CARL RITTER THE GEOGRAPHER.*

Mn. GAGE has done a very noteworthy thing. In a biography

occupying less than 250 pages, a little book which can be read in an afternoon, he has let us into the inner life of a real German Professor, one of the typical sort, or rather of the sort supposed in England to be typical ; of a man, that is, six feet high, with red hair, and slightly eccentric manners, full of learning, but with little knowledge of the world ; simple to childishness, yet self- conscious as a flirt ; living for the most part as a dependent either on a patron or on government, yet haughtily independent in his function as instructor ; leading a life without incident, yet full of beauty and usefulness. We never remember to have read a book more full of human interest; for Mr. Gage has told the story of a great though uneventful career singularly well, without super- fluous words, yet with all the information needed ; with none of the regular biographer's idolatry of his hero, yet with a quiet insight and appreciativeness which guarantee the accuracy of his

account. We do not know if he was much indebted to his German authorities, for we have not read them, but he has succeeded in bringing out strongly the German peculiarities of his subject; his sel f- consciousness, his supreme belief in cultivation, which he seems to think would produce as well as develop moral qualities; the immense -space which friendship and associations of all kinds filled in his

life, the calm, laborious industry with which he set himself throughout life to " improve his mind" in a deliberate fashion, which a grown Englishman busied with external things rather than internal, apt to prefer the improvement of others to mere self-culture, instinctively would, but for the suave dignity which was Ritter's characteristic, consider just a little childish. The self-consciousness of the man is almost marvellous. The son of a family of professionals,—father a surgeon,—Carl was educated at Schnepfeuthal by the Salzmanns, on a "system" which Mr. Gage does not describe, but which was intended to secure ends widely different from those sought in the great English schools,—to breed scholars and men, but scholars of the learned kind, men very like -what the finest English women are, deeply informed, highly- principled, " unspotted " in mind, adepts in gymnastics, but ignorant and careless of the world, and liable to crotchets,—Ritter, for example, thinking it all his life slightly ignoble to drive to any place he could reach on foot, entirely forgetting that as man Jives but seventy years time is a possession to be edonomized. From Schnepfenthal he was sent, having been adopted as a de- pendent friend by Hollweg, then the great banker of Frankfort, to Halle, to finish his university education ; and there he formed .an acquaintance, among others, with a student named Spilleke, of -whom Ritter, still a mere lad, writes this description :—

" My friend [Spilleke] has an admirable character ; he is certainly one of the first of us young men in his command over the department which he has chosen; ho has, what I want a friend to have eminetly, line taste, a feeling for all that is noble and good, and quick sensibili- ties ; and yet he is not precisely such a friend as I should want to have with me my whole crooked life long. ` And why?' you say. Well, I hardly know. I can scarcely give a reason; or rather I can hardly -venture to trust myself with finding a cause; but I will say to you that there are some slight flaws, after all, in his character. In the acqulti- tion of knowledge, and in the cultivation of our minds, what perfect mutual understanding we have had ! and how much, how very much, we have enjoyed together ! We have read English and Italian poets together, and some of the great German classics. In knowledge, in judgment, in wit, in everything that we call capacity, he is far before me ; but when, in the course of our walks, it comes to open-hearted- mess, and when, in our division of time, or in our enjoyments, there are sacrifices to be made:--will you pardon the foolish frankness of your brother ?—I feel that I am the greater, the truer. I do not know that you understand me well enough to allow me to say this ; at any rate, I need not add a word to what the feeling that I must have a confidant for my thoughts has compelled me to write.'" An English lad might have felt all that, but he certainly never would have analyzed his feeling so carefully, nor have recognized so accurately the peculiar merit of his own disposition. Even if he had he would have felt reluctant to describe his feeling, have felt in describing it as if he were, so to speak, intellectually immodest.. From Halle he returned to the Hollweg family, to act as tutor to their two boys, and his view of his duty in that capacity is most characteristic. He wanted to make the lads, who were to be great bankers, and in a sense rulers, professors like himself, fought their mother, who had notions of dignity, and fretted

dreadfully because somehow his ducklings would take to the water, because, as he put it, the world would come between him and them :—

• Ths L(Ye of Carl Ritter. By W. L. Gap. London: Blackwood. " The children are a great comfort to me. Yet I should be happier in my work if I could transfer them to a locality where they could be entirely under my influence, and where the powerful adverse draughts from the outside world could not reach them."

