distributed over the whole extent of the globe. They exist in large masses in the northern hemisphere, deeply embedded in the alluvial deposits of the tertiary period. Humboldt discovered specimens on some of the most elevated ridges of the Andes; and similar remains have been found in Africa. In the frozen regions of the far North, surrounded by successive layers of everlasting ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... this of the Phoca Ursina, Pallas of the camel, and Humboldt of a small American monkey."—Laurence On ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various

... The works of Humboldt, Herschel, Dove, Sabine, Reid, Redfield, Espy, and others, are appealed to in confirmation ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

... industries, except those making war supplies, were not producing over 25 per cent. of capacity, and many were closed. The Siemens-Schuckert Works, even before the Landsturm was called out, lost 40 per cent. of their men on mobilization. The Humboldt Steel Works, near Cologne, employing 4,000 men, were closed early in August, as were nearly all the great iron works in the district between Duesseldorf and Duisburg. Probably 50 to 75 per cent. of the workers were called to the colors. The skilled artisans were in the army or ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... terrible thing: "Woman is the nervous part of humanity, man the muscular." Humboldt himself, that serious thinker, has said that an invisible atmosphere surrounds ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... desert to her: no square foot of it is barren. Even the sage-brush has a charm, if only from its dim likeness to a miniature olive tree, both being glaucous and hoary. An oasis of irrigated clover on Humboldt River is made a theme for an idyl. The vast rocks, when bare even of moss, are at least rich and various in tint and form, and have plenty of meaning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... generations, it is distinctly contained in the vein of important thought respecting education and culture, spread through the European mind by the labours and genius of Pestalozzi. The unqualified championship of it by Wilhelm von Humboldt is referred to in the book; but he by no means stood alone in his own country. During the early part of the present century the doctrine of the rights of individuality, and the claim of the moral nature to develop itself in its own way, was pushed by a whole school of German authors even ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... in England. An English lady passing through an Italian gallery with her daughter stopped before a bust of Washington. The daughter said, "Mother, who was Washington?" "Why, my dear, don't you know?" was the astonished reply. "He wrote the 'Sketch-Book.'" It was at the house of Baron von Humboldt, the Prussian minister, that Irving first met Madame de Stael, who was then enjoying the celebrity of "Delphine." He was impressed with her strength of mind, and somewhat astounded at the amazing flow of her conversation, and the question upon question ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... inhabitants of Peru. In that land earthquakes are nearly as common as rain storms are with us; and shocks by which whole cities are changed into a heap of ruins are by no means infrequent. Yet even in Peru, "the land of earthquakes," as Humboldt has termed it, no such catastrophe as that of August, 1868, had occurred within the memory of man. It was not one city which was laid in ruins, but a whole empire. Those who perished were counted by tens of thousands, while ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... California. I was put onto a fellow named Johnson up in Humboldt County, who wanted some plunder in my line—the boys, you know, are pretty good to each other in tipping a good chance off to one another. I couldn't very well run up to the place—it was a two- day town—so I wrote Johnson to meet me at 'Frisco at my expense. He came down, bought his bill all right, ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson

