314 Humboldt's Letters. 



Emperor Paul, in the epoch of his political insanity, 

 had made the proposition through Kotzebue, that the 

 ministers for foreign affairs should measure swords 

 personally instead of the armies. I was at that time 

 (1799 and 1800) in the deltas of South America, and was 

 entirely ignorant of the anecdote which the Russian 

 Princess now, as it appears to me, so occidental in her 

 predilections, desires to corroborate. The obscure re- 

 searches I have made would seem to lead to the result 

 that the duel was to be waged not by the ministers 

 but by the monarchs themselves. I pray you, noble 

 friend, to write me a few lines on what your excellent 

 memory supplies, and still more I pray you to tell me 

 consoling words about your health at the return of the 

 injurious cold weather. Bunsen writes me that he 

 expects a fourth edition of his letters. Does the great 

 reading demand for this excellent or rather useful book 

 indicate that the German public is less chloroformed 

 against action than we had supposed? Dubito. The 

 German landlord of a (dicunt) very dirty hotel, which 

 glories in my name in California for many years beside 

 a more cleanly one of " Jenny Lind," sends me German 

 California papers from time to time. In a discourse on 

 the moral and intellectual state of the English, the \ 

 French, and the Germans, the editor recently said : 

 " We Germans are a nation of thinkers, deeply occupied 

 with the world of ideas, we also have the great advan- 



