11 



skrit, that he cannot accept it, albeit he considers it of 

 very great importance. He wishes, for the sake of 

 the great man who is now no more,* that you should 

 undertake the task. I am grieved to hear that you 

 and your gifted wife have but a fragment of health 

 between you, which you courteously lend to one 

 another a kind of mutual instruction, or Azais-com- 

 pensation,t which I very much lament. I have re- 

 ceived a long letter from Mme. de Cotta.J It appears 

 she is likely to take upon herself the publication of 

 the "Allgemeine Zeitung," another anti-salic move- 

 ment. How strange that at certain times one prin- 

 ciple pervades the entire world 1 The revival of faiths 

 of yore ; the inextinguishable yearning after peace ; 

 the mistrust of all improvement ; the hydrophobia of 

 all talent ; the enforced uniformity of creeds ; diplo- 

 matic love of protocols car dines rerum. 



A. HT. 



Note of Vwnhagen. I had answered, in consequence of Rahel's 

 indisposition, in her name, the letter which had been addressed to 

 her on the 1st, and in the postscript had expressed a wish that 

 "Willhelm Ton Humboldt might review for the "Jahrbiicher der 

 Kritik," the concluding volume of " Faust," which was then 

 shortly expected to appear. 



* Goethe. See Varnhagen's note to this letter.- TR. 



f Alluding to a work by Azais, "Application des Compensations a la 

 Revolution de 1789." Paris, 1830. TR. 



J The widow of the eminent publisher. TR. 



At that time the first literary review in Germany. TR. 