... made and entered into this 14th day August, A.D. 1860 between A. J. Houstis as county Judge of Humboldt County for and in behalf of a certain Indian boy called and known by the name of "Smoky" of the first part and Austin Wiley, of the said county of the second part. That Whereas the said Austin Wiley had in his ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... Bliss, of the Adjutant General's department, which occurred July 5th, 1853, promoted me to the captaincy of a company then stationed at Humboldt Bay, California. The notice reached me in September of the same year, and I very soon started to join my new command. There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to take passage on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber. Red wood, a species of cedar, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... mediaeval landscapes, the effort to represent a wilderness that is there only for the sake of the hermits leads to the curious contradiction of a populous hermitage, every part of it occupied by figures resolutely bent on being alone, and sedulously ignoring the others. Humboldt quotes from the early Fathers some glowing descriptions of natural scenery, but they turn always upon the seclusion from mankind, and upon the contrast between the grandeur of God's works and the littleness of ours. But in Claude we have the hint, however crude, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... the last words of this sketch, the second part of Kosmos, by Alexander von Humboldt, came to my hand. Evidently the great author (who so well deserves immortality for his contributions to science) views the world also as a whole; and wherever in ancient or modern times, even a glimpse of this doctrine can be found, he quotes ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... known in the world is situated in Mascoli, near the base of Mount Etna, on the island of Sicily. It measures one hundred and ninety feet in circumference. It is a chestnut-tree, and still bears fruit in abundance. The oldest tree is believed to be a famous cypress still growing in Oaxaca, Mexico. Humboldt saw it in 1855, when he recorded the measurement as being one hundred and twenty-six feet in circumference and three hundred and eighty-two feet between the out-spread branches. In Nevada, United States, stands what is well known as the "Dead Giant Redwood Tree," which measures ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... of large trees are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United States there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain this size." Later botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its greatest perfection in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently described. The geographer Guyot, himself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... hopes" to live upon; next, that from Agassiz to his father, who begs to be told as much as he can be supposed to understand of the nature of this work upon fossil fishes, which called for so much time, labor, and expense; and, almost immediately, Agassiz's letter to his parents, telling them that Humboldt had, quite spontaneously and unexpectedly, relieved his present anxieties by a credit of a thousand francs, to be increased, if necessary. Humboldt had shown a friendly interest in him from the first, and had undertaken to negotiate with Cotta, the publisher, in his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... her to love her enemies and then hold balances true by hating her friends, let Clio so record, for history is no longer a lie agreed upon. In her magnificent park and in her public squares Philadelphia has done honor in bronze and marble to Columbus, Humboldt, Schubert, Goethe, Schiller, Garibaldi and Joan of Arc. But "Mad Anthony Wayne," and that fearless fighting youth, Decatur, are absolutely forgotten. Doctor Benjamin Rush, patriot, the near and dear friend of Franklin, and the man who welcomed Thomas Paine to Pennsylvania ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... shut our eyes, or to open our eyes wide and dispense with all but the faintest musical accompaniment? What sense, in short, does he mainly address himself to? Goethe said that he was a 'seeing' man; W. von Humboldt, the great linguist, that he was a 'listening' man. The influence of Milton's blindness on his poetry was noticed by Lessing. The short-sightedness of Wieland has also been detected in ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... the passage of thought from man to man; it determines whether the writing of the people shall be hieroglyphic or alphabetic; it gives both life and form to the ideals of their art. It is a distinction that was clearly recognized by Wilhelm von Humboldt, when he laid down that the incorporative characteristic essential to all the American languages is the result of the exaltation of the imaginative over the ratiocinative elements ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates

