EESIDENCE AT BERLIN TO THE REVOLUTION OF JULY. 155 



and I trust that the sojourn there will have completely re- 

 established your health. There is nothing just now that 

 interests me so deeply, for I am most anxious to retain 

 you at Berlin during the winter, since one of my strongest 

 motives for leaving Paris was to enjoy your society. I am 

 sadly afraid that you will work too hard in your solitude, but 

 it is easy to resign one's self when affection prompts the sacri- 

 fice. I implore you to act according to your own wish. I 

 shall never regret having come to Berlin. It will of course be 

 a gratification to have you so near. I shall come and see you 

 at Tegel even oftener than once a week. Nothing shall ever 

 separate us again ; my highest happiness now consists in being- 

 near you.' He had, in fact, before undertaking his expedition 

 to Eussia. been in the habit, notwithstanding the numerous 

 migrations of the court from Berlin to Charlottenburg, 

 Pfaueninsel, Potsdam, and Paretz, of running over occasionally 

 to the ' hospitable country seat,' where his brother, ' while 

 enjoying the reminiscences of an eventful career, pursued 

 his favourite studies amid the attractions of classic art 

 surrounded by an affectionate family to whom he was ever 

 most devotedly attached.' 1 Alexander regarded his brother's 

 family as his own. In writing to Freiesleben on Septem- 

 ber 3, 1827, he remarks: 'I have just returned (ten o'clock 

 P.M.) from visiting my family at Tegel, where I have found 

 them all in excellent health after their visit to Grastein.' 

 With his aversion to music, it will scarcely create surprise 

 that he should on one occasion inveigh against an ' unlucky 

 concert ' by Paganini, to which he had to escort his nieces, as 

 he should thus be deprived of an opportunity of meeting 

 Dirichlet at the house of Crell. But it was not only in the 

 participation of social enjoyments that he was called upon to 

 sympathise with his brother's family ; late in the autumn of 

 1828 his sister-in-law, Caroline von Humboldt, was attacked 

 with increasing violence by the complaint from which she had 

 been a sufferer for many years described by Alexander with 

 sympathetic sorrow as ' the most hopeless and fearful disease 



1 See Alexander von Humboldt's Preface to his brother's ' Abhandlung 

 iiber die Kawisprache/ p. xiii. 



