Besides, he was personally acquainted with the great founders of my science, Thomas Young and Francois Champollion, and had obtained an insight into deciphering the hieroglyphics.

He knew all the results of the investigations, and expressed an opinion concerning them.

Without having entered deeply into details he often hit the nail on the head.

I doubt whether he had ever held in his hand a book on these subjects, but he had listened to the answers given by others to his skilful questions with the same keen attention that he bestowed on mine, and the gift of comprehension peculiar to him enabled him to rapidly shape what he heard into a distinctly outlined picture.

Therefore he must have seemed to laymen a very compendium of science, yet he never used this faculty to dazzle others or give himself the appearance of erudition.
"Man cannot be God," he wrote--I am quoting from a letter received the day after his visit--"yet 'to be like unto God' need not remain a mere theological phrase to the aspirant.