52 Humboldt's Letters. 



ee. 



HUMBOLDT TO YARNHAGEN. 



I CAME, dear friend, for two purposes: 1, to bring 

 you the opinions of Minister Kamptz (casus in terminis, 

 only twenty-five copies printed), which you, perhaps, had 

 not seen before, and which has elicited a vehement reply 

 from Herr von Oertzen, the Minister of Mecklenburg- 

 Strelitz, burned in the Lord. Read (p. 30 and 32), how 

 one can whitewash a person. I would beg of you not to 

 laugh at me, when you are invited to-morrow to a lec- 

 ture at the Princess's. I can assure you there is less 

 vanity, from which, by the bye, I am not at all free, 

 than weakness of character and good nature in it. 

 Thus, I believed that I owed this satisfaction to the 

 Princess ; the daughter also pressed me, and she showed 

 me a harmless list of ten persons. If you will propose 

 or bring with you one or more persons, it will be agree- 

 able to me ; only bring no one who has heard me 

 already. Your friends are mine ; from yours I may expect 

 indulgence. I insist upon it, that a man is not without 

 merit, who after spending his life with cyphers and 



