38 ALEXANDER VON HUMEOLDT. 



Lutheran clergyman ; occasionally even at the Roman Catholic 

 chapel, to hear the Bishop of Culm or the French preachers 

 Ancillon, Erman, Dupasquet, and E-eclam, but most frequently 

 at the small Hospital Church, attracted by the preaching of 

 Ambrosius, where the great world soon came in such crowds 

 that no room could be found for the sisterhood in attendance 

 at the institution. This pious church-going, however, was 

 accompanied, as is well known, by an extreme laxity of morals ; 

 from ' gallant Saxony,' from the corrupt court of King Au- 

 gustus, came many seductive syrens and abandoned women 

 to the court of Frederick William, bringing with them the 

 worst practices of heathen times. 



A caustic description of the state of Berlin at this period is 

 given by George Forster in the following letter to Sommering, 

 bearing date March 16, 1788 : l 'I could hold no converse 

 with the all-powerful people, as you call them, much less even 

 attempt to fathom them, without disclaiming the character of 

 an honest man. Had I found them to be a people who, like 

 Cicero's augurs, laughed over the mysteries of their own trade, 

 it might have been possible for me to have associated with 

 them. But to play the hypocrite, and call that high and 

 honourable which I could never regard as such, is to me an 

 impossibility.' After a severe critique of Wollner, Bischofs- 

 werder, Theden, and others, he says : ' What can be expected 

 from such men ? ' 



And not only foreigners, but even residents describe the 

 state of Berlin at that time as being in the highest degree sad 

 and depressing. On October 27, 1788, Professor Fischer, who 

 has been already mentioned as one of the tutors of the two 

 Humboldts, writes on this subject to the most distinguished 

 mathematician of the day, Johann Friedrich Pfaff, at Helm- 

 stadt, as follows : 6 Alas ! alas ! many and sad changes have 

 taken place at Berlin since you left it. I keep hoping, how- 

 ever, that the fermentation agitating the public mind will in 

 the end, notwithstanding all counter-pressure, tend to further 

 the progress of enlightenment ; for such a condition of things 

 obliges all the friends of truth actively to bestir themselves. 



1 Wagner, < Leben und Wirken Sommering's,' vol. i. p. 260. 



