68 Humboldt's Letters. 



In Varnhagen's Diary is the following entry, dated 

 August 9th, 1838. Humboldt told me in a long visit 

 the news of Toeplitz. The King of Prussia and the 

 Emperor of Russia have both avoided meeting each 

 other alone, each of them fearing the embarrassment of 

 a tete-a-tete. The Emperor spoke on several occasions 

 quite contemptuously of the present French Govern- 

 ment, and still worse of the King Louis Philippe himself. 

 Prince Metternich's conduct was frivolous, light-minded, 

 and without fear for the present ; he is not alarmed, 

 though haunted by the gloomy thought that at Louis 

 Philippe's death things must take a new turn, and that 

 then war will become inevitable. Does he think to make 

 people believe this, I ask ? With Metternich one always 

 ought to examine first, how far an opinion adapts itself 

 to the position of the moment. 



Under date of April 9th, 1839, Varnhagen wrote in 

 his Diary : " Humboldt called quite unexpectedly and 

 made the greatest excuses for not having called on 

 me before. And then he opened his newsbag and 

 recited a thousand stories from Paris and Berlin at least 

 for two hours. Things in France bear a very gloomy 

 aspect, he thinks ; and he has lately written about 

 it to Prince Metternich. The crisis in France is yet a 

 latent one but to-morrow it may burst forth, and how 

 needful it would then be, and, in this event, how neces- 



