360 MEMOIR OF LEOPOLD VON BUCH. 



geuius of method the charm of eloquence aud the seductiveness of good nature, 

 found himself hajipy in an opportunity of communicating to a quick and pene- 

 trating intellect the treasures of knowledge which had been accumulated by 

 long years of meditation and observation, and -which a disinclination for Avriting,* 

 only to be accovmted for by his happy facility of speech, left him no other 

 means of imparting. 



About the same period ^yith Von Buch, there arrived at the school of Freyberg 

 several young men Avith whom he naturally entered into relations of friendship. 

 These attachments, so easily contracted in youth, so often dissolved amid the 

 conflicts of life, were with him as enduring as life itself. No simil^irity of aims 

 ever disturbed the uniformity of his regard for Charles Fnesleben,t and through- 

 out his whole career his love and admiration for Alexander Yon Humboldt, who 

 to a less candid nature might have seemed a dangerous rival, were as unre- 

 stricted as they were disinterested. 



At eighteen years of age he made a first trial of his strength by publishing a 

 icscriptlvc minercdog]j,\ from the motto of which we learn the boldness of his 

 aspirations : "What is new," he says, "extends, what is great exalts, the circle 

 of our observation." Soliciting, two years after, employment in the service of 

 mines, he addressed to the Minister Heinitz a second essay, equally evincing 

 the early penetration of his intellect : "What I have sought to prove," he says, 

 •'is the jjossibility of finding constant laws according to Avhich the formation of 

 crystals takes place." A royal scholarship, with a commission for directing the 

 working of the mines, was speedily conferred on him, and imposed engagements 

 whose restraints %c submitted to for three years. But, independent in spirit and 

 in fortune, with a rich future before him, knowing as yet no explanation of the 

 great phenomena of the globe but those which the school of Freyberg admitted, 

 and too clear-sighted to content himself with these, he threw aside the shackles 

 of the artificial world with the badge of the engineer and resumed his liberty. 

 'J'his fortunate breach of discipline, the first awakening of genius, was silently 

 connived at by government, to the subsequent advantage of both parties. 



Of the disciples of Werncr§ it has been said, " that they dispersed them- 

 selves through all countries, from pole to pole, in order to interrogate nature 

 in the name of their master." Von Buch was pre-eminently one of those inde- 

 fatigable interrogators of natm-e. He set out in 1797, directing his course 

 towards the Alps, wandered for some time in the mountainous districts of Styria, 

 passed a winter at Salzbourg,|| and then turned his steps towards Italy. He 

 wished to visit the places where violent commotions have ruptured the crust of 

 the earth and opened it, according to his own expression, to the eyes of observers. 

 It was here, however, that his confidence in the infallibility of his school was 

 destined speedily to be shaken. 



From Perugino, the young Neptunian already writes : " Here the different 

 species of rocks seem to have been overwhelmed by chaos itself. I find the 

 beds of porphyry above the secondary limestone, and the micaceous schists 

 above the porphyry. Does not all this threaten with ruin the fine systems 

 which determine the epoch of formations?" In a series of letters to his friend 



* Tlie -writings left us by Werner are few aud very sliort : Treatise on the characters of 

 iiniierah, (J774, ) a work in which the spirit of Liuuo3us is predominant; Classification and 

 description of mountains, (1787;) Ncio theory of the formation of mineral and metallic veins, 

 ( ]79l,) a work of a high order, in which tlie geuius of observation and method is everywhere 

 visible. 



iJohan Karl Friesleben, (died 1846,) captain of mines at Freyberg, and known by his geo- 

 logical writings on the gypsum of the Val-canaria, Formations of Thuringia, Sfc. 



t Materiaux pour une description mineralogique de la contrec dc Carlsbad. Freyberg, 



^ See the excellent work of d'Aubuisson de Voisins ; Traite de geognosie, etc., 1819. 

 II A sojourn shared by his friend Humboldt, and memorable for the experiments of the latter 

 on meteorology and eudiometry. 



