69.HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
Berlin,April 3d, 1842.
Berlin,April 3d, 1842.
Berlin,April 3d, 1842.
Berlin,April 3d, 1842.
If I have appeared slow in thanking you, my dear friend, for your delightful present, it is because all my leisure time at Potsdam was absorbed by the perusal of your biography, beginning with your early youth and terminating with your description of the Congress of Vienna. To have had such a development as yours is a gratifying advantage. It is instructive to follow the career of men like you and to behold them acting before our eyes.
How unjust we once were in our opinions of the men who undertook to rearrange Europe at that great Congress—I mean to say how much more did we then exact in our unjust views, while at present, on comparing the members of that Congress with the mediocre creatures of to-day, they appear great in our recollection. In their place we have now court-philosophers, missionary-devoted ladies of state ministers, court theologians, and sensation preachers......
Minister Buelow complains that you never came to seehimen famillebetween the hours of 8 and 9. He will hold his public reception to-morrow, Tuesday evening, and you would be an ornament to his circle. He never sends letters of invitation to those who know how welcome they are to him.
A. v. Humboldt.
A. v. Humboldt.
A. v. Humboldt.
A. v. Humboldt.
Monday.
Monday.
Monday.
Monday.