J 38 Humboldt's Letters. 



eo. 



HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. 



BERLIN, April 3d, 1842. 



IP I have appeared slow in thanking you, my dear 

 friend, for your delightful present, it is because all my 

 leisure time at Potsdam was absorbed by the perusal of 

 your biography, beginning with your early youth and 

 terminating with your description of the Congress of 

 Vienna. To have had such a development as yours is a 

 gratifying advantage. It is instructive to follow the 

 career of men like you and to behold them acting before 

 our eyes. 



How unjust we once were in our opinions of the men 

 who undertook to rearrange Europe at that great Con- 

 gress I mean to say how much more did we then exact 

 in our unjust views, while at present, on comparing the 

 members of that Congress with the mediocre creatures 

 of to-day, they appear great in our recollection. In 

 their place we have now court-philosophers, missionary- 

 devoted ladies of state ministers, court theologians, and 

 sensation preachers 



Minister Buelow complains that you never came to see 



