42 



On the 19th. of April, 1839, Yarnhagen relates in his Diary : 

 " Yisited Humboldt, who told me a great number of things, and 

 showed me a fine portrait of Arago, that pleased me mightily ! He 

 spoke much of the Anglo-Russian complications in the East Indies 

 and Persia, and related to me what he had heard from the mouth of 

 the Russian Emperor himself on the subject. The Emperor was 

 embittered against the English, and thought it of the highest im- 

 portance to counteract their dominion in Asia. Humboldt allows 

 that I am right in saying that a good fifty years must pass away 

 before any real danger' from Russia will threaten the English in the 

 East, but that apprehension and zeal might even, without necessity, 

 produce a conflict in Europe,* before it would come to a collision in 

 that quarter ; both sides, however, would no doubt bethink them- 

 selves before bringing matters to such a pass." 



On the 25th May, 1839, Yarnhagen writes in his Diary : " Met 

 Humboldt ' Unter den Linden.' "We had a long chat. He told me 

 that people about the Court, the King excepted, who never speaks 

 ill of the dead, and the Crown Prince, who even expressed some 

 regret, had spoken abominably about the death of Gans. The other 

 princes were delighted the Princess von Liegnitzf spoke most 

 malignantly." 



XXXVI. 



HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. 



Berlin, Monday, 3rd June, 1839. 



The bookj which you lent me, dear friend, is a 

 precious book, as indeed everything must be called 



* Humboldt's political insight lias been verified by the events of 1854, 

 when " apprehension and zeal " really brought about a war, the probability 

 of which Russia seemed to have more fully foreseen than England or 

 France. TR. 



f The morganatic wife of Friedrich William III. TR. 



Dorow's " Memoirs and Letters," vol. iii. 



