7.HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
Berlin,July 9th, 1830.
Please accept for yourself and your highminded and excellent lady my sincerest thanks for your new present, so agreeable to me.[7]I was not personally acquainted with the man whose eccentricities you have so æsthetically described. He was one of those who shine by their personal appearance; their lives are of greater effect than their writings. A man who boasts that his recollections go back to thefirst yearof his life (how differently the Margravine judged things, when she says: “J’étais un enfant très précoce—à deux ans je savais parler, à trois ans je marchais!”); a man who owns a guardian angel in a black cloak, like Cardanus—who makes love to old maids, without being drunk, only in order to convert the same to virtue and reading; a man, to whom thefateof German professorsunder German princes appears more tragical than that of the Greeks—such a man cannot but be admired—as a curiosity! The “Kirchen-Zeitung” will never inscribe his name in the list of “the faithful,” and the Schimmelmanns will hardly thank you, my most honored friend, that the work recalls the Danish-Holstein saturnalia of sentimental demagogism.
I am very much gratified that you will take “Hardenberg” in hand. It is a difficult but satisfactory task, if you be careful to separate theepochs, and provided his life be judged without party hatred, which seems to have subsided at last, with regard to Hegel in the Academy.
Thankfully yours,A. Humboldt.
Thankfully yours,A. Humboldt.
Thankfully yours,A. Humboldt.
Thankfully yours,
A. Humboldt.
We find in Varnhagen’s diary the following entry referring to the above: “Alexander von Humboldt said to Gans, after the July revolution, when he heard him express very exalted hopes of the new government, ‘Believe me, dear friend, my wishes go as far as yours, but my hopes are very feeble. I have seen changes of government in France for forty years. They always fall by their own incapacity; the new ones give always the same promises, but they never keep them, and the march to ruin is renewed. I was personally acquainted with most of the men in power, some of them intimately; there were distinguished,well-meaning men among them; but they did not persevere; after a short time they were not better than their predecessors—nay, they became even greater rascals. Not one of all the governments there has kept the promises made to the people—not one of them has subordinated its own interest to the welfare of the country. And until this be done, no power can possibly take a lasting root in France. The nation has always been deceived, and will again be deceived; when it will punish the treason and the perjury of its rulers; for it is strong and mature enough to do this at the proper time.’”