30 Humboldt's Letters. 



what he considers, nevertheless, as highly important. 

 He desires, in honor of the celebrity of the great 

 departed one,* that you should undertake the task. I 

 am painfully concerned to hear that you enjoy, together 

 with your ingenious friend, but a small bit of health, 

 which you kindly lend each other something of a 

 mutual self-instruction, or Azais-compensation, which 

 afflicts me very much. I have received a long letter of 

 Mrs. Cotta. It seems she will assume the editorship of 

 the Allgemeine Zeitung, an anti-salique enterprise alto- 

 gether. Is it not strange, how, at certain epochs, a 

 certain principle seems to penetrate all mankind ? Resus- 

 citation of reverence for the past, not-to-be-disturbed 

 love of peace, distrust in the possibility of amelioration, 

 hydrophobia against genius, religious compulsion for 



unity, mania-diplomatica for protocols Cardi- 



nes rerum. 



NOTE BY VARNHAGEN. I had replied in Rah el's name, who was 

 prevented by sickness, to the note of the 1st inst, directed to her, and 

 in a postscript had expressed the desire Minister de Humboldt 

 should write the critique of Faust, just then to be published for tho 

 Jahrbucher der Kritik. 



* Goethe. Translator. 