... not far from the city, where a rivulet entered the sea, I observed a fact connected with a subject discussed by Humboldt. (1/7. "Personal Narrative" volume 5 part 1 page 18.) At the cataracts of the great rivers Orinoco, Nile, and Congo, the syenitic rocks are coated by a black substance, appearing as if they had been ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... at your back and the gorge at your right, to the crest of a narrow ridge where the chapel stands. Once there, you overlook the fairest sight in all Christendom—"the loveliest valley in the world," as Humboldt called it—for the Yumuri nestles right at your feet, a vale of pure delight, a glimpse of Paradise that bewilders the eye and fills the soul ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... rocks in many parts of the world, except on the belief that they have subsequently been completely denuded of all overlying strata? That such extensive areas do exist cannot be doubted: the granitic region of Parime is described by Humboldt as being at least nineteen times as large as Switzerland. South of the Amazon, Boue colours an area composed of rocks of this nature as equal to that of Spain, France, Italy, part of Germany, and the British ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... gate is a fine bronze colossal bust of Alexander Von Humboldt, the work of Professor Blaiser of Berlin, which was presented to the park by the German citizens of New York, and inaugurated on the 14th of September, 1869, the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... and of real value. For one cannot doubt the madness of Auguste Comte. It was manifested in public on the 12th of April, 1826, and interrupted the success of his lectures, which had attracted all the leading minds of the time, including Humboldt himself. After a violent attack of mania, the founder of the philosophy of Positivism took refuge at Montmorency. From there he was with difficulty brought back to Paris and placed under the care of the celebrated alienist, Esquirol. He was released when ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... of the first truly modern men. That clear soul—who first collected from the literature of all countries evidence of the origin and progress of the sense of natural beauty, and himself, in his Ansichten der Natur, achieved the noblest masterpiece of description—Alexander von Humboldt, has not done full justice to Petrarch; and, following in the steps of the great reaper, we may still hope to glean a few ears ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... you come to me squealing for help? Joe, take a back seat and let me try my hand without any advice from you. The girl's name is Doris Kenyon and she's an orphan. Her father used to be the general manager of my redwood mill on Humboldt Bay, and her mother was a girlhood friend of my late wife's; so naturally I've established a sort of protectorate over her. She has to work for a living, and any time there's a potentially fine, two-million-dollar husband like Joey lying round loose I like to ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... the barbarians had discovered in tobacco a sedative to promote their reveries and compose them to sleep, of which the hidalgos were as yet ignorant, but which they were soon to appropriate with avidity, and to use with equal zest. Humboldt says that it had been cultivated by the people of Orinoco from time immemorial, and was smoked all over America at the time of the Spanish Conquest,—also that it was first discovered by Europeans in Yucatan, in 1520, and was there called ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... and perhaps, few works of a decidedly romantic character have ever been so generally read, or so much approved. Among the great names whose admiration of it is on record, may be mentioned Napoleon and Humboldt. ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... in extreme indefiniteness of mental conception and almost entire absence of exactness. The experience of Captain Parry,[47] who found that the Eskimos made mistakes before they reached 7, and of Humboldt,[48] who says that a Chayma might be made to say that his age was either 18 or 60, has been duplicated by all investigators who have had actual experience among savage races. Nor, on the other hand, is the development of a numeral ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant

