206 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



really be in Delhi. How can the word Brotherr have escaped 

 him instead of Dienstherr ? It would have been much more 

 to his taste. The professors are therefore servants of the State, 

 forming an elective corporation, where " Vetat c'est mo^." In 

 this lethargic German} 7 such events are necessary for the de- 

 velopment of freedom.' 



Upon the visit of the King of Hanover to Berlin in the follow- 

 ing summer, Humboldt, commissioned by Gauss, * endeavoured 

 to test the possibility of obtaining Weber's reappointment/ 

 He proceeded ' with caution, and simply in his own name as a 

 fellow-countryman and personal friend of Wilhelm Weber, as a 

 former student of the famous University, and as the one most 

 concerned in the sudden interruption of the great work upon 

 terrestrial magnetism, which Gauss was carrying on according 

 to his own valuable method of observation.' But he continues : 

 ' Gracious as the king was upon several occasions, it was im- 

 possible, for reasons which you may well imagine, amid the 

 whirl of court life, to find opportunity for conversation on per- 

 sonal matters. I succeeded, however, in securing the interest 

 of two persons high in the king's esteem, General von C. and 

 Count H. They showed more interest in the subject than could 

 have been expected, even from men of science ; they both felt 

 there was a line beyond which it would be impossible to go. 

 It will scarcely be appropriate in this letter, which I am writing 

 amid many interruptions, to give you an account of the steps 

 they have taken, or the opinions they have expressed. I re- 

 strict myself to the general results. The king promises to show 

 all the lenity that is consistent with the attitude he feels bound 

 to maintain. He would be willing to receive a proposition for 

 the reinstalment if accompanied by a distinct recantation of all 

 former protestations. It was urged in vain that the fact of 

 soliciting for the vacant place of itself involved the promise of 

 entire renunciation of political interference or expression of 

 opinion. A recantation of the offensive expressions is insisted 

 on. It will not suffice to say that they were misinterpreted, 

 or taken in too severe a sense ; they ought to have been more 

 truly the expressions of the heart ; there is besides no connec- 

 tion between lectures upon physics and politics. Your appeal 

 for the assistance of a talented physicist is acceded to on scien- 



