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Ministers, should enter the lists for the duel. I 

 entreat you, my generous friend, to write me a few 

 lines as to what your excellent memory supplies on 

 the subject ; and even more earnestly do I entreat 

 you to give me some reassurance as to your health 

 at the return of this abominable frost. Bunsen 

 writes, that he is expecting a fourth edition of his 

 " Letters." The excellent, or rather the useful book 

 being so extensively bought and read, does it prove 

 that the German public has been less chloroformed 

 for action than we thought ? Dubito. The German 

 host of (dicunf) a very dirty hotel, which, bearing 

 my name, has for many years flourished by the side 

 of a more cleanly one named after Jenny Lind, in 

 San Francisco in California sends me from time to 

 time German Californian newspapers. Descanting 

 in a late number on the moral and intellectual con- 

 dition of the English, French, and Germans, the 

 editor says : " We Germans are a tribe of thinkers, 

 deeply engaged in our innermost mind with the 

 world of thought ; we also have, over all the other 

 nations settled here, the great advantage of troubling 

 ourselves very little, or not at all, about municipal 

 and political affairs." Thus we boast on the shores 

 of the Pacific ; we buy the " Signs of the Times,' 7 * 

 but scarcely five in a hundred of us will go to the 

 poll. It is too inconvenient. We are thinking. 

 Your old, affectionate friend, 



A. v. HUMBOLDT. 



Has not the very pleasant young Tyrolese poet, 

 Adolphus Pichler his actual profession is that of 



* Bunsen's " Signs of the Times," also translated into English. TR. 



R 2 