... by the keeper and myself when much distressed and loudly screaming. Rengger states[12] that the eyes of the Cebus azarae fill with tears, but not sufficiently to overflow, when it is prevented getting some much desired object, or is much frightened. Humboldt also asserts that the eyes of the Callithrix sciureus "instantly fill with tears when it is seized with fear;" but when this pretty little monkey in the Zoological Gardens was teased, so as to cry out loudly, this did not occur. I do not, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... military service, and the sweets of exemption tempted him to evade the three-year military course. The consequence was that he was prosecuted as a deserter, and sentenced in contumaciam. Afterwards, Alexander von Humboldt succeeded, by describing his services to science on his first expedition in Australia, in obtaining a pardon from the King. By a Cabinet Order, Leichhardt received permission to return to Prussia unpunished. When the order arrived in Australia, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... Durand agreed with Alexander von Humboldt—in fact, she even went further than that celebrated man, for while he asserted that Thun was one of the three most beautiful spots on earth, Bessie held that this Swiss town was absolutely the most perfectly lovely place she had ever visited. Her reason for this ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... like a scattering swarm of locusts, to the right and left." There are not records of all the returns of this meteoric swarm between the thirteenth century and the eighteenth, but when the earth encountered it in 1799, Humboldt reported that "from the beginning of the phenomenon there was not a space in the firmament equal in extent to three diameters of the moon that was not filled every instant with bolides and falling stars;" and Mr. Andrew Ellicott, an agent of the United States, cruising off ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... ancients at least 600 years before Christ, that a piece of amber when excited by rubbing would attract straws, and that a lump of lodestone had the property of drawing iron. Both facts were probably ascertained by chance. Humboldt informs us that he saw an Indian child of the Orinoco rubbing the seed of a trailing plant to make it attract the wild cotton; and, perhaps, a prehistoric tribesman of the Baltic or the plains of Sicily found in the yellow stone he had polished the mysterious power of collecting ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... name is written Kuhn, Kuhne, Quino, and in several other ways. Humboldt used Kuhn, and either this or Kuhne is probably the correct form, but long usage gives preference ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... individuals, its verdict eked out and assisted by instructive minutiae of lineament and meaning detected, in the "off-guard" of private intercourse, by the eye of a great painter and a lifelong student of physiognomy. We glance from the rugged Blucher to the wily Metternich, and from the philosophic Humboldt to the semi-savage Platoff. The dandies George IV. and Alexander are here, but Brummel is left out. The gem of the collection is Pius VII., Lawrence's masterpiece, widely familiar by engravings. Raphael's Julius II. seems to have been in the artist's mind, but that work is not improved on, unless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... one other geological term, bequeathed to us by a great authority, and which cannot be changed for the better: I mean that of Geological Horizon, applied by Humboldt to the whole extent of any one geological division,—as, for instance, the Silurian horizon, including the whole extent of the Silurian epoch. It indicates one level in time, as the horizon which limits our view indicates the farthest extension of the plain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... same way. The English soldiers expired in the Black Hole of Calcutta because they wanted pure air. Thus about half the children born in some manufacturing towns die, before they are five years old, principally because they want pure air. Humboldt tells of a sailor who was dying of fever in the close hold of a ship. His comrades brought him out of his hold to die in the open air. Instead of dying, he revived, and eventually got well. He was cured by the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... from monotony, and it fully realises the idea of the grand and the beautiful combined. One spot in particular made an impression upon me which I wish I had the power to convey by words. Between Cape Mendocina and Humboldt Bay, on the northern limits of California, a grand collection of hills and mountains of every variety of size, shape, and form occurs. This grand group recedes in a gentle sweep from the coast far inland, where it terminates in a high conical mountain, overtopping the entire mass of pinnacles which ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... or in their vicinity, the effect was generally ascribed to the rest of animated beings, while in localities where such an explanation was inapplicable, it was supposed to arise from a favourable direction of the prevailing wind. Baron Humboldt was particularly struck with this phenomenon when he first heard the rushing of the great cataracts of the Orinoco in the plain which surrounds the mission of the Apures. These sounds he regarded as three times louder during the night than during the day. Some authors ascribed this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various

... reading. I have added one quite vital and essential book—Livy (the two first books), and three plays of Aristophanes (Clouds, Birds, and Plutus). Of travels, I read myself all old ones I can get hold of; of modern, Humboldt is the central model. Forbes (James Forbes in Alps) is essential to the modern Swiss tourist—of sense." Mr. Ruskin puts the word all to Plato, everything to Carlyle, and every word to Scott. Pindar's name he adds in the list ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... selon nous, sa logique n'est pas moins sure.—GUIZOT, Histoire de la Civilisation, 20. Der Keim fortschreitender Entwicklung ist, auch auf goettlichem Geheisse, der Menschheit eingepflanzt. Die Weltgeschichte ist der blosse Ausdruck einer vorbestimmten Entwicklung.—A. HUMBOLDT, January 2, 1842, Im Neuen Reich, 1872, i. 197. Das historisch grosse ist religioes gross; es ist die Gottheit selbst, die sich offenbart.—RAUMER, April ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton

