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Letter from Aikin to her brother Edmund, dated March 1818: 'It is curious to observe the native eloquence of Humboldt struggling with the encombrance of all the sciences. Did ever mortal man study so many ologies, or travel with so many ometers!'
'If you really want to have a [notion] of tropical countries, study Humboldt.? Skip th[e] scientific parts & commence after leaving Teneriffe.? My feelings amount to admiration the more I read him.'
'I am just now (when at home) reading 'Cosmos', a sketch of a physical description of the universe. Parts of it are very interesting, but others of too deeply scientific character for my limited capacity to comprehend; still I hope to gather a good deal of curious and useful information from it...'