KESIDENCE AT KEKLIN TO THE KEVOLUTION OF JULY. 141 



letter to Cancrin 1 that, in order to avoid interruption to his 

 work, he had not followed the nomadic philosophers to Vienna, 

 6 where in the midst of endless feasting the vanity of the learned 

 finds gratification.' When making arrangements for visiting 

 Grottingen on the occasion of the jubilee of the University in 

 1837, Humboldt writes from Teplitz on July 29, to Grauss, in 

 accepting the hospitality of the guest whom he had entertained 

 at Berlin in 1828: ' I have been fighting a hard battle here in 

 Bohemia with Count Sternberg. It is thought quite incredible 

 that I should not give the preference to the meeting of the 

 nomadic philosophers at Prague. I boldly justified my decision 

 on the ground of having once been a student at the University 

 of Grottingen, and of the promise I had given many years ago 

 to your own sovereign and the Duke of Cambridge. The more 

 important reasons which actually influenced my decision it was 

 impossible for me to adduce. A few hours' intercourse with 

 you, my dear friend, will be more highly prized by me than 

 all the meetings of the so-called natural philosophers, who 

 move about in such immense masses, and with such a mania 

 for feasting, that the kind of scientific intercourse one is able 

 to enjoy is most unsatisfactory. I have often asked myself 

 at the conclusion of one of those meetings the question put 

 by the mathematician after the opera : " Enfin dites-moi 

 franchement ce que cela prouve ? " In another letter, of 

 August 5, he ridicules the ' enormous preparations made 

 for feasting the nomadic philosophers ' by whom 6 science isA 

 made to dance for the amusement of the public.' Again, in 

 writing to Schumacher on September 26, 1847, when referring 

 to his visit to Paris at the beginning of October, he remarks : 

 4 1 hope that by that time the nomadic philosophers, with their 

 roving propensities and love of music and feasting, will have 

 dispersed to their several homes from the unscientific region of 

 Aix-la-Chapelle. The whole affair has unfortunately degene- 

 rated into a mere theatrical spectacle, and on this occasion it 

 has proved exceedingly tame and paltry.' He not only re- 

 fused invitations to Scandinavia and Switzerland, but declined 

 a proposal to preside at a congress of European savants to be 



1 <Im Ural und Altai. Briefwechsel zwischen A. von Humboldt und 

 G. Graf von Cancrin/ p. 43. 



