Humboldt's Letters. 369 



the time, but affords no nourishment. On Thursday 

 the King hopes to close and settle with me. Be pleased 

 to write Professor Hoffmann, of Wuerzburg, that I am 

 grateful for his torso, but no assistance is to be expected 

 from the King, not only (what you must not write), 

 because something like a holy horror of the Catholic 

 zeal of Baader is rooted in the King's mind, but also 

 because all literary assistance dwindles down in the 

 cabinet to a present of forty or forty-five thalers. In 

 preference to the publication in the preface of a miser- 

 able letter of introduction, which may have been written 

 in a moment of ill-humor, I enclose a memorandum as 

 requested. 



With the same friendship as of old, 



A. v. HUMBOLDT. 



(INCLOSURE IN A LETTER FROM HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.) 



You ask me, dear friend, what were the earliest im- 

 pressions produced upon me by Franz Baader ! I first 

 saw him in June, 1791, while studying the art of mining 

 in Freiberg, after the journey with George Forster to 

 England, and after my sojourn in the Hamburg Com- 

 mercial Academy of Buesching and Ebeling. For eight 

 months I enjoyed the daily intercourse of this amiable 

 and gifted man. Franz Baader had then published his 

 work on caloric, and his inclinations were all of a che- 

 mico-physical nature, with a slight infusion of ideas 