"Up to the present time Philip's education has been the entire object of my life here; and must not everything which has any relation to what I am purposing and doing be interesting to me? I am almost compelled to confess that I have long been troubled because the pure, high aim which I have striven to reach has seemed unattainable. I have wished to preserve in my pupil his childlike innocence, his youth-, ful modesty, his simplicity, his warmth of feeling, and his purity of heart. These I have tried to guard by making my own example what it should be, by calling his attention to nature, by instructing him in virtue, by awakening his interest in knowledge ; but I own I have not perfectly succeeded in protecting him against the temptations of the outward world. My caution has not been a match against the cunning, and the false glitter, and the folly of the world around. That world of innocence in which my pupil has hitherto lived must be given up for the future, and the world as it is must take its place. He must become over-curious, haughty, wise beyond his years—in a word, he will become like the people by whom he is surrounded, and who will unconsciously be his chief examples. I cannot change that which is wholly outside of my reach, and-I must acknowledge the existence of what is good and what is bad in giving my instructions. I must tell him of all the follies and the ungoverned passions which surround him, and I must call everything by its right name. How hard this will be for me to do I can tell no one."

His pupils grew up good scholars and good men, but we question if they quite fulfilled their father's hopes,—whether they would not have lived more useful, if not worthier lives, if Ritter had not at last succeeded in forcing the family to allow him to carry them off into seclusion. There was a little vanity, though of the good kind, and a little offended vanity, too, in his contempt for external life. Thus be writes to his mother :—" I have just come from a great party which is given here every Wednesday. To the first two which were held after my arrival I did not go, because I was not invited ; the third time I went without invitation ; and to- day again, the fourth time, although I would rather have been bidden to stay away than requested to come. But I felt that I owed it to my own place ; I felt that I must make this claim at the outset, lest my rights might be encroached upon in the future; I felt also that I must become acquainted with the friends of the family ; and yet I would far rather have remained in my own quiet room. How little, how little I feel myself to be in this fine society ! I am no politician ; I hold it beneath my dignity to waste my time in trifling with young girls ; I do not play cards ; and yet, creeping, as it were, up to my room, and thinking how

small an object I am, I feel that I am far greater than many of the gentlemen who now, at twelve o'clock, are playing !'hombre in

the room below.' " It was characteristic of such a nature that though he made himself minutely familiar with the French lan- guage and literature he never could enjoy either, deliberately pre- ferring both the Italian, which has scarcely a prose literature at all in comparison, and the Spanish.

All this time, and indeed from childhood, he was prose- cuting his geographical studies, tempted thereto originally by a mechanical skill in sketching and drawing maps,—skill which would have made him a great artist, but for a want of originating power,—and he had formed a really lofty idea of the scope of his favourite pursuit : — My aim has not

been merely to collect and arrange a larger mass of materials than any predecessor, but to trace the general laws which under- lie all the diversity of nature, to show their connection with every fact taken singly, and to indicate on a purely historical field the perfect unity and harmony which exist in the apparent diversity

and caprice which prevail on the globe, and which seem most marked in the"muitual relations of nature and man. Out of this course of study there springs the science of physical geography, in which are to be traced all the laws and conditions under whose influence the great diversity in things, nations, and individuals, first springs into existence, and undergoes all its subsequent modi- fications."' During seven years' residence at Gdttingen he was inces- santlylabouring athisgeographicalresearches, and when he accepted the Chair of History at Frankfort he believed he had made through his geographical studies some great historical discoveries. He re- tained, however, at once his simplicity and self-consciousness, and Mr. Gage publishes some letters from him to his betrothed which, admirable as they are in their deep affection and deeper piety, still betray both qualities. We must, however, quote one which betrays neither, as giving an insight into the grave wisdom towards which the man was growing :—

