FROM ACCESSION OF FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. TO 1848. 263 



confidential servants were to be treated with honour when 

 they merited only to be classed as birds of prey.' l The king's 

 powers of eloquence were regarded by him as somewhat dange- 

 rous gifts. There was, he admitted, something noble in the 

 wish of the king to address himself personally to his people, 

 and communicate with them publicly, but his speeches could 

 produce but one effect an increase of excitement. He formed 

 no unjust estimate of the rhetorical gifts of the king when he 

 described his eloquence as full of poetic images which, if some- 

 what hackneyed, were given with a sweetness of expression, and 

 a delicate appreciation of rhythm suggesting, as in the case of 

 all compositions where imagination is more prominent than 

 thought, a ready adaptation to music. The unfortunate posi- 

 tion of the king he has thus graphically described : ' One 

 cannot escape a feeling of sadness at the sight of a prince so 

 highly gifted and imbued with the best intentions, stimulated 

 by the freshness of his mind towards new subjects of investiga- 

 tion, rendered in all matters relating to politics the victim of 

 deception. As Parry, in his Polar expedition, while urging 

 northward along the ice his sleighs and Samoyede dogs, found, 

 when the sun, bursting through the fog, revealed his position, 

 that he had been unconsciously travelling several degrees to 

 the southward, since he had been journeying on a mass of 

 floating ice borne by the ocean currents to the south so with 

 the king ; the ministers form the moving bank of ice, and the 

 ocean current may it not be found in the proselyting spirit 

 of dogmatic theology ? ' 



The ministry was, in fact, being gradually drawn into the 

 ever-widening stream of pietism, rapidly spreading from the 

 court to official life. Humboldt keenly satirised the hours for 

 prayer and the evening reunions at Herr von Thile's, where the 

 invitations were issued for c cards and prayer.' 2 But the satire 

 soon gave place to serious anger : if we may trust Varnhagen, 

 Humboldt boldly remarked to Eichhorn, the minister, in the 

 presence of others : c We are far worse off under your rule than 

 under Wollner.' 3 The course of conduct pursued by Eichhorn 



1 Letter to Bockh of the same date. 



2 Varnhagen's < Tagebiicher,' vol. ii. p. 255 j vol, iii. p. 286, 

 9 Ibid, vol. ii. pp. 383, 400, 



