Humboldt's Letters. 125 



Ferdinand, of Brunswick : after long service in the 

 Finkenstein dragoons, he was frequently sent to Frede- 

 rick II., during the gloomiest period of the Seven Years' 

 War ; thus Frederick II. writes in his letters on the 

 Wedel disaster : " I told Humboldt everything that 

 can be told at such a distance." (Manuscript letters 

 quite recently bought by the King in Eastern 

 Prussia.) 



My family comes from Northern Pomerania. My 

 brother and I were for a long time the last of our name. 

 My mother's maiden name was Colomb, cousin of the 

 Princess Bluecher, and therefore niece of the old Pre- 

 sident in Aurich (Ostfriesland). She was first married 

 to a Baron von Holwede. From this marriage sprung 

 my step-brother Holwede, formerly in the regiment 

 of gcnsdarmes. To my mother belongs the merit of 

 having procured for us, at the instigation of old privy- 

 councillor Kunth, a thorough education. Wilhelm, 

 for the first years, was educated by our tutor Campe. 

 The foundation of his profound attainments in Grecian 

 lore was laid by Loeffler, the author of a liberal book 

 on the New Platonism of the Fathers of the Church ; he 

 then was a chaplain in the army, and afterwards chief 

 ecclesiastical counsellor at Gotha. Fischer, of the Graue 

 Kloster, instructed Wilhelm in Greek for many years ; 

 he had, what is little known, a profound knowledge of 

 Greek, besides that of mathematics. That Engel, Reite- 



