Humboldt's Letters. 399 



S34. 



HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. 



BERLIN, September 9th, at night, 1858. 



HEARTY thanks, my dear friend, for your affectionate 

 missive. The thanks of the excellent .... is far from 

 indifferent to me. No one here has had the politeness 

 to inform me that my proposal has been accepted. As 

 you and your accomplished niece, Miss Ludmilla, are 

 fond of curiosities, and as my extreme old age has 

 deadened all compunction at the exhibition of my own 

 praises, I send you a letter from Queen Victoria, deli- 

 vered by the Princess of Prussia, and requesting an 

 autograph of some passages from the Views of Nature 

 and Kosmos (poetical descriptions of nature), as well as 

 a letter from the American Secretary of War, who has 

 been accommodating to me for the traveller Moell- 

 hausen, the son-in-law of Seiffert, draughtsman of the 

 two expeditions to the South Sea, and who, mirabile 

 dictu, has dismissed all political animosity on account 

 of my friendship for Fremont. The latter of the com- 

 munications gives me the greater pleasure, of the two, 

 though it is unpardonably extravagant in the use of 

 great names. 



