145.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
POTSDAM, _November 1st, 1851_.
You have given me an inexpressible pleasure, my dear, my noble friend,
by your kind letter. I am heavily in your debt, and my long silence and
apparent neglect might have provoked some suspicions of coolness or
diversity on matters of opinion. With a man of your mind and goodness of
heart I ought to have entertained no such apprehensions. Before I
received your dear letter with Baader’s portrait, it was my intention to
bring you personally the third volume of Kosmos (two parts in one), now
finished with great difficulty, and which unfortunately is exclusively
astronomical. I was certain of a kind reception, and your letter of the
24th of October, which had been left behind in my house at Berlin,
confirmed my purpose. Ottilie von Goethe gives me cheering news in
regard to your health. As usual you will combat her opinion. But what
astonished me was, that the president of the council, usually cold as a
glacier, was delighted with Ottilie, and is entirely disposed to gratify
her wish for the appointment of Wolfgang, at the Prussian embassy at
Rome. Was it necessary, however, for Wolfgang, after publishing a very
able little work on Nature and Legislation, to go to press with a
collection of poems, containing but rare gleams of imagination?
Written with the devotion of better days, in a time of gloom and
feebleness, by