637 



WERNER, ABRAHAM GOTTLOB. 



WERNER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG. 



638 



throughout Europe as the first geologist and mineralogist of the day, 

 and was looked upon as the founder and author of mineralogy as a 

 science. His fame was not so much acquired through his writings as 

 by means of his lectures, for we have seen that some of his principal 

 views were only promulgated in this channel. He was an admirable 

 lecturer. One of his pupils describes his appearance in 1799 as very 

 remarkable and striking at the first interview. He was middle-sized, 

 and broad shouldered ; his round and friendly countenance did not at 

 first sight promise much, but when he began to speak, he at once 

 commanded the most marked attention. His eye was full of fire and 

 animation, his voice from its high tone was sometimes sharp, but 

 every word was well-weighed ; a cautious clearness and the most 

 marked decision in the views he expressed were apparent in all that 

 he said. With, all this there was united a good feeling which irresis- 

 tibly won every heart. In mineralo'gical investigations his discrimiua- 

 tion of the most delicate distinctions was remarkable. In recognising 

 and exhibiting these, his whole demeanour presented a combination 

 of earnestness and assured conviction. Every single obscurity annoyed 

 him, and he almost compelled his hearers to distinguish with the 

 greatest possible certainty the most trivial variations in the mixtures 

 of colours occurring in minerals, all the characters of which were 

 classified with extreme minuteness, and every instance of deviation 

 from his arrangement and every case of doubt, vexed and annoyed him. 

 Although he employed no mathematical formulae in the arrangement of 

 his crystals, afterwards so successfully adopted by Hauy, yet the crystal- 

 line structure, the number of cleavages, and their relative position 

 were materials in Werner's classification. Whoever, under his instruc- 

 tion, undertook a mountain expedition, received an extremely minute 

 plan according to which he was to make his observations. Every 

 deviation, even the slightest, from the rules thus laid down, and every 

 neglect of any portion of them, was severely blamed. It was necessary 

 that he who wished to derive advantage from Werner's instruction, 

 should give himself up to his master, for the whole system was so 

 intimately linked together, and the various elements of discrimination 

 in mineralogy were so closely united with the mode of observation in 

 geology, that the disturbance of any of them rendered all the others 

 uncertain and doubtful. (Professor StefTens, ' Was ich Erlebte.') 



He considered minerals under their chemical, economical, and even 

 geographical aspects, and he arranged his collections under these 

 different modes of treating the subject. He showed or attempted to 

 show the influence of the mineral composition of rocks upon the 

 habits, history, and even moral qualities of nation?, and it may there- 

 fore be easily seen that his lectures had some points of interest even 

 for the coldest minds. (Cuvier, ' Biographie Universelle.') He asso- 

 ciated everything with his favourite science, and in his excursive 

 lectures he pointed out all the economical uses of minerals, and their 

 application to medicine ; the. influence of the mineral composition of 

 rocks upon the soil; and of the soil upon the resources, wealth, and 

 civilisation of man. The vast sandy plains of Turtary and Africa, he 

 would say, retained their inhabitants in the shape of wandering 

 shepherds ; the granitic mountains and the low calcareous and alluvial 

 plains gave rise to different manners, degrees of wealth, and intelli- 

 gence. The history even of languages, and the migration of tribes, 

 had been determined by the direction of particular strata. The 

 qualities of certain stones used in building would lead him to descant 

 on the architecture of different ages and nations ; and the physical 

 geography of a country frequently invited him to treat of military 

 tactics. The charm of his manner/s and his eloquence kindled enthu- 

 siasm in the minds of his pupils ; and many who had intended at first 

 only to acquire a slight knowledge of mineralogy, when they had once 

 heard him, devoted themselves to it as the business of their lives. 

 (Cuvier, ' Eloge de Werner ; ' Lyell, ' Principles of Geology,' vol. i.) 



This extended and popular treatment of the science attracted some, 

 while others to whom the love of science for science sake was not a 

 sufficient inducement, became his pupils from the connection that 

 his lectures, from the situation he filled, necessarily had with mining. 

 Among his pupils or attendants on his lectures may be enumerated 

 Alexander Humboldt, Von Buch, D'Aubuisson, Jameson, Brocchi, 

 Napione, Freisleben, Raumer, Englehart, Karsten, Mohs, Herc'er, 

 Wiedemann, Emmerling, Reuss, Steffens, Breithaupt, Esmark, Wad 

 (Denmark), D'Andrada (Brazil), and Elbyar (Spanish Mexico). In 

 consequence of Werner writing so little, and his lectures not being 

 preserved, it is to the works of many of these pupils that recourse 

 must be had to acquire a perfect acquaintance with the details of their 

 preceptor's views, and the gradual extension of his theories and dis- 

 coveries. That Werner's powers of external discrimination were 

 extremely acute, we have seen in speaking of him as a mineralogist, 

 and his talent and tendency for classifying were in his rnineralogical 

 studies fully fed by an abundant store of observation ; but when he 

 came to apply this methodising power to geology, the love of system, 

 so fostered, appears to have been too strong for the collection of facts 

 he bad to deal with. 



To return to the biography of Werner. In 1302 he visited Paris, 

 and was received with great honour by the scientific and learned 

 bodies. The Academy of Sciences elected him one of their eight 

 foreign associates ; and the leaders of the French republic sent him a 

 diploma as ' Citoyen,' an honour which somewhat perplexed Werner, 

 as he was a loyal Saxon, and firmly attached to his prince. Werner 



was so devoted to his country that he never would enter into any 

 other service, although the most tempting offers were repeatedly 

 made to him. 



