ame. It is a total mistake to say that it is in
vain to attempt describing such scenes; that is the same mistake as
was formerly committed by pacific academical historians, who said it
was useless to attempt painting a battle, for they were all like each
other. How like they really are to each other, has been shown by
Colonel Napier and many other modern historians. We question if even
the sight of the rapids of the Orinoco would make so vivid an
impression on the imagination, as Humboldt's inimitable description;
or a journey over the Pampas or the Andes, convey a clearer or more
distinct idea of their opposite features than what has been derived
from his brilliant pencil. It is the same with all the other scenes in
nature. Description, if done by a masterly hand, can, to an
intelligent mind, convey as vivid an idea as reality. What is wanting
is the enthusiasm which warms at the perception of the sublime and the
beautiful, the poetic mind which seizes as by inspiration its
characteristic features, and the pictorial eye which discerns the
appearances they exhibit, and by referring to images known to all,
succeeds in causing them to be generally felt by the readers.

With all Humboldt's great and transcendent merits, he is a child of
Adam, and therefore not without his faults. The principal of these is
the want of arrangement. His travels are put together without any
proper method; there is a great want of indexes and tables of
contents; it is scarcely possible, except by looking over the whole,
to find any passage you want. This is a fault which, in a person of
his accurate and scientific mind, is very surprising, and the more
inexcusable that it could so easily be remedied by mechanical
industry, or the aid of compilers and index-makers. But akin to this,
is another fault of a more irremediable kind, as it originates in the
varied excellences of the author, and the vast store of information on
many different subjects which he brings to bear on the subject of his
travels. He has so many topics of which he is master himself, that he
forgets with how few, comparatively, his readers are familiar; he sees
so many objects of enquiry--physical, moral, and political--in the
countries which he visits, that he becomes insensible to the fact,
that though each probably possesses a certain degree of interest to
each reader, yet it is scarcely possible to find one to whom, as to
himself, they are _all alike_ the object of eager sol