FROM ACCESSION OF FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. 'TO 1848. 279 



them the superior authority of the king. With consum- 

 mate tact he was accustomed to employ any or all of these 

 manoeuvres. By conversation or by letter, at an incidental 

 meeting or at a special interview, he laid his requests before 

 the ministers ; he sighed every now and then over the ' humilia- 

 tion and abasement ' of the begging and petitioning to which 

 he submitted for the most part in vain, but, like the mendi- 

 cant friar begging for his convent from door to door, he sup- 

 pressed every personal feeling of discomfort by the thought of 

 the cause he was intent on serving. He was moreover obliged 

 to confess himself to blame for many of his disappointments. 

 Friedrich von Eaumer called his cousin once to account for 

 paying so little regard to the recommendations of a man like 

 Humboldt ; whereupon the minister replied that he was not 

 to blame this time, as Humboldt had warmly recommended 

 no less than three candidates for the appointment in question : 

 he had therefore no reason to complain that two of th-em had 

 been rejected. Fortunately Humboldt had now a friend in 

 the ministry in the person of Johannes Schulze, in the Depart- 

 ment for Public Instruction, a man of classical education and 

 liberal tone of thought, upon whose sagacity and discretion he 

 could rely. A confidential correspondence maintained during 

 several years bears witness to the good results of this intimacy. 

 When narrating Humboldt's exertions in favour of Eisenstein, 

 we shall have occasion to give many extracts from his letters to 

 Schulze: it need only be remarked here that he was in the 

 habit of appealing to him in the first instance, as by no means 

 the least powerful source of assistance in questions relating to 

 appointments and applications for government aid. ; It is still 

 uncertain, as everything in the future is,' he writes once to 

 Bockh, ' and in the midst of such uncertainty there is nothing 

 more to be done than to keep up the steam in the locomotive 

 Gr. 0. E. E. Schulze.' On another occasion Humboldt wrote to 

 Dirichlet, ' Pray do what you can by thundering at the Kup- 

 fergraben where that noisy steam-engine Johannes Schulze is 

 at work.' When nothing was to be accomplished by this steam- 

 power, there still remained the king as Deus ex machind. 



Humboldt was perfectly aware of the slender means at the 

 disposal of Government for the encouragement of science and 