... earliest training recalls the education of William and Alexander von Humboldt, those two nineteenth century Germans whose achievements for the prosperity of their fatherland and the advancement of humanity have caused them to be spoken of as the most remarkable pair of brothers that ever lived. He ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... taken from a letter on Rome, by M. de Humboldt, brother of the celebrated Traveller, and Prussian Minister at Rome. It is difficult to find anywhere a man whose conversation and writings bespeak more knowledge ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... the horizon, curved down beyond it, as the upper side of a horn curves over the lower, when one looks into the mouth. There is none of the many aspects of Nature more grand than this, which is so rarely seen, that I believe the only person who has ever described it is Humboldt, who saw it, looking from the Silla de Caraccas over the Caribbean Sea. It gives you the impression of standing on the edge of the earth, and looking off into space. From the mast-head, the ocean appears either flat or slightly ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... truly national education had taken effect. Elementary instruction was now being organized in Prussia; and the divorce of thought from action, which had so long sterilized German life, was ended by the foundation of the University of Berlin by Humboldt. Thus, in 1810, the year of Prussia's deepest woe, when her brave Queen died of a stricken heart, when French soldiers and douaniers were seizing and burning colonial wares, her thinkers came into closer touch with her men of action, with mutually helpful results. Thinkers ceased ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... form this ascending column of air by kindling large fires which, Mr. Espy says, are known to produce rain. Humboldt speaks of a mysterious connexion between volcanoes and rain, and says that when a volcano bursts out in South America in a dry season, it sometimes changes it to a rainy one. The Indians of Paraguay, when their crops are threatened by drought, set fire to the vast plains with the intention ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... Henry Alexander von Humboldt was born in Berlin on September 14, 1769. In 1788 he made the acquaintance of George Forster, one of Captain Cook's companions, and geological excursions made with him were the occasion of his first publications, a book on the nature of basalt. His work in the administration ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... an eclipse, to which the date of August 28, 360 A.D., has been assigned. Humboldt, quoting this historian, says that the description is quite that of a solar eclipse, but its stated long duration (daybreak to noon), and the word caligo (fog or mist) are awkward factors. Moreover, the historian associates it with events ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... when the earliest of such tables were constructed and when chronometers came into use is obscure, but they were in existence in at least a rudimentary form early in the fifteenth century. [Footnote: Humboldt, Examen ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... of the earth a formation known to geologists resembling that of the Amazons. Its extent is stupendous; it stretches from the Atlantic shore, through the whole width of Brazil, into Peru, to the very foot of the Andes. Humboldt speaks of it "in the vast plains of the Amazons, in the eastern boundary of Jaen de Bracamoros," and says, "This prodigious extension of red sandstone in the low grounds stretching along the east of the Andes is one of the most striking phenomena I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... of Atlantis. In modern times we hardly seek for traces of the submerged continent; but even Mr. Grote is inclined to believe in the Egyptian poem of Solon of which there is no evidence in antiquity; while others, like Martin, discuss the Egyptian origin of the legend, or like M. de Humboldt, whom he quotes, are disposed to find in it a vestige of a widely-spread tradition. Others, adopting a different vein of reflection, regard the Island of Atlantis as the anticipation of a still greater island—the ...
— Critias • Plato

... us that Baron A. von Humboldt urges further search after this expedition in the Welsh records. He thinks the passage is in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various

... Pelhams, the Maxime de Trailles, are indispensable to the perfection of society. It is a great misfortune to a country to have no dandies, those supreme virtuosos of taste and distinction. Germany, which glories in Mozart and Kant, Goethe and Humboldt, the country of deep thinkers and brave soldiers, never had a great dandy, and so has remained behind England or France in all that constitutes the graceful side of life, the refinements of social intercourse, and the art of living. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... every modern writer who has investigated the history and former condition of Spanish America, either with the help of books or of personal observation of the present state of that part of our continent, shares the same fate. Robertson, Dupaix, Stephens, Humboldt, are all objects of Mr. Wilson's vituperation or contempt. To say that Alexander von Humboldt is probably the most learned man in Europe, and that Robert A. Wilson is undoubtedly one of the most ignorant men in America, would give but a slight notion of the contrast between them. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... and, full of people, were swallowed up as in a whirlpool. No fragments of these wrecks ever rose again to the surface; the water where the quay went down is now 600 feet deep. The area covered by this earthquake was very great. Humboldt says that a portion of the earth's surface, four times as great as the size of Europe, was simultaneously shaken. It extended from the Baltic to the West Indies, and from Canada to Algiers. At eight leagues from Morocco the ground opened ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... sanitarians. Hence the necessity for calling attention at the outset to an ample and manifest equivalent for the deadly dose of confined exhalations taken daily by all civilized men. We perceive that that dose is not lost, like the Humboldt River, in a "sink," but reappears, like the wide-sown grass, in a perennial and universal crop of diseases, almost numberless and ever increasing in number, peculiar to house-dwellers. The trail of these plagues stops nowhere else; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... available places are filled with portraits of great scientists and men of achievement, as well as with pictures of historic and scientific interest. Over the fireplace hangs a large photograph showing the Edison cement plant in its entire length, flanked on one end of the mantel by a bust of Humboldt, and on the other by a statuette of Sandow, the latter having been presented to Edison by the celebrated athlete after the visit he made to Orange to pose for the motion pictures in the earliest days of their development. On looking up under the second ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... first edition of this well known atlas, contains, among other maps, an ethnographic map of North America, made in 1845. It is based, as is stated, upon material derived from Gallatin, Humboldt, Clavigero, Hervas, Vater, and others. So far as the eastern part of the United States is concerned it is largely a duplication of Gallatin's map of 1836, while in the western region a certain amount of new ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell

