COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 | Page 2

incessant toil, four fifths
were completed, and an ordinary copy of the part then in print cost considerably more
than one hundred pounds sterling. Since that time the publication has gone on more
slowly, and even now after the lapse of nearly half a century, it remains, and probably

ever will remain, incomplete.
In the year 1828, when the greatest portion of his literary labor had been accomplished,
he undertook a scientific journey to Siberia, under the special protection of the Russian
government. In this journey -- a journey for which he had prepared himself by a course of
study unparalleled in the history of travel -- he was accompanied by two companions
hardly less distinguished than himself, Ehrenberg and Gustav Rose, and p 5 the results
obtained during their expedition are recorded by our author in his 'Fragments Asiatiques',
and in his 'Asie Centrale', and by Rose in his 'Reise nach dem Oural'. If the 'Asie
Centrale' had been his only work, constituting, as it does, an epitome of all the knowledge
acquired by himself and by former travelers on the physical geography of Northern and
Central Asia, that work alone would have sufficed to form a reputation of the highest
order.
I proceed to offer a few remarks on the work of which I now present a new translation to
the English public, a work intended by its author "to embrace a summary of physical
knowledge, as connected with a delineation of the material universe."
The idea of such a physical description of the universe had, it appears, been present to his
mind from a very early epoch. It was a work which he felt he must accomplish, and he
devoted almost a lifetime to the accumulation of materials for it. For almost half a
century it had occupied his thoughts; and at length, in the evening of life, he felt himself
rich enough in the accumulation of thought, travel, reading, and experimental research, to
reduce into form and reality the undefined vision that has so long floated before him. The
work, when completed, will form three volumes. The 'first' volume comprises a sketch of
all that is at present known of the physical phenomena of the universe; the 'second'
comprehends two distinct parts, the first of which treats of the incitements to the study of
nature, afforded in descriptive poetry, landscape painting, and the cultivation of exotic
plants; while the second and larger part enters into the consideration of the different
epochs in the progress of discovery and of the corresponding stages of advance in human
civilization. The 'third' volume, the publication of which, as M. Humboldt himself
informs me in a letter addressed to my learned friend and publisher, Mr. H. G. Bohn, "has
been somewhat delayed, owing to the present state of public affairs, will comprise the
special and scientific development of the great Picture of Nature p 6 Each of the three
parts of the 'Cosmos' is therefore, to a certain extent, distinct in its object, and may be
considered complete in itself. We can not better terminate this brief notice than in the
words of one of the most eminent philosophers of our own country, that, "should the
conclusion correspond (as we doubt not) with these beginnings, a work will have been
accomplished every way worthy of the author's fame, and a crowning laurel added to that
wreath with which Europe will always delight to surround the name of Alexander von
Humboldt."
In venturing to appear before the English public as the interpreter of "the great work of
our age,"* I have been encouraged by the assistance of many kind literary and scientific
friends, and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity of expressing my deep obligations to
Mr. Brooke, Dr. Day, Professor Edward Forbes, Mr. Hind, Mr. Glaisher, Dr. Percy, and
Mr. Ronalds, for the valuable aid they have afforded me.
[footnote] *The expression applied to the Cosmos by the learned Bunsen, in his late
Report on Ethnology, in the 'Report of the British Association for' 1847, p. 265.
It would be scarcely right to conclude these remarks without a reference to the

translations that have preceded mine. The translation executed by Mrs. Sabine is
singularly accurate and elegant. The other translation is remarkable for the opposite
qualities, and may therefore be passed over in silence. The present volumes differ from
those of Mrs. Sabine in having all the foreign measures converted into corresponding
English terms, in being published at considerably less than one third of the price, and in
being a translation of the entire work, for I have not conceived myself justified in
omitting passages, sometimes amounting to pages, simply because they might be deemed
slightly obnoxious to our national prejudices.
p 7 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. -------------------
In the late evening of an