KESIDENCE AT BERLIN TO THE REVOLUTION OF JULY. 121 



hearers by a committee appointed for the purpose, consisting 

 of Duke Charles of Mecklenburg, Von Buch, Von Witzleben, 

 Levezow, Eauch, Friedrich Tieck, Lichtenstein, and Schinkel. 

 The medal was presented as a memorial c of the great interest 

 that by means of the lectures had been excited in science, and 

 of the powerful charm by which Humboldt drew together so 

 rare an assemblage of persons of rank, high culture, and distin- 

 guished excellence.' It is unnecessary to make any reference 

 to the various odes, sonnets, and doggerel rhymes in which the 

 enthusiasm of numerous hearers noble and plebeian, ' school- 

 boys and school-girls ' found vent in pamphlets or in the 

 periodicals of the day. The impression produced by the 

 lectures may be summed up in the following striking words 

 addressed by William von Humboldt to Groethe in a letter 

 dated May 1, 1828: < Alexander is really a "puissance," and 

 has acquired a new kind of fame by his lectures. They are 

 admirable. He is more than ever his former self, and is still 

 characterised by a kind of shyness, an unmistakable anxiety 

 traceable in his manner when presenting himself before the 

 public.' 



There was not wanting, however, a certain class of dis- 

 contented and uninterested hearers. General von Witzleben, ~ 

 though among those who presented the medal, could not 

 conceal his anxiety as to the injurious effect the lectures 

 might produce, from their tendency to undermine the tradi- 

 tions of religion, since both the Humboldts were in his opinion 

 too much inclined to be free-thinkers. 1 Hegel bitterly com- 

 plained to Varnhagen of the severe censure passed upon his 

 system of natural philosophy. 2 The manner in which Humboldt 

 treated the passage about the 'saturnalia' when publishing 

 ' Cosmos,' in after years, is too characteristic to be omitted. 

 He judged it cowardly not to repeat the selfsame words which 

 he had employed in censuring ' the bal en masque of natural 

 philosophy run mad. One ought to have the courage to print 

 what one has said or written within the last thirty years.' 

 In the meanwhile, however, Hegel had died, ' and as I shall 



1 Varnhagen, ' Blatter,' p. 15. 



2 Not preserved by Varnhagen, but found in Humboldt's letter to Bockh 

 of 1841, from which extracts have already been given. 