" 'Yon speak of ideals ; but do not try to form them, my love. They are of human origin ; they have no permanent character—nothing which rises above the mind that conceives them, even although they may seem Titanically great to ns, and although poets may extol them in never so glowing verses. What we must do is to make the actual possibilities of life our ideal; it lies in human power not to construct the A godlike, but to recognize it, and thus to gain it. Then' what is actual becomes finer than any ideal; and one finds that it is a great art to make what is present before the eye as noble and beautiful as are our dreams.' "

The single defect of that sentence is the momentary forgetfulness that an ideal may be divine, forgetfulness quite unlike Ritter's habit of mind, which was intensely devout towards Christ.

At the age of forty he took up his residence finally in Berlin, and there he lived forty years, publishing for recreation works on geography absolutely unique in their depth and variety of their learning, but working mainly as an instructor. His geographical .classes were at first but thinly attended, but as the extraordinary dignity and sweetness of his character began to be perceived, students thronged his hall till his lectures were often delivered to an audience of three hundred. Involved and tedious as his writ- ings are, his spoken lectures were simple and intelligible, and the descriptive portions full of a pictorial eloquence, mainly derived, it would seem, from his incesaanttravel, and habit of regarding all scenes with the eye of a topographical artist, of a man who can catch in an instant and reproduce every feature of a landscape. It was scarcely, however, his eloquence which drew such crowds to his feet, but a consciousness that here was a truly noble nature, a man strictly scientific and yet Christian, self-conscious and yet modest, full of learning, and full also of benevolence and noble feeling. His bearing greatly assisted to strengthen his influence over the o rdinary mind. " He was n tall, finely proportioned man, with

▪ noble head, a most sincere and earnest manner, yet unusually

.quiet and simple. His dress was peculiar when an old man, and no one who frequented the famous Linden Avenue of Berlin would fail to notice that tall and venerable figure, clad in a long blue cloak and broad-rimmed hat, both half a century out of date. He used to wear a large rolling collar, like that worn with us in days long gone by ; and that, together. with the huge born spec- tacles, gave him a rusticity of appearance and a friendliness which captivated every one who knew his learning, his talents, and his heart." His writings are pervaded by a tone of deep piety, of heartfelt belief in the personal government of God. and the reality of the kingdom of Christ, which greatly extended his in- fluence, and was indeed the main source of strength in his character. He died a very old man on the 29th Septembm., 1859, with his grand work on the Geography of the Earth scarcely half 'completed,—its scale being as gigantic as if he expected to live a 'thousand years, and most of the volumes unreadable, —leaving behind him the impression that in him all that is noble and useful in the German Professor culminated ; that among men who live the inner life, and think self-culture nobler than external effort, who believe education to be an originating as well as a guiding force, and learning an end as well as a means, he was, perhaps, the noblest man. Englishmen may study his life with all the more pleasure because so different to that which they themselves lead, so much richer in associations, in friendships, in conscious additions to the character and the mental powers, and so much poorer in effective and permanent work. The German life, we feel assured, is the happier of the two, but we doubt what Mr. Gage appears to believe, that it is also the nobler. There is some- thing of selfishness in this perpetual introversion of the thought, something of egoism in this constant test of every study, and pursuit, and change of circumstance by its effect on my life, my character, my soul, a limit to the horizon of thought and effort -which seems to us artificial, and, therefore, injurious. We should have expected Ritter to be careless of politics, proud of personal dis- tinction, and so Mr. Gage describes him. Only once, when Napoleon was retreating from Germany, could he interest himself in public 'affairs ; and he printed on the title-page of his books nearly half a page of literary titles. Mr. Gage says there was no vanity in this, and polisibly it was only self-consciousness ; but it was like the man 'who through a long life of noble aims and noble work never 'forgot to measure his advance, to count the steps he had made 'towards the realization of his ideal.