MEMOIR OP WERNER. 37 



under a hundred others in the house of Werner 

 To carry this matter to the extremity, he did not 

 eren reply to this Academy when it placed him on 

 the list of its eight foreign associates, which is adorn- 

 ed with all the great names of which Europe can 

 boast for more than a century ; and perhaps he did 

 not even know that this honour had been confeiTed 

 on him, unless he happened to learn it from some 

 almanack. 



But we may well pardon him, when we learn, 

 that, about this same period, an express sent to him 

 by his sister from Dresden, was obliged to wait two 

 months at an inn, and at his expense, before a simple 

 signature could be obtained to a paper relating to 

 some urgent family business. 



This insurmountable antipathy to writing seemed 

 the more unaccountable, as it caused him lo infringe 

 the laws of etiquette, which, next to his studies, was 

 the subject that affected him most. In eveiy thing 

 else, he is said to have observed the slightest cour- 

 tesies of social life with as much punctuality as he 

 attended to the varieties of minerals. This spirit of 

 formality, which was preserved in Germany for a 

 longer time than any where else, and in Saxony 

 longer than in any other part of Germany, was par- 

 ticularly remarkable in him, apparently because it 

 seemed in his eyes a kind of method. He delibe- 

 rated about the arrangement of a dinner with as 

 much gravity as about the arrangement of his library 

 or cabinet. 



