My son has left for Berlin a few days ago, in the capacity of Minister
Plenipotentiary. He quitted me animated with the best of sentiments,
with the most decided ideas of peace and conciliation! And yet this day
your Chargé d’Affaires waited upon our Minister of Foreign Affairs to
represent to him the apprehensions which the mission of my son has
excited in your cabinet and among the population of Berlin. This is my
recompense for the efforts made since my arrival at power to maintain
the accord of the two governments, in order to remove every pretext for
war! Who can be made to believe that, animated with the sentiments which
I publicly profess, I would have consented to entrust Emanuel with an
important diplomatic mission, if he had been in discord with me, if he
belonged to a hideous socialist sect, to _communism_, for, I am ashamed
to say it, the accusations made have not stopped short of that? As to
the rest, I appeal to the future; all such apprehensions will disappear
as soon as Emanuel shall have entered upon his functions. Your Chargé
d’Affaires will then regret the untimely protest addressed to M.
Bastide.
I am very happy, my dear friend, to receive your welcome letter. Nothing
in the world could be more agreeable than to hear of the continuance of
your friendship. I am worthy of it, because of the price I set upon it.
I have an abiding faith that my conduct, during the last three months (I
had about said the last three centuries), has not caused me to lose in
your esteem.
Ever yours, with heart and soul,
F. ARAGO.
158.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
BERLIN, _Friday, April 14th, 1854_.
As the King held his churching on Thursday, I dined in Charlottenburg
to-day, and can give you news agreeable to us, that the King, as he told
me, had known of the day of honor[67] (not by Uhden!!)[68] and had
prepared everything for it long ago. The ingredients of the spiritual or
material feeding are buried in Cimmerian darkness.
Your faithful
HUMBOLDT.
The Prince of Prussia knows nothing of the invitation for noce et
festin.
159.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
My American connexions having entailed upon me the predilection of the
Peace Society, I am molested by them with many of their writings and
tracts. But the last number of the “Herald of Peace” is so remarkable on
account of the political movement of the pietistic peace Quakers, that
perhaps it will amuse you for one moment, my dear friend, to read for
yourself the testimonies. Destroy the sheet!
The missive, at the same time, is intended for a sign of _life_, that
is, of most intimate and faithful friendship for you in these sad times
of weakness and folly. I have disentangled myself from the new
“Stahl-Ranke” council, for reasons which are not those of old age; I
resigned. I add an unkempt letter of poor Bunsen, which you must keep
quite secret, and send it to me, if there is an opportunity, to my
Berlin residence. First Heidelberg and afterwards Bonn, constantly
vibrating between the perturbating recollections of two archbishops.
With the dangerous tendency of the noble man for theological dispute,
and for his newly-invented apostolic church, under the firm of
Hippolytus, a residence in England, that is to say, in the country
between London and Oxford (on account of the books), would be more
favorable than Bonn. The Anglican High Church, intolerant though it be,
is less inconvenient in a _free_ country, than a ministerial church diet
in Prussia. Moreover, in the interest of Bunsen’s scientific reputation,
I look forward with dread to the impending productions, full of
hypotheses on aboriginal nations, Egyptian, Indian, and excavated
Assyrian Semitic, as also on the situation of Paradise, for which _a map
has been ordered_ at Kiepert’s. Maps on the creeds of nations can ascend
from the ship-fastening myth at the ocean and the Himalaya mountains to
the Ararat and to Aramea Kymbotas, even to the Mexican Coxcox, vagaries,
not unknown to the Mormon bible. (See Supplement.)
The Weimar fancies are of a more exhilarating kind; controlling the
climates by means of crystal palaces, which, at the same time, are
taverns, and make superfluous Nicos and Madeira, and demand only a
capital of one and a half millions of thalers, an undertaking in the
deserted Potsdam town of barracks. And such a device, hatched in the
brains of a well-informed man like Froriep.
In faithful friendship, yours,
A. HUMBOLDT.
POTSDAM, _July 4th, 1854_. In the age of crystal palaces.
It was but the other day, in glancing at a letter of Gneisenau’s, of
1818 (in the pointless biography of Stein,[69] p. 262) that I stumbled
upon a passage, doubtless long familiar to you: “H. strives again for
the centre, but there are wanting to him confidence, _esteem_,
_character_, and courage.” Sheer personal hatred alone can have moved
the vain Gneisenau to speak thus disreputably of my brother. I
recollect, indeed, to have heard of him, that Gneisenau was hostile to
him when he was dismissed. By-the-by, what was said by all parties in
those times on political institutions looks to me now, and did so
already in the years 1815–1818, as if I was reading a book of the
thirteenth century on physical science; fear of provincial estates was
alone praiseworthy—c’est de la bouillie pour les chats.
