I 



COLLEGE LIFE. 49 



levant. They read out their compliments or addresses and 

 patiently listen while the prseses disputes with himself. As, 

 however, it is quite possible to be a good physician without 

 being able to speak Latin, I will not deny that among the new 

 doctors there may not have been here and there a clever man. 

 When we return to Berlin, I shall hope to bring you, my dear 

 friend, a large store of disputations of this kind, which will at 

 least possess some merit, since they are nearly all from the pen 

 of Professor Hartmann. He is properly the lecturer on pa- 

 thology, therapeutics, chemistry, and materige medicse, but 

 now that Meier is at Berlin, he constitutes the entire medical 

 faculty. He is, moreover, a profound philologist and an agree- 

 able Latin versifier. But enough and perhaps too much on 

 these subjects. Eemember me, as well as my brother and Herr 

 Kunth, to the dear counsellor and his wife ; pray assure the 

 latter that I shall not dare to write to her until I have received 

 complete absolution, that is to say, until she can assure me 

 that instead of feeling " a little vexed " with me, she is more 

 than " a little pleased." She shall then have a dreadful letter 

 in English from me. Remember me also to Yeit, and Levi, 

 and all my acquaintance. 



* Ever yours, 



< A. v. HUMBOLDT the younger.' 



His correspondence with Beer seems to have been prosecuted 

 with great activity,' and was maintained at intervals even after 

 his return from America. The following letters, belonging to 

 this -period, may here be introduced : they furnish evidence of 

 the close friendship that existed between Kunth and his pupils, 

 and were addressed to David Friedlander, who had been called 

 suddenly away from Frankfort by a death in his family. The 

 three letters are written on one sheet of paper, quarto size, and 

 bear the same date, Frankfort, December 19, 1787. 



The first letter is from William von Humboldt : 



' Sudden as was your departure from Frankfort, and much 

 as it distressed me on every account, yet the receipt of your 

 kind letter was almost as great a surprise to me, and, for more 

 reasons than one, made me very happy. I ought indeed to 



VOL. I. E 



