36.HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Berlin, Monday,June 3d, 1839.

The book which you lent me, dear friend, is delightful,[19]as everything must be called which characterizes the individuality of men. My brother’s letters are excellent indeed. His opinion of the State Chancellor does much credit to his character, and the conclusion, which seems to take away something from the praise bestowed on him, is full of a deep political meaning. He alludes to some other result of greater magnitude, which the development of the world-wide events in question might have produced.

What pleases me most is the acknowledgment ofyourtalents, ofyourpower of writing; the praise of the high-mindedness exhibited inRahel’sletters (to the few who can appreciate them). Adam Mueller’s aristocratic fancies and coarsely but naturally sensual princess,[20]alittle lewd—no doubt from being hunchbacked—afford the most striking contrast of political and human filth. “To save the country,” says Gentz, in his Primary Political Position, “means to restore to the nobility of Prussia their ancient privileges, to liberate all the noblemen from taxes, so that they may spontaneously, after some negotiation, offer their ‘don gratuit’ to the monarch. To enable them to do this the peasant must be indissolubly bound to the soil.” How charmed “the Montmorencys of the Ackermark” must have been to see what, until then, was uselessly concealed in their miserable souls, expressed in refined language by a talented writer, and moulded into such systematical dogmas. This narrow spirit of caste knows neither place nor time. Like a threatening spectre it will reappear when I shall be no more. I frequently ask myself whether Adam Mueller could not, at the present time, again canvass for votes among the “cross-bearers,” who, like Homerian heroes, take their repose stretched on their bags in the wool market? Benjamin Constant has exquisitely pictured this aristocratic idea of self-importance in the parable of the Shipwrecked. He cries, “Grand Dieu, je ne suis pas assez indiscret pour vous prier de nous sauver tous! Sauvez-moi tout seul!”

If you have a moment’s leisure, please read in the 3d volume of my “History of the Geography of the Middle Ages,” what I have said of the natural viewsand the style of Christopher Columbus, vol. iii. p. 232. This dream, p. 316, was the object of a lecture at Chateaubriand’s and Madame Récamier’s, and had a good effect, as the utterance of sentiment always will have, on the barren fields of minute erudition. I hope to offer you shortly the five volumes that have already been printed. The negligence of the publisher prevents my doing so now.

A. Ht.

On the 9th of June, 1839, Varnhagen writes in his diary: “Humboldt agrees with me in the assertion made by me at different times, that too much cannot be inferred from the silence of the historians. He refers to three highly important and undeniable facts, which are not mentioned by those whose first duty it should have been to record them. In the archives of Barcelona, no vestige of the triumphal entry held there by Columbus; in Marco Polo, no mention of the Chinese wall; in the archives of Portugal, nothing of the travels of Amerigo Vespucci, in the service of that crown.” (History of the Geography of the New Continent, part iv., p. 160,sq.)

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