Humboldt's Letters. 295 



intended. Silent rest would be far more useful. But 

 this can hardly be expected in the place selected, where 

 Catholic hatred is already alive, and nourishes and 

 strengthens that political rancor which will continue in 

 vigor, fed with fuel from here. 



The late Prince Wittgenstein once congratulated me 

 that I had not to sit in the Council of State, and that 

 was the old Council, of which your Excellency also was 

 a member! How much more must I congratulate 

 you on your escape from the new one, of which Stahl 

 and Ranke are members ! To the latter, no one will 

 dispute the part of the clown ; to the first, every one 

 will accord that of the sophist. 



The words of Gneisenau, which Pertz alludes to in 

 Stein's Leben (v. 262), are so entirely inappli cable to 

 William von Humboldt that one would be tempted to 

 interpret the H. differently, if an acceptable conjecture 

 could be found. I have myself, indeed, heard from 

 Gneisenau's lips expressions of dissatisfaction, but never 

 such extravagant ones, which might be contradicted so 

 easily and perfectly. What Gneisenau blamed chiefly 

 in your brother was that he never tried, by the respect 

 which he commanded and by the superiority of his 

 mind, to unite all those of equal sentiment into a com- 

 munion, by which much might have been undertaken 

 and effected. But this reproach, if it be one, Gneisenau 

 himself deserved as well, and received from his adhe- 



