. 298 Humboldt's Letters. 



King, I talk aloud only to him, but very freely, because 

 I know that it will be reported, colored certainly accord- 

 ing to the color of the reporter, and this the more 

 especially in a country where anything like a gentle 

 allusion by way of criticism is lost on account of the 

 complete want of development of conversational lan- 

 guage. 



The judgment of Gneisenau is certainly on my bro- 

 ther. These often are ebullitions of the moment. Schiller 

 writes to Koerner, when I arrived in Jena, " that I was 

 by far more ingenious and gifted than my brother ; *' 

 afterwards, in a time when he saw me daily and over- 

 whelmed me with tenderness, he wrote to Koerner that 

 " I was a man of narrow understanding," without poetry 

 or soul, who, in spite of all my restless activity in my 

 walk of study, never would accomplish anything great ; 

 that Herder's works were diseases, discharged by his 

 mental constitution." (One thinks it is a passage of 

 Zelter's letters !) In an autograph of a collection at 

 Augsburg, which they wanted to give to me, but which 

 I sent back, my friend Prince S. writes to Koreff : "Alex- 

 ander H. again accompanies the King to the Congress 

 at Aachen only as a pointer !" Thus they play on the 

 boards of the world for credulous posterity. 



The Emperor Alexander had told the late King that 

 my brother was doubtless bribed by the Jews to be of 

 service to them in the Congress of Vienna, as Baron 



