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" Daheim !" Your poetry is incomparably grand 

 and beautiful, an exaltation of the subject, full of 

 graceful and grave suggestions as to what is to be 

 gathered from Nature, Art, and the implements of a 

 scholar's household. Would that my brother Wilhelm, 

 who, in his correspondence with Wolf, discussed at 

 such length these more or less exact hexameters, had 

 lived to enjoy the honours thus poured upon our 

 family. 



Your advice, even when unrhythmically expressed, 

 is to me as a command. I shall follow it at once, as 

 you have made the matter very much easier for me. 

 Alea jacta sit. Could you, dear friend, transcribe 

 the last ten lines of the Grand Duke's letter into 

 your own artistic characters, in order that I may guess 

 what it is I have promised him ? Of Fremont, whose 

 portrait reminds one very much of Chateaubriand's, 

 a biography dedicated to me has just appeared at New 

 York. " Memoir of the Life and Public Services of 

 John Charles Fremont, by John Bigdon (?)." The 

 dedication says : " To Alexander von Humboldt, 

 this memoir of one whose genius he was amongst the 

 first to discover and acknowledge, is respectfully 

 inscribed by the author." Delicate words, rather ar- 

 tificially strung together. Then follows a reprint of 

 the letter which I wrote to him from Sans Souci in the 

 name of the King, on forwarding him the large gold 

 medal of the Society of Science and Art, 1850, for the 

 greatest barometrical survey that had ever been 

 made 500 geographical miles, from Missouri to the 

 Pacific. It closes with the words, of which Sans 

 Souci need not be ashamed: "La Californie, qui a 

 noblement resiste a 1' introduction de 1'esclavage, sera 



