307 



On the 18th February, 1858, Varnhagen reports in his Diary: 

 " Went to Humboldt. With admirable presence of mind he thinks 

 immediately of everything of which our presence can remind him ; 

 he says the most nattering things to Ludmilla on her book, for the 

 second edition of which we shall not have long to wait ; he will 

 give her some notes on Friesen,* which he would have liked also to 

 communicate to the Leipzig Gymnastic Society for the Commemora- 

 tion which the latter had intended for him; but after their 

 first inquiry, they have not applied again. With the Grand 

 Duke of Weimar he is very much out of humour, having had several 

 hours lost to him and the brothers Schlagintweit by that personage at 

 his successive calls ; they soon observed that he did not care to in- 

 struct himself in the things which had been prepared for him, but 

 had only desired to converse with them, investing each of them 

 with the Order of the Falcon. As to * * *, he made the same 

 excuse to Humboldt as he has to me, viz., he required noble birth in 

 his private secretary, which Humboldt finds quite abominable, but 

 quite in accordance with the personal prejudices of the Grand Duke ; 

 the father, who had also been no very remarkable person, had at 

 least masked this manner of thinking, but the son professed it with- 

 out any disguise. Once, after a gentleman not belonging to the 

 nobility had left the company, he expressed with great satisfaction 

 the comfortable feeling, " Now we are among ourselves ! " Another 

 time, when it was noticed that there were thirteen at the dinner 

 table, he replied consolingly, there were two commoners among them, 

 who did not count for anything ! And this he told Humboldt in. 

 French, because, as he said, those two would certainly not under- 

 stand that ! !f Humboldt complained bitterly of the burden of the 

 shoals of letters with which he was pursued at least four hun- 

 dred in the month he had to read many beginning with 'My 



* Friesen was one of the favourite pupils of " Old Father Jahn," the 

 founder of that system of Gymnastics, which was put down as traitorous in 

 1820, and which has since spread all over the world. The " Turner," as the 

 German Gymnasts are called, are among the most active members of the 

 " National Union" party. TR. 



f The Grand Duke of "Weimar wrote upon the margin of a copy of the 

 German edition of this book, the words : " This is a lie ! KARL ALEXANDER," 

 and then sent the book to the library at Weimar. TR. 



x 2 



