182 ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 



intellectual desert ; we allude to the irreparable loss he expe- 

 rienced in the death of his brother. 



During the few years that William von Humboldt survived 

 his wife, he lingered in a solitude that was only cheered by the 

 labour to which, from early association, he mechanically clung. 

 His position was thus touchingly described by Alexander : 

 c Wholly given up to grief, he seeks in the depth of his misery 

 the only consolation that can render life supportable, while he 

 occupies himself with intellectual pursuits as with the drudgery 

 of a task.' l At the request of Gustav Schlesier, the compiler 

 of the biography of William von Humboldt, Alexander subse- 

 quently furnished an account from the notes in his journal of 

 the melancholy illness of his brother, which first assumed an 

 alarming character on March 27, 1835, and terminated fatally 

 on April 8. 2 From this record we need only extract the por- 

 tions having reference to Alexander. He was throughout 

 lovingly occupied with the invalid, anxious to catch the last 

 utterances of his noble mind, and eager to soothe the excite- 

 ment of his delirium ; during the first stages of his illness he 

 read to him such portions of Schiller's poems as gave expres- 

 sion to the spirit's longing for emancipation from the bonds 

 of material existence. In the early part of April he forwarded 

 to Gride, his publisher in Paris, some proof-sheets which had 

 waited many days for correction, with the following lines : ' I 

 have been unable to send my letter before, as I have been dis- 

 tracted by the agonising thought of my brother's approaching 

 end. For three days he has been at the point of death. I 

 pass my days at his house. How many tears I have shed ! He 

 is just now slightly better, but I dare not indulge hope. I need 

 your kind sympathy, although I have so far exerted myself as 

 to correct the proofs.' 3 At six o'clock on the morning of 

 Sunday, April 5, he penned to Varnhagen that remarkable 

 letter, which upon its publication some years ago immediately 

 acquired a world-wide notoriety : ' To you, my dear Varnhagen, 

 who shrink not from grief, since you view it as the expression 



1 De la Roquette, vol. ii. p. 105. 



2 Best given in W. F. A. Zimmermann's ' Humboldtbuch/ vol. iii. p. 19, 

 &c. 



3 De la Roquette, vol. ii. ( Avertissement des nouv. editeurs/ p. v. 



