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The Mexican government has, unfortunately, followed Humboldt's advice in some respects. Cotton goods, woollens, and hardware are thus protected. We may sum up the statistics of the Mexican cotton-manufacture in a rough way thus, taking merely into question the coarse cotton cloth called manta, and used principally by the Indians.
In such preparation for work lies an open secret of greatness. In the little cemetery at Tegel, which has now no vacant place, Humboldt's epitaph speaks to the living. His virtues and his faults are left to the judgment of the Omniscient. In the gallery of her great men Germany places the colossal figure of Humboldt beside that of Goethe.
Moreover, of scattered papers, those of the Royal Society's Catalogue, which antedate his arrival in this country, are more than threescore and ten. He had help, indeed; but the more he had, the more he enlarged and diversified his tasks; Humboldt's sound advice about his zoölogical undertakings being no more heeded than his fulminations against the glacial theory.
Although imperfect, it explains Humboldt's answer, which is not only interesting in itself, but throws light on Agassiz's work at this period. NEUCHATEL, January 27, 1833. . . .A thousand thanks for your last most welcome letter. I can hardly tell you what pleasure it gave me, or how I am cheered and stimulated to new activity by intercourse with you on so intimate a footing.
It may be instructive to such believers in system to compare Humboldt's narrative of the cultivation shown by the great Colonial Universities of Mexico, Quito, and Lima, of the pleasing Creole society that entertained him, and the peaceful quiet and security he noticed throughout country, with the relations of modern travellers or newspaper-correspondents who visit those semi-barbarous regions.
But nothing is less certain, and Humboldt's opinion has hitherto appeared to the best writers to offer the largest amount of probability. Americus Vespucius made three other voyages. At the close of this latter year, Giuliano Bartholomeo di Giocondo induced Vespucius to enter the service of Emmanuel, King of Portugal, and he accomplished two more voyages at the expense of his new master.
Humboldt's explanation is, that the Caribs, being the cleverest and strongest Indians, are also the most imaginative; and therefore, being fallen children of Adam, the greatest liars; and that they invented both El Dorado and the dog-heads out of pure wickedness. Be it so.
After Locke's time the negative view of the functions of Government gradually grew in strength, until it obtained systematic and able expression in Wilhelm von Humboldt's "Ideen," the essence of which is the denial that the State has a right to be anything more than chief policeman.
"'If there were beings who lived in the depths & the earth, and could emerge through the open fissures, and could suddenly behold the earth, the sea, and the: vault of heaven " "But you you impostor," cried Mr. Lincoln, interrupting, "you're giving us Humboldt's Cosmos." Mr. Hill owned up, laughing. It is remarkable how soon we accustom ourselves to a strange situation.
In the next thirty years, the business increased rapidly, and Humboldt estimates the total arrivals, openly entered and smuggled in, from 1521 to 1820, as 372,449. Mr. J.S. Thrasher, in a translation of Humboldt's work, issued in 1856, added a footnote showing the arrivals up to 1854 as 644,000. A British official authority, at the same period, gives the total as a little less than 500,000.
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