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 137: 131. PRINCE ALBERT TO HUMBOLDT.

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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.

131.
PRINCE ALBERT TO HUMBOLDT.

Windsor Castle, February 17th, 1847.

My dear Baron:

I have been constantly impressed while gradually reading the first volume of your “Kosmos” with my desire to thank you for the high intellectual enjoyment, its study has afforded me.

I am really unable to give you an authoritative judgment on this excellent work, which I received from your hands, and to atone in some measure for this defect, as well as to give some substantial character to the expression of my thanks, I present you the accompanying work (Catherwood’s Views in Central America). It may serve as an appendix to your own great work on Spanish America, and thus become worthy of your attention. I do not dare to express the intense anxiety with which I look forward to the appearance of the second volume of “Kosmos.” May that Heaven, whose roving oceans of light and sidereal terraces you have so ably described, be pleased to preserve you to your country, to the world, and to “Kosmos” itself, for many years, in undisturbed vigor of mind and body. This is the sincere wish of your

Very devoted,

Albert.