Ill 



Werners Early Career 105 



had formed to devote himself to minerals seem at last to 

 have grown too strong to be resisted, so that after doing 

 his duty at the foundries for five years he resolved to 

 betake himself in 1769 to the Mining Academy of Freiberg, 

 which had been founded two years before, and of the 

 attractions of which he had no doubt heard much. Amid 

 what was now thoroughly congenial to him, he threw 

 himself with enthusiasm into the work of the school, not 

 only availing himself of all the formal instruction in the 

 art of mining to be had from the teachers, but visiting all 

 the chief Saxon mines, especially those of most importance 

 in the Freiberg district, descending the shafts, joining in 

 the manual labour of the miners, and thus making himself 

 master of the whole art of mining, below ground as well as 

 above. His zeal and capacity were soon recognized by the 

 officials at Freiberg, and before he had been long there he 

 was offered a place in the Saxon Corps of Mines. He was 

 not unwilling to accept the appointment, but determined 

 first of all to prosecute a wider range of study for a few 

 years at the University of Leipzig. 



Accordingly, after some two years spent in mining 

 pursuits Werner went to Leipzig in the spring of the year 

 1771, and for the next two years devoted himself almost 

 entirely to the study of law. In his third and last year at 

 the University, he seems to have taken up a miscellaneous 

 series of subjects, especially modern languages, but he 

 settled down at last to the prosecution of his first love 

 mineralogy, and with such industry and enthusiasm did he 

 pursue this study, that while in his twenty-fifth year, and 

 still a "student of the science and law of mining," he 

 published his first essay a little duodecimo of 300 pages, on 



