Some strong expressions in the London letter, as welcome to me as they
were unexpected, remind me that Herr von Radowitz indulged in similar
ones, and even had them printed (Gesammelte Schriften IV., 210, 256,
281); in the second passage he even goes so far as to reverse the motto,
“Against democrats soldiers alone avail!”
161.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
BERLIN, _July 9th, 1854_.
Returning from the Russian Saint’s day celebrated in Sans Souci, I found
your amiable letter. As I cannot refuse you anything, I add Hippolytus!
Satisfy in return my curiosity. I believe that I never in my life spoke
to Herr Senfft von Pilsach; I might meet him in the street or in society
without knowing him. Notwithstanding all this I may have dined with him
at the King’s. After what I heard of him I do not feel well affected
towards him. Since I always sit opposite the King, I talk aloud only to
him, but very freely, because I know that it will be reported, colored
certainly according to the color of the reporter, and this the more
especially in a country where anything like a gentle allusion by way of
criticism is lost on account of the complete want of development of
conversational language.
The judgment of Gneisenau is certainly on my brother. These often are
ebullitions of the moment. Schiller writes to Koerner, when I arrived in
Jena, “that I was by far more ingenious and gifted than my brother;”
afterwards, in a time when he saw me daily and overwhelmed me with
tenderness, he wrote to Koerner that “I was a man of narrow
understanding, without poetry or soul, who, in spite of all my restless
activity in my walk of study, never would accomplish anything great;
that Herder’s works were diseases, discharged by his mental
constitution.” (One thinks it is a passage of Zelter’s letters!) In an
autograph of a collection at Augsburg, which they wanted to give to me,
but which I sent back, my friend Prince S. writes to Koreff: “Alexander
H. again accompanies the King to the Congress at Aachen only as a
pointer!” Thus they play on the boards of the world for credulous
posterity.
The Emperor Alexander had told the late King that my brother was
doubtless bribed by the Jews to be of service to them in the Congress of
Vienna, as Baron von Buelow was bribed in the Belgian affair by the
French, according to the King of Hanover. In Schoening’s very
interesting War of the Bavarian Succession, interesting by the
correspondence with Prince Heinrich and the reflection cast on the
present disputable state of things, there is mentioned on p. 294, a
political project, which was unknown to me, the Austrian proposition to
give Burgundy as a kingdom to the Bavarian dynasty in return for a
cession of Bavaria. This title of King of Burgundy was the object of the
ambition of the Duke of M. in 1815, though he would have contented
himself with Lorraine and Alsatia. Napoleon also once had a momentary
intention to make the Principe de la Paz, King of Baetica (Andalusia and
Grenada) from recollections of “Télémaque,” and the King of Sardinia,
Roi de Numidie, although the donor had not a foot of land in Africa to
dispose of.
With warm friendship, always equally incorrect and illegible, your most
faithful,