FROM ACCESSION OF FKEDEBICK WILLIAM IV. TO 1848. 291 



He was unwilling to deny himself 4 the pleasure of renewing the 

 expression of his homage to one who had proved himself so 

 ready to devote to the service of his country the highest gifts 

 of song, the deepest poetic feeling, and the noblest freedom of 

 thought.' Only two hours after these lines had been penned, 

 Uhland's remarkable letter of December 2 arrived, in which, 

 upon the rumour of his election, he ' unhesitatingly ' declined 

 to accept such an ' honour, inseparably connected as it was 

 with a position of rank,' because he should be thereby occu- 

 pying a position entirely inconsistent with his principles, both 

 in literature and politics, to which he had never been unfaithful, 

 though he had forborne to give them prominent expression. 

 'This inconsistency,' he nobly adds, 'would be all the more 

 striking from the circumstance that after the wreck of national 

 hopes in which I also indulged, it would ill become me to wear 

 the insignia of honour, while those with whom I- was asso- 

 ciated in the endeavour to realise these hopes have merely 

 because in the late troubles their zeal carried them a few steps 

 farther incurred the loss of home, freedom, citizenship, nay, 

 even life itself; yet, however their conduct may be viewed, no 

 private or public act of violence can righteously be laid to their 

 charge, for in the late national movement, the result not merely 

 of an arbitrary impulse, but of the position into which the 

 country had been brought by the course of events, they have 

 throughout pursued an upright and straightforward course.' 

 While freely acknowledging the political independence of the 

 order, Uhland felt that his principles allowed him no other 

 course. 



This refusal occasioned Humboldt a disturbed night. He 

 wrote at once to Illaire, a member of the Privy Council, re- 

 questing him for the present to withhold the document from 

 the king's signature. He then proceeded to write to Uhland 

 a masterly letter of its kind, urging him, if possible, to change 

 his determination. Everything that could be said in favour of 

 the liberal character of the order is skilfully adduced. The 

 republican sentiments of Arago, and- Melloni, ' the former 

 president of the Griunta Eevoluzionaria of Parma,' the with- 

 drawal of Manzoni's refusal, the election of Thomas Moore, 

 ' by whom the Holy Alliance had been so severely satirised,' the 



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