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 230: 220. VARNHAGEN 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.

220.
VARNHAGEN TO HUMBOLDT.

Berlin, February 19th, 1858.

You see, dear friend, that in spite of many little cavils of Mr. d’Avezac, who has learned to quote from Malte-Brun, your cousin does you much honor.

But it is incomprehensible that Mr. d’Avezac knows nothing at all of the map of Juan de la Cose, of 1500, published by me in 1830, six years before the death of Colon, and of a work in large quarto, under the title “Geschichte des Seefahrers Ritter Martin Behaim, von W. Ghillany and Alex. Humboldt, 1853,” where the origin of the name of “America” is discussed.

A. Ht.

The ravages of a single night. The noble, youthful old man, Vecchio della Montagna.

Accompanying the book, “Considerations Géographiques sur l’Histoire du Brézil, Examen critique d’une nouvelle histoire générale du Brézil, par M. Francois Adolphe de Varnhagen. Rapport fait par M. d’Avezac, Paris, 1857–58.”