276 



CXCVI. 



VARNHAGEN TO HUMBOLDT. 



Berlin, 9th February, 1857. 



Your Excellency receives herewith, with warmest 

 thanks, the book which you have kindly intrusted 

 to me. I have read it with very varied feelings : 

 I might almost say with painful interest. The 

 author, it is true, makes concessions, and gives 

 opinions of which I should not have thought him 

 capable, as little as of the luxuriant erudition of his 

 plentiful quotations. But the handsome anthology 

 of notes cannot cover the kernel of the text, which is 

 a very bitter one : the justification of negro slavery, 

 a brutal eulogy of war and standing armies, and the 

 usefulness of aristocratic revolutions. In spite of his 

 all-embracing civilities, that look like invitations to 

 those of different opinions, the author, after all, offers 

 them only the diet of the " Kreuzzeitung," but a 

 little more delicately prepared than Professor Leo uses 

 to do it, whose " dirt of civilization" (Bildttngsdreck) 

 and " scrofulous rabble" are only seasoned a little more 

 highly. Latet anguis in herba ! Altogether, I always 

 feel rather queer when philosophers measure and 

 foretel the march and steps of the life of humanity, 

 and mean to find laws for the possibilities of millions 

 of years from the sparse dates of our still very 

 slender history of a few thousand years. Neither 

 Fichte, Schelling, Steffens, nor Hegel have been 

 particularly felicitous in this attempt ; the determi- 

 nation of the ages is best left to poets. Besides this, 

 our author is still remarkable for confessing that he 



