COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 | Page 2

lapse of nearly half a century, it remains, and probably ever will remain, incomplete.
In the year 1828, when the greatest portion of his literary labor had been accomplished, he undertook a scientific journey to Siberia, under the special protection of the Russian government. In this journey -- a journey for which he had prepared himself by a course of study unparalleled in the history of travel -- he was accompanied by two companions hardly less distinguished than himself, Ehrenberg and Gustav Rose, and p 5 the results obtained during their expedition are recorded by our author in his 'Fragments Asiatiques', and in his 'Asie Centrale', and by Rose in his 'Reise nach dem Oural'. If the 'Asie Centrale' had been his only work, constituting, as it does, an epitome of all the knowledge acquired by himself and by former travelers on the physical geography of Northern and Central Asia, that work alone would have sufficed to form a reputation of the highest order.
I proceed to offer a few remarks on the work of which I now present a new translation to the English public, a work intended by its author "to embrace a summary of physical knowledge, as connected with a delineation of the material universe."
The idea of such a physical description of the universe had, it appears, been present to his mind from a very early epoch. It was a work which he felt he must accomplish, and he devoted almost a lifetime to the accumulation of materials for it. For almost half a century it had occupied his thoughts; and at length, in the evening of life, he felt himself rich enough in the accumulation of thought, travel, reading, and experimental research, to reduce into form and reality the undefined vision that has so long floated before him. The work, when completed, will form three volumes. The 'first' volume comprises a sketch of all that is at present known of the physical phenomena of the universe; the 'second' comprehends two distinct parts, the first of which treats of the incitements to the study of nature, afforded in descriptive poetry, landscape painting, and the cultivation of exotic plants; while the second and larger part enters into the consideration of the different epochs in the progress of discovery and of the corresponding stages of advance in human civilization. The 'third' volume, the publication of which, as M. Humboldt himself informs me in a letter addressed to my learned friend and publisher, Mr. H. G. Bohn, "has been somewhat delayed, owing to the present state of public affairs, will comprise the special and scientific development of the great Picture of Nature p 6 Each of the three parts of the 'Cosmos' is therefore, to a certain extent, distinct in its object, and may be considered complete in itself. We can not better terminate this brief notice than in the words of one of the most eminent philosophers of our own country, that, "should the conclusion correspond (as we doubt not) with these beginnings, a work will have been accomplished every way worthy of the author's fame, and a crowning laurel added to that wreath with which Europe will always delight to surround the name of Alexander von Humboldt."
In venturing to appear before the English public as the interpreter of "the great work of our age,"* I have been encouraged by the assistance of many kind literary and scientific friends, and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity of expressing my deep obligations to Mr. Brooke, Dr. Day, Professor Edward Forbes, Mr. Hind, Mr. Glaisher, Dr. Percy, and Mr. Ronalds, for the valuable aid they have afforded me.
[footnote] *The expression applied to the Cosmos by the learned Bunsen, in his late Report on Ethnology, in the 'Report of the British Association for' 1847, p. 265.
It would be scarcely right to conclude these remarks without a reference to the translations that have preceded mine. The translation executed by Mrs. Sabine is singularly accurate and elegant. The other translation is remarkable for the opposite qualities, and may therefore be passed over in silence. The present volumes differ from those of Mrs. Sabine in having all the foreign measures converted into corresponding English terms, in being published at considerably less than one third of the price, and in being a translation of the entire work, for I have not conceived myself justified in omitting passages, sometimes amounting to pages, simply because they might be deemed slightly obnoxious to our national prejudices.
p 7 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. -------------------
In the late evening of an active life I offer to the German public a work, whose undefined image has floated before my mind for almost half a century. I have frequently looked upon its completion as impracticable, but as often as I have been disposed to relinquish the undertaking, I