230 Humboldt's Letters. 



datory remarks. I also deplore the omissions to which 

 you are kind enough to make me attentive. Perhaps 

 they could be supplied in the next volume. It was sup- 

 posed that the letters must be printed in the form in 

 which my brother had prepared them for publication, 

 and in which they were offered for sale. I believe no 

 nation on earth can produce an instance of such a life 

 devoted exclusively to the increase of the wealth of 

 ideas ! How inexpressibly I rejoice in the mere prospect 

 of once more beholding a master-piece of your accurate, 

 life-like, and withal delicate representations of social 

 and diplomatic occurrences ! 

 With unalterable attachment, 



Your grateful 



A. HUMBOLDT. 



While it was not entirely wise in a monarch who is 

 great in history to have yielded, under the influence of 

 the atmosphere of Versailles, to the temptation of off- 

 setting the memory of the barricades with a spectacle 

 a la Louis XIV., throwing great difficulties in the way 

 of the successor, and attaining nothing of value, the 

 conduct of Palmerston, and of Albert and Victoria, on 

 the other hand, is likewise clumsily ill-mannered. Mean- 

 time, the sober Americans are establishing a universal 

 empire in the West, which already threatens the trade 

 of China. 



