Sunday, Feb. 21st, 1847.

I do not recollect showing you a very beautiful letter of my brother, on the death of Schiller, dated “Rome, 1805.” It was discovered but lately, and will be published in the next volume of his works. I inclose a very amiable letter from Prince Metternich, received this week, also a stiff and unmeaning one from Prince Albert. Prince Metternich has published, at his own cost, a splendid description of his mineralogical collection at Koenigswart, having probably in view his election to the Presidency of the new Academy instead of Kolowrat. At the special request of Prince Albert I left a copy of Kosmos on his desk at Stolzenfels. He had the civility not to thank me. The “blackbird”[[51]] has improved his politeness in the present instance, and besides, he makes me talk of “roving oceans of light” and “sidereal terraces”—a Coburg version of my text, quite English—from Windsor, where terraces abound. In Kosmos I speak once of the “starry carpet,” page 159, in explaining the open spaces between the stars. He presents me a work upon “Mexican Monuments,” a copy of which I myself had purchased two years ago. A splendid edition of Lord Byron would have been in better taste. It is also strange that he does not mention “Queen Victoria.” Possibly my “Book of Nature” is not sufficiently Christian for her Majesty. You see that I am a severe critic of “princely epistles.”

Please return Metternich and Albert soon, as I have not yet replied to them; also Wilhelm’s letter at your leisure—it is the only copy I have. I gave the original to Schlesier, who was very anxious to possess something from my brother’s hand.

With old attachment, yours,

A. v. Humboldt.

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.