... for both purposes combined. But the sense of smell is of extremely slight service, if any, even to the dark coloured races of men, in whom it is much more highly developed than in the white and civilised races. (36. The account given by Humboldt of the power of smell possessed by the natives of South America is well known, and has been confirmed by others. M. Houzeau ('Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales,' etc., tom. i. 1872, p. 91) asserts that he repeatedly made experiments, and proved that Negroes and Indians could recognise persons ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... of passion is not to be found in the works themselves, they at all events occasion the actor to lay greater stress on superficial brilliancy than on a profound knowledge of character [Footnote: See a treatise of M. Von Humboldt the elder, in Goethe's Propylaen, on the French acting, equally distinguished for a refined and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... stones into the water outside." Here, either a calabash on a long pole is used in drawing water, or a fence is planted. The natives eat the crocodile, but to us the idea of tasting the musky-scented, fishy-looking flesh carried the idea of cannibalism. Humboldt remarks, that in South America the alligators of some rivers are more dangerous than in others. Alligators differ from crocodiles in the fourth or canine tooth going into a hole or socket in the upper jaw, while ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... great Western trail ran on to California and Oregon. In the early thirties Bonneville, Walker, Kelley, and Wyeth successively essayed this Overland Trail by way of the Platte through the South Pass of the Rockies to the Humboldt, Snake, and Columbia rivers. From Independence on the Missouri this famous pathway led to Fort Laramie, a distance of 672 miles; another 800-mile climb brought the traveler through South Pass; and so, by way of Fort Bridger, Salt Lake, and Sutter's Fort, to San Francisco. The route, well ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... physician and friend of the imperial philosopher Marcus Aurelius. The Arabs gave laws in various branches of knowledge to those whom their arms had invaded, or the terror of their spreading dominion had reached, and the point from which they started was, as Humboldt acknowledges, "the study of medicine, by which they long ruled the Christian Schools," and to which they added the department of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Ideas on Archaeology (Dresden, 1811, pp. 20, 21), without, however, saying anything that we did not already know from Goetze. Still Boettiger rendered great and twofold service: first, as we shall see presently, because through him Alexander von Humboldt obtained some notice of the manuscript, and, second, because Boettiger's note, as he himself explains in the Dresden Anzeiger, No. 133, p. 5, 1832, induced Lord Kingsborough to have the ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas

