y 



48 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



excuses, only I cannot allow such a theme to engross my letter. 

 Your kindness leads me to hope that you will have attributed 

 my long (unintentional) silence rather to thoughtlessness than 

 to any want of friendship. The Fair now going on here brings 

 many people from Berlin, and of all my old acquaintances I have 

 had most pleasure in meeting with Friedlander. We learnt 

 from him that you are all well, and have not yet forgotten 

 your absent friends. If you only knew how many unhappy 

 hours have been sweetened to us here by the remembrance of 

 you and the other kind friends whose society we enjoyed in 

 your company! Whether I like this place, and whether I 

 prefer my present position as a student to my former mode 

 of life at Berlin, are questions which daily come before me, 

 but to which as yet I can find no satisfactory answer. If 

 it were not for the friendly intercourse we enjoy here so 

 thoroughly, Frankfort would indeed be a dull place to both 

 of us. It requires, however, but a very small amount of 

 philosophy to be convinced that mankind is created for every 

 spot upon the earth, consequently for the ice-bound bank of 

 the Oder. What more exalted aim can the Groddess of 

 Science (who certainly has no temple here) propose to herself 

 than to make mankind contented I (I have been striving to 

 appear before you in the character of a fine writer, but have 

 , not succeeded.) 



' The number of students here is very small ; there are only 

 between 220 and 230, eight only of whom are studying medicine, 

 while there is no university in Germany where so many Doc- 

 tor's degrees in medicine are conferred. During the first five 

 weeks of our residence here, no fewer than five candidates, of 

 whom one only was a foreigner, disputed " ad summos in medi- 

 cina honores legitime obtinendos." Such a manifestation of 

 eagerness among physicians proves that good wares must be 

 brought to market to attract so many customers. In Frankfort 

 everything conspires to facilitate the acquisition of a Doctor's 

 degree, since the disputation, if it can be so called, is nowhere 

 easier. The prseses must not merely write the disputation, 

 but defend it in its simple acceptation. The respondents, who 

 in most cases cannot put half-a-dozen words together in Latin, 

 behave as if the objections of their opponents were quite irre- 



