29 



you that vanity (although I am by no means free 

 from that) has less to do with this step than indecision 

 of character and good nature. I thought myself 

 obliged to give the Princess this gratification her 

 daughter, too, urged me strongly, and she showed 

 me a harmless list of ten persons. If you wish to 

 propose, or bring with you, one or more friends, I 

 have no objection ; but no one, mind, who has already 

 heard me. Your friends are mine. I can look for 

 indulgence from them. I maintain that a man is not 

 altogether without merit, if, after having spent his 

 life among figures and stones, he has given himself 

 the trouble to learn to write Grerman. 



Y"ours, 



AL. HT. 



I hope also to be able to get you the violent 

 pamphlet of the Strelitz Minister, in which there is 

 much more wit (i. e. than in that of Kamptz). 



Varnhagen in his Diary of 3rd May, 1831, remarks: "In the 

 evening the long-talked-of lecture of Baron Humboldt, at the 

 Princess von Piickler's. The lecture was very fine, and made a 

 very favourable impression. I spoke to General von Riihle* about 

 Humboldt' s character; he entirely agreed with me, 'that we shall 

 never know what we have possessed in him until he is dead.' 



" Baron Humboldt was with me yesterday, and brought me the 

 little pamphlet (of which only twenty-five copies were printed), of 

 Minister von Kamptz, ' Casus in terminis,' in which he places the 

 change of dynasty in France in the best light, and justifies the 

 Mecklenburg marriage. This was so contrary to his former princi- 

 ples that I said to him at once, ' If he could see his double we 

 should have him imprisoning himself.' There are plenty of persons 

 still who oppose the marriage. Duke Charles of Mecklenburg- 

 * General von Ruble, geographer and cartographer. TR. 



