FROM REVOLUTION OF JULY TO DEATH OF THE KING. 205 



country, was deprived of his appointment, and therefore could 

 scarcely remain in Grottingen. ' How dreadful,' writes Hum- 

 boldt in a letter to Gauss on December 25, in which, con- 

 trary to his usual custom, he takes the precaution of indicating 

 the names by initials, ' how dreadful would it be to witness the 

 destruction of a fruitful field, which only a few months ago 

 seemed to be bursting into ear ! I am haunted too by the 

 image of your beautiful and interesting invalid daughter, and 

 of the noble Ewald. I am iveak enough not to desire the sepa- 

 ration, and to believe in a deus ex machind a mystical faith 

 indeed.' The success that had attended Humboldt's efforts in 

 the case of Henle, the anatomist, and other sufferers in the 

 revolutionary disturbances, now emboldened him in the cause 

 of so many men of worth to attempt to influence Hanover 

 through the Court of Berlin ; in this, however, he met with 

 little encouragement. ' Many in the so-called upper regions 

 of society,' he writes in the same letter to Grauss, ' are com- 

 pletely insensible to the nobility of mind to me so evident in 

 the sacrifice, apart from the stimulus of political excitement, 

 of every outward advantage to the voice of conscience. Our 

 judgment is often warped by personal considerations. Time 

 will, I think, bring about a more correct view of things. 

 Neither you nor our mutual friend Weber can entertain any 

 doubt of my sentiments.' Towards men of greater indepen- 

 dence of thought he wrote in still stronger terms ; on the 

 following day, to Schumacher, he groaned over c the tyrants of 

 Hanover and Modena. What barbarity ! The villains propose 

 to disband the universities ; they will not succeed, however, in 

 doing away with that old-established institution, renewed day 

 by day, that passes under the name of youth.' 6 How conve- 

 nient for them if they could accomplish its extermination ! ' 

 he remarks at the close of a letter to Letronne of the same date. 1 

 And in writing to Bockh he exclaims : c What an infamous 

 article appeared yesterday in our " Staatszeitung," copied from 

 the " Hannoversche Zeitung,*' couched in a style of the most 

 refined insolence, apparently written first in English by the 

 iron pen of the tyran de melodrame himself. One might 



1 De la Roquette, vol. ii. p. 154. 