... served equally to interpret all the allusions of poets and travellers; whether with Homer, on a spring morning, we sat down on the many-peaked Olympus, or, with Virgil and his compeers, roamed the Etrurian and Thessalian hills, or with Humboldt measured the more modern Andes and Teneriffe. Thus we spoke our mind to them, standing on ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... there were dozens conducted by hollow-eyed, gaunt men, drawn by few weak animals. Women trudged wearily, carrying children. And the tales they brought were terrible. They told us of thousands they had left behind in the great desert of the Humboldt Sink, fighting starvation, disease, and the loss of cattle. Women who had lost their husbands from the deadly cholera were staggering on without food or water, leading their children. The trail was lined with dead mules and cattle. Some said that five thousand ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... Cambridge, I read with care and profound interest Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative.' This work, and Sir J. Herschel's 'Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy,' stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science. No one or a dozen other books ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... purpose of exploring the natural history, amongst other things." His salary was 420 pounds a year, and he earned it by admirable service. Brown remained in Australia for two years after the discovery voyage, and his great Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae, which won the praise of Humboldt, is a classic monument to the extent and ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... I received from Paris was full of sympathy and congratulations on the termination of my laborious and perilous adventures; it was from a man already in possession of an European reputation, but whom I had never seen: M. de Humboldt, after what he had heard of my misfortunes, offered me his friendship. Such was the first origin of a connection which dates from nearly forty-two years back, without a single cloud ever ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... Humboldt, 'the first of travellers,' but not The last, if late accounts be accurate, Invented, by some name I have forgot, As well as the sublime discovery's date, An airy instrument, with which he sought To ascertain the atmospheric state, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... intimated to them his intention of honouring them with his company. Sir Moses went early in the morning of the following day to Somerset House to see the King of Prussia admitted as fellow of the Royal Society, together with Baron Alexander von Humboldt; and before two o'clock he and Lady Montefiore were at ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... descends in the northern hemisphere in April and May—and may it not be the atmospherical disturbances which accompany the autumnal equinox, that take up the microscopic organisms from the upper Orinoco and the great Amazonian basin for the showers of October?' Humboldt gives a striking picture of the region in question, and, if the phrase may be permitted, of its dust-producing capabilities; so that the origin of this light powder, as regards one locality, may be said to be ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

... of France to be guarded with the utmost care for a hundred years"; of Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams, the wise and heroic statesmen; of Washington, the perfect citizen; of Wellington, the perfect soldier; of Goethe, the all-knowing poet; of Humboldt, the encyclopaedia of science. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... dollar per head. By evening we were running across the continent on a bee line, and I sat for an hour on the rear platform of the rear car to enjoy the wonderful beauty of the sunset and the atmosphere. Far as one could see in the crystalline air there was nothing but desert. The jagged Humboldt ranges flaming in the sunset, with snow in their clefts, though forty-five miles off, looked within an easy canter. The bright metal track, purpling like all else in the cool distance, was all that linked one with ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... made at Schlossenfels, which included among its distinguished guests Humboldt and Prince Metternich. Next day the King and Queen of Prussia took leave of their visitors, still under heavy rain. The weather cleared afterwards for a time, however, and beautiful Bingen, with the rest of the Rhenish country, was seen ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... example, in the "The Sky" (5/2.), which seems to thrill with the ardent and comprehensive genius of a Humboldt, and admire the ease with which he surmounts all the difficulties and smooths the way for the vast voyage on which he conducts you, past the infinity of the suns and the stars in their millions, scintillating in the cold air ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed to write and ask a favor of you. Let your memory go back to your days in the Humboldt mines—'62-'63. You will remember, you and Clagett and Oliver and the old blacksmith Tillou lived in a lean-to which was half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp—strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... ministers. The Czar Alexander was attended by Count Nesselrode and Count Pozzo di Borgo; the Emperor Francis of Austria, by Metternich and Prince Esterhazy; the King of Prussia (Frederic William III.), by Count Bernstorff and Baron Humboldt. George IV. of Great Britain, and Louis XVIII. of France, being elderly and gouty, sent as their plenipotentiaries the Duke of Wellington and the Vicomte de Montmorenci, accompanied, and, finally, superseded by, the French ambassador, M. de ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron



Words linked to "Humboldt" :   philologist, philologue, Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt, naturalist, Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, natural scientist, Humboldt current



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