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Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt cover

Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt

Chapter 136: 130. METTERNICH TO HUMBOLDT.
By Alexander von Humboldt
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Essays, Letters & SpeechesGerman LiteratureHistory - Modern (1750+)

About This Book

A curated correspondence collects letters from Alexander von Humboldt to his friend and confidant Varnhagen von Ense, supplemented by diary excerpts and letters from other contemporaries. The missives blend personal friendship with professional exchange, discussing scientific observations, lectures, manuscripts, travels, and reactions to peers and events. Editorial apparatus preserves original phrasing and provides contextual notes and extracts that illuminate relationships and chronology. The selection highlights the writer’s methods of observation, precise descriptive habits, and modes of intellectual collaboration. Together the documents form a compact portrait of an engaged scholar whose private reflections and public endeavors intersect across a wide range of topics.

130.
METTERNICH TO HUMBOLDT.

Vienna, February, 1847.
My dear Baron:

I will begin this letter by congratulating you upon the new decoration, which the King has lately conferred upon you. The “Eagle” under whose wing—sub umbra alarum—you have executed so much will be a noble decoration on your breast. Suum cuique!

Now to what I wish to say further. You know, that I am no savan and that I have no pretension to be one; but notwithstanding this, you know that I am the friend of science, and in that capacity have furnished the means to some savans of publishing the little work of which I enclose the first copy to you. I hope you will approve of its execution. I think I am at the present the owner of the most complete collection of monuments[52] now existing of an epoch of which I cannot pretend to fix the age—and of which the “Gossau” conceals countless numbers. History written by man presents but an insignificant point when compared to that of which nature supplies the material. It was not I who christened one of the Ammonites after me—it is the doing of the editors of the opuscule.—I am, however, quite sure that neither my name nor even that of Ammon was known when my godson was alive.

Thousand sincere homages, my dear Baron,
Metternich.