Werner suffered for many years uninterruptedly from a stomach 

 complaint. The distresses of his country, consequent upon its being 

 made the theatre of the campaign of 1813, seem to have preyed upon 

 his mind, increased his malady, and produced a complication of 

 diseases from which he never rallied. In 1817 be went to Dresden, 

 in the hope of obtaining some relief from his sufferings. He became 

 worse, and died there on the 30th of June, in the arms of his cister, 

 in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Bdttiger pronounced his funeral 

 oration : Ritter delivered his ' Eloge ' at the Academy of Munich, and 

 Baron Cuvier at the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Werner was never 

 married. He had surrendered in his lifetime the whole of bis valuable 

 collection of minerals, comprising upwards of 100,000 specimens, and 

 also a large collection of Greek and Roman medals, to the School of 

 Mines at Freiberg, for 40,000 crowns, a price considerably below the 

 value ; and in consequence of the distressed state of Saxony at that 

 period, he accepted only a small part of the reduced sum, reserving a 

 moderate interest upon the remainder under the form of an annuity, 

 and bequeathing the capital after his death to the academy in which 

 he had been more than forty years the most distinguished professor. 



WERNER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG ZACHARIAS, an eminent 

 German dramatist, was born on November 18, 1768, at Koni^sberg, 

 in East Prussia, in the university of which town his father was pro- 

 fessor of history and rhetoric. The death of his father left him at an 

 early age to the sole care of his mother, a woman of considerable talent 

 and of a lively imagination. In 1784 he began to prepare for the civil 

 service, and attended lectures on jurisprudence and finance in Konigs- 

 berg, and also those of Kant, to which he gave much attention. In 

 1793 he entered the Prussian civil service as secretary in the Finance 

 department, in which capacity he lived for a considerable time at 

 Warsaw, which had recently been taken possession of by Prussia. In 

 1800 he there produced his first dramatic work, ' Die Sohne des Thais,' 

 a work distinguished by the simplicity of its plot, its successful cha- 

 racterisation, depth of feeling, and power of language. On February 

 24, 1804, his mother died at Konigsberg on the same day with his 

 friend Mnioch, and the sad remembrance gave the title to his most 

 celebrated tragedy, ' Der vierundzwanzigster Februar,' a play elevating 

 itself far above those of later imitators in a similar style by a terrible 

 originality, a keenly penetrating insight into the human heart, an 

 artistical arrangement of the action, and a rare and discriminating use 

 of language. After his return to Warsaw he wrote ' Das Kreuz an 

 der Ostsee ' (The Cross on the Baltic), for which G. T. A. Hoffmann 

 composed the music. In 1805 he was removed to an official situa- 

 tion in Berlin, but his mind, always eccentric, became now more 

 decidedly erratic. His religious feelings were strongly excited, and 

 an irrepressible desire for change possessed him, with an almost total 

 want of stability. He gave up his office and separated from his wife, 

 an amiable Polonese, whom he had married in 1799, after having 

 divorced two other wives. He then wrote for the Berlin theatre, 

 'Martin Luther, oder die Weihe der Kraft' (The Consecration of 

 Strength), in which he mixed up history with mysticism, but which 

 has fine poetical passages. After this he wandered through Germany, 

 and remaining at Weimar for three months, returned to Berlin in 

 1808. His stay was short there; he travelled into Switzerland,- and 

 at Interlaken became acquainted with Madame de Stael-Holstein. 

 In the autumn of the same year he was in Paris, and in December 

 again at Weimar, where the duke bestowed a pension on him, while 

 almost at the same time the Grand-duke of Hesse-Darmstadt created 

 him a counsellor of state. He next resided for four months at Coppet 

 with Madame de Stael and A. W. Schlegel, and afterwards, on their 

 recommendation, proceeded to Rome in 1809. In April 1811 he was 

 secretly admitted as a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and for 

 a time studied theology privately. In 1814, having removed to the 

 seminary at Aschaffenburg, he was consecrated priest, went to Vienna 

 during the sitting of the Congress in the autumn of that year, commenced 

 preaching, and attracted large audiences. Part of the years 1816-17 he 

 passed in Poland. Soon after his return to Vienna he quitted, to the 

 great surprise of the public, the order of the Redemptorists into which 

 he had been admitted two or three years previously, though he still 

 continued to preach. In 1820 he wrote his last tragedy, 'Die Mutter 

 der Makkabiier,' which, with passages of considerable poetical beauty, 

 evinces the same striving after novelty shown in his other pursuits. 

 He affects a roughness of language, a rude and often indelicate humour, 

 widely different from his earlier works, but of which some of his inter- 

 vening ones had shown symptoms, for during all this vacillati6n of 

 opinion and constant change of scene, he had not lost or altogether 

 neglected his poetical powers, though the changes he had adopted in 

 their development were by no means improvements. He had written 

 'Attila, Konig der Hunnen,' 'Wanda, Kb'nigin der Sarmaten,' ' Kune- 

 gunda,' and other poems, among which were hymns, that do not add 

 greatly to his reputation as a poet. As a preacher he was popular, 

 but his sermons, while they possess an attractive and inventive manner 

 of explanation and illustration are disfigured by poor witticisms not 

 unfrequently irreverent, and an obtrusive humility. He continued 

 to preach until a short time before his death, which happened on 

 January 18, 1823. His dramatic works were collected and published 



