MY DEAR M.,—I did not thank you immediately for your delightful and
instructive letter, because there were many points on which I wished to
write fully. The last decisive crisis of the German-European business has
at length arrived, and I have had the opportunity of doing my duty in the
matter. But I have been doing nothing else since last Saturday, nothing
Chinese even. I recommend the inclosed to you. The young man is a good and
highly informed German bookseller. He has of course written just what I
did not tell him, and omitted what he ought to have said, “that he had
been here for five years with the first booksellers, and before that was
trained under his father in Bonn; that he understands English, German,
French, Italian, and Spanish.” I have only heard what is good of him. How
grateful I feel to you for having begun the Index of Egyptian words at
once! We wanted one here for a special purpose, so our trouble has not
been thrown away. I now perceive how impossible it is to understand the
Egyptian language and history thoroughly without Chinese. In the
chronology there is still much to be done.
We have as yet held our own in London and Warsaw as against Vienna. But in
the Schleswig-Holstein question we have the whole world, and unfortunately
our own peace of July 2d, against us. Radowitz has worked most devotedly
and honestly. When shall we see you again?
[8.]