With two yellow pamphlets, to his friend of many years, Varnhagen von
Ense, with old admiration and attachment. The author.
On the 29th January, 1852, Varnhagen’s journal reads as follows:
“Humboldt came at one o’clock, wonderfully robust for his time of life!
Speaks with indignant scorn of the _coup d’état_ in France, the
undisguised outrage, the arbitrary banishments, and particularly the
robbery of the estates of the Orleans family. The King was at first full
of rejoicing, he and the court saw nothing offensive in the crime
committed against the people, the legislature, the law, and the sanctity
of oaths, but that the adventurer preserves universal suffrage, rests
upon the people, practises socialism, and even wants to be emperor; this
is what makes him detested! Humboldt is of opinion that in the
revolution of February the establishment of the Provisional Government,
which was immediately obeyed throughout France, was a piece of even
greater audacity than the present usurpation of the one man who has
already been president, and worn the name of government for three years.
I reminded him of the parliament, and the committee of fifty at
Frankfort-on-the-Main. In the disposition to acquiesce, he sees that
national feeling of unity and cohesion which, among Frenchmen,
suppresses all party feeling. Humboldt says there is no doubt that Louis
Bonaparte is a son of Admiral Verhuel, and his brother, Morny, a son of
General Flahault, who, he says, lived with both the sisters, the Queen
of Holland and the Queen of Naples. Of Persigny—Fialin de Persigny—he
speaks with the utmost contempt, calling him a raw, unkempt
non-commissioned officer, who still arrogates to himself discoveries
about the pyramids. Passing on to our own affairs, he deplored the
narrowness, the pitiful character of our ministry; he considers Raumer
the most stupid of them all, stupid and unmannerly both; the King is
cross and peevish, capricious, and prone to excuse himself by saying
that he is powerless, and must be governed by his ministers.”
On the 30th of January, 1852, Varnhagen adds: “Humboldt takes a lively
interest in the widow of the philologist F.; her husband has done much
work for him. At Humboldt’s urgent advice, she has petitioned the King
for a pension, and Humboldt and Boekh were to support the petition by
their signatures. But F. was a democrat, not an active, but an avowed
one, and the King might have heard of it. To neutralize this, Humboldt
proposed to request Stahl to join in countersigning the petition. His
own name can now accomplish nothing with the King! On what days have we
fallen, when Humboldt asks Stahl to give him countenance!”
147.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
BERLIN, _Feb. 5th, 1852_.
I believe, my dear friend, that the letter I have just received, will
greatly confirm your ideas about Paris. Galuski, the translator of the
second volume of Kosmos, is a man of noble instincts, great talents, and
much philological learning, but very moderate in his love of liberty.
What he says of his first impression, is a pretty impudent expression of
this moderation. He also was seized with a marvellous dread of coming
events. My opinion has always been that the wildest republic cannot do
so much and such enduring harm to the intellectual progress of mankind,
and to their consciousness of right and honor, as _le régime de mon
oncle, le despotisme éclairé, dogmatique, milieux_, which applies all
the arts of civilization to subject a people to the caprices of an
individual. Read, to increase your abhorrence of such degradation, which
threatens to spread like a pestilence, in the “Journal des Debats” of
this morning (February 3d), the reasons for drawing up a list of
recommendations of those who might be elected (according to the
“Constitutionnel).” The “Spenersche Zeitung” of yesterday did not fail
to follow suit with a communication in favor of a similar set of
proposals for our second chamber!
I hope soon to procure for you the Histoire de l’Académie (by
Bartholmess). I have made many vain efforts to advance the interests of
Professor F.’s widow.
Your most attached,
A. HUMBOLDT.