Humboldt's Letters. 1 1 1 



night in a gloomy frame of mind. They show perhaps 

 a too sentimental disposition to praise. 



Page 1, line 2, "yet" because it happens during my 

 life time. Line 10, "The highly gifted souls ," perhaps 

 displeasing. Should it be men f 



A. v. HUMBOLDT. 



On the 21st of November, Varnhagen wrote down 

 the following about Humboldt : 



" I read* to-day the dispatches which Al. von Hum- 

 boldt addressed to the King from Paris in the year 

 1835. They are not like Humboldt! Anybody else 

 could have written such dispatches nay, what is still 

 worse, nobody could have written them otherwise! 

 Thus it is, however, with political business it con- 

 sists of mere trifles, not at all important in themselves, 

 but becoming important because everybody has agreed 

 to consider them so. Thus the established hypocrisy 

 of forms, presumptions, and exaggerations drown the 

 truth. I looked into myself and confessed that were 

 I engaged in such affairs, I, too, would follow in the 

 beaten track ; and yet people wonder that in England 

 and France editors of newspapers become ministers, as 

 if it were not infinitely more easy to write the usual 

 dispatches than good newspaper articles." 



