56 Humboldt's Letters. 



you will be angry with me, because you divine that the 

 fundamental idea of this wonderful treatise is not entirely 

 satisfactory to me. 



23. 



HUMBOLDT TO VAKNHAGEK 



WEDNESDAY, May 11th, 1837. 



You have prepared for me, my highly esteemed 

 friend, a delightful pleasure. I hope that these remarks 

 upon the composition of history will hereafter form a 

 part of your miscellaneous writings ! The mind cer- 

 tainly becomes dizzy in contemplating the abundance 

 of material which springs copiously from every fresh 

 source. You point out how this material may be 

 moulded by a man of genius. In the approaching 

 millennium everything will be simplified the individual 

 life of nations is preserved, in spite of warlike expedi- 

 tions over continents. Since the great epoch of Colum- 

 bus and Gama, who made one part, one side of this 

 planet known to the other, that fluctuating element, 

 the ocean, has established the omnipresence of one 

 kind of civilization (that of Western Europe). Its 

 influence breaks through the rigid barriers of continents, 