On this letter Varnhagen remarks in his diary, July 5th, 1854:—“I found
a long letter from Humboldt, who communicated to me, accompanied by fine
remarks, the latest number of the Herald of Peace, a letter of
Bunsen—four closely-written quarto pages—and another by Robert Froriep,
of Weimar. ‘The missive at the same time is intended for a sign of
_life_, that is, of most intimate and faithful friendship for you in
these sad times of weakness and folly.’ Farther: ‘I disengaged myself
from the new “Stahl-Ranke” council, for reasons, which are not those of
old age; I resigned.’ Then he speaks of Froriep’s plays of imagination,
who wishes to build a crystal palace to control the climate in the
‘deserted town of barracks,’ Potsdam, with a loan of one and a half
million of thalers! Finally, he blames Gneisenau’s misjudgment on
Wilhelm von Humboldt, pronounced in a letter of 1818, which Pertz
communicates in his ‘pointless Biography of Stein;’ and Humboldt rightly
condemns the mean misjudgment of his brother.
“The letter of Bunsen is written in a very unconnected manner—Humboldt
calls it an ‘unkempt’ one, which characterizes it admirably. Bunsen
intends to live for the future in Bonn, but he complains that the
university has deteriorated so much, particularly the theological
faculty. Dorner and Rothe have been jostled out, and their places are
held by the most mediocre and narrow-minded people to be found in all
Germany, such as Lange and Steinmeyer; from Hengstenberg’s study,
through Gerlach, all bends, he says, to ignorance and darkness, the
present gloomy period of the most intellectual king of the century will
come to be deplored even more grievously than the age of Woellner; every
thing is imbued with the reactionary political character of the
squirearchy; hypocrisy and _real_ infidelity can grow out of this unholy
system, and a most violent reaction must ensue; body-guards and
policemen can enforce any political programme as long as it lasts; but
the German never submits to the enthralment of the mind, and his curse
will pursue through all the centuries those who have attempted it. Thus
writes Bunsen! But he writes thus now as a deposed favorite! How was he,
and for what did he work before? For the same ignorance and darkness.
Quite like Radowitz, who also played the liberal at last!”
160.
VARNHAGEN TO HUMBOLDT.
BERLIN, _July 8th, 1854_.
With emotions of gratitude I received the dear letter of your
Excellency. Yet a sign of life, indeed, a sign of the most vigorous
life! Whenever the question could arise how you felt and thought in this
gloomy time, such a sheet would be the most decided answer, the most
brilliant testimony, to a sentiment and activity which always kept on in
the same direction, and never proved false. The letter from London—the
epithet “unkempt” is singularly happy. I send back dutifully, as
directed; how I should have liked to incorporate it with my collections!
It is a remarkable sign of the present situation; many expressions in it
strikingly significant. Had the writer but expressed himself thus before
his last personal experience! The scientific renown which you believe in
danger from the threatening deluge of writings seems to me to have stood
from the first upon unsafe ground, upheld by external props, with which
it must fall inevitably. Perhaps a political career will be open to him
again, but certainly not through literary aid, for which, in part, this
sudden literary taste seems intended. Silent rest would be far more
useful. But this can hardly be expected in the place selected, where
Catholic hatred is already alive, and nourishes and strengthens that
political rancor which will continue in vigor, fed with fuel from here.
The late Prince Wittgenstein once congratulated me that I had not to sit
in the Council of State, and that was the old Council, of which your
Excellency also was a member! How much more must I congratulate you on
your escape from the new one, of which Stahl and Ranke are members! To
the latter, no one will dispute the part of the clown; to the first,
every one will accord that of the sophist.
The words of Gneisenau, which Pertz alludes to in Stein’s Leben (v.
262), are so entirely inapplicable to William von Humboldt that one
would be tempted to interpret the H. differently, if an acceptable
conjecture could be found. I have myself, indeed, heard from Gneisenau’s
lips expressions of dissatisfaction, but never such extravagant ones,
which might be contradicted so easily and perfectly. What Gneisenau
blamed chiefly in your brother was that he never tried, by the respect
which he commanded and by the superiority of his mind, to unite all
those of equal sentiment into a communion, by which much might have been
undertaken and effected. But this reproach, if it be one, Gneisenau
himself deserved as well, and received from his adherents! The book of
Pertz is full of aspersions and incongruities, which, indeed, in most
cases originate in Stein himself, but are confirmed by Pertz in blind
partiality; he, while communicating everything, even in many cases
things which do not belong to the subject, leaves out important
documents without hesitation as soon as he finds them not entirely for
the benefit of his hero. The same will take place when he writes the
biography of Gneisenau, for which the hand of a tactician would seem to
be the first desideratum.
The pious quaker-sheet was already known to me; one could hardly have
thought such monstrosities practicable in the English language! But our
time abounds in such. The psychographer takes the place of the moving
table; they try to enforce my faith in the absurdity; I excuse myself,
that at my time of life a man is a little backward, and that I have just
arrived at table moving, but of that they do not want to hear any more.
This reminds me of something, I will not suppress! It of course happens
often, that remarks of your Excellency, in particular such made at the
royal table, come to the ears of the public, and are repeated with zeal,
and by this assume widely different forms; thus, quite recently, a reply
to Herr Senfft von Pilsach, in which the original form seemed lost to a
great extent, it would certainly be desirable if the latter were always
authentically preserved.
With my repeated most heartfelt thanks, in most faithful reverence and
submission, I remain immutably, your Excellency’s most obedient,