264 Humboldt's Letters. 



heavily in your debt, and my long silence and apparent 

 neglect might have provoked some suspicions of cool- 

 ness or diversity on matters of opinion. With a man 

 of your mind and goodness of heart I ought to have 

 entertained no such apprehensions. Before I received 

 your dear letter with Baader's portrait, it was my inten- 

 tion to bring you personally the third volume of Kosmos 

 (two parts in one), now finished with great difficulty, 

 and which unfortunately is exclusively astronomical. I 

 was certain of a kind reception, and your letter of the 

 24th of October, which had been left behind in my 

 house at Berlin, confirmed my purpose. Ottilie von 

 Goethe gives me cheering news in regard to your health. 

 As usual you will combat her opinion. But what 

 astonished me was, that the president of the council, 

 usually cold as a glacier, was delighted with Ottilie, and 

 is entirely disposed to gratify her wish for the appoint- 

 ment of Wolfgang, at the Prussian embassy at Rome. 

 Was it necessary, however, for Wolfgang, after publish- 

 ing a very able little work on Nature and Legislation, 

 to go to press with a collection of poems, containing but 

 rare gleams of imagination ? 



Written with the devotion of better days, in a time 

 of gloom and feebleness, by 



A. v. HUMBOLDT. 



On the 24th of November, 1851, Varnhagen wrote 



