WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
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 52: 50. ARAGO TO HUMBOLDT.
By Alexander von Humboldt
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

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.

50.
ARAGO TO HUMBOLDT.

Paris, March 12th, 1841.

I must not, I will not, believe that you asked me seriously whether I should look forward to your journey to Paris with pleasure. Could it be that you ever doubted my invariable attachment? Be it known to you that I should consider the slightest doubt upon this point a most cruel offence. Beyond the immediate circle of my own family you are, without comparison, the person whom, of all others, I love the most dearly. But you must be resigned to the duties of this position, as you are of my friends the only one to whom I would look in my difficulties.

I am truly happy in the anticipation of spending some evenings with him to whom I am indebted for my taste in meteorology and physics. There will be a bed for you at the Observatory.

Poor Savary is in a lamentable state. The physician assures me that the disease of his lungs leaves no hope. What a calamity!

You will arrive at Paris at the opening of my course of astronomy. My new amphitheatre is got up with a profligate luxury.

I am charmed with the news of poor Sheiffer’s[26] recovery (is it true?). Your good heart has always secured you a numerous family.

Adieu, best of friends. My attachment to you will only cease with my life.

Fr. Arago.
Note of Humboldt.—I had asked whether he thought it possible that the difference of our political wishes [war with Germany] might disturb our intercourse.
Note of Humboldt.—To his highly gifted friend, Varnhagen von Ense, with the most earnest request to avoid all publication of this autograph before Arago’s death.
A. Humboldt.