KARL WILHELM VON, a distinguished statesman and philologist, and the elder brother of the illustrious traveller and naturalist, was born at Potsdam, June 22, 1767. His father, who at the time of his birth, was chamberlain to the Princess Elizabeth of Prussia, was a man of wealth, and was thus able to give his sons the best education that money could procure. He trained them at home until they were of age to begin independent study; he then sent them to the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, which they soon exchanged for that of Göttingen. It was now that the path of the brothers began to diverge. The younger devoted himself to the study of nature; the elder found his sphere in law, the philosophy of language, and ancient literature. In the number of his friends Wilhelm von Humboldt began at this time to reckon the illustrious men who have created the literature of modern Germany. To Schiller he was especially attracted, and their correspondence from 1793 to 1803 (published at Stuttgart in 1830) shows on what terms of esteem and affection the friendship was maintained on both sides. His intimacy with Goethe gave birth to his famous critique on the Hermann and Dorothea of that poet, in which he gave to the world his profound discussions on the laws of epic poetry in general. Marrying in 1791, Humboldt spent the early years of his wedded life in the strictest seclusion, contributing occasional essays to the periodicals, chiefly on his contemporaries. These were reprinted in a collective form at Berlin in 1799. In the following year he was made Prussian minister at the Papal Court, and his residence at Rome gave a strong impulse to the classical bent of his tastes and studies. On his return home in 1808 he was made minister of public instruction. Unable to give effect to his views in this capacity, he retired altogether from public life for two years, and it was with some difficulty that at the end of that time he could be persuaded to go as ambassador to Vienna. For the next few years he was engaged in all the great diplomatic transactions consequent on the wars of Napoleon—Prague, Châtillon (where, along with the chancellor, Hardenberg, he signed the capitulation of Paris), Vienna, and Frankfort. It was he too who in 1815 signed the treaty by which Saxony was compelled to abandon to Prussia a large portion of her territory. When the great European war came to an end, he was sent as ambassador-extraordinary to London; in 1818 he took part in the deliberations of the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. On his return to Berlin he found the tone of political feeling so little consonant to his ideas and his hopes that he retired from public life altogether, and, dividing his time between his estate of Tegel and the town of Berlin, lived entirely for literature. He died April 8, 1835. His works, which are very numerous, range over a wide field, and display the rich endowments and versatility of his mind. But his best chances of fame rest on his philological works, and especially on his researches into the Basque, Sanscrit, and Malay tongues. At the time of his death he had nearly finished two important treatises; one on the languages of the Eastern Archipelago, derived from the Sanscrit, and the other on the philosophy of language. All the works essential to his fame have been recently collected by his brother Alexander, assisted by the famous Brandes.