146 



prolix, and that I could never write a page of " vivid 

 expression."* With constant attachment, your 



A. v. HUMBOLDT. 



Pardon me, like a true philosopher, for the half- 

 sheet : I made a mistake in the address. 



CY. 



HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. 



Berlin, January 25th, 1846. 



An official dinner given at the Palace to the Fried- 

 ensritter (Knights of Peace), f of whom I am the un- 

 worthy Chancellor some dreadful hours at Billow's, 

 whose case grows more desperate every day and a 

 ball at the 'Palace, from which I have but just returned 

 yet I cannot lay me down without thanking you 

 briefly for your intellectual food. I glory in the retro- 

 spect of a poetical age which has called forth a 

 nobler I should say a more vigorous one ; but I 

 gladly turn anew from the long " Threnody," j "the 

 blue eyes and the black," and Besser's facetious 

 rococo,^ to your "Zinzendorf." That is a great, a 

 most successful life-picture; a form towering above 

 all that our own deeply excited times produce in 

 other directions. Your " Zinzendorf " always was 

 read with admiration by my brother. How is its in- 

 terest increased by what we see, or rather are looking 

 forward to ! But where are, in the intellectual glaciers 



* Sic. in original. TR. 



f Members of the order pour le Merite. TR. 



J Haller's Trauerode is supposed to be meant, as Gentz was in the habit 

 of quoting Haller to Varnhagen. TR. 



Court Poet and Master of the Ceremonies to Friedrich the First, the 

 first king of Prussia. He was in 1684 and 1685 Ambassador in England, 

 and died in 1728. TR. 



