1884.] 
7 17 
Wohler and Liebig. 
believes to be unmerited distinction, and in measure as he 
keeps his own self in the background the merits of others 
are brought forward by him. 
At the time when Liebig had published the Essays in 
which he defends his views on Bacon, Wohler writes to 
him : — 
“ I have read them with great pleasure and with real 
admiration of your talents, which manifest themselves also 
in this line. It is not want of interest, but want of practice, 
which makes me slower than you in entering into such 
questions. The power of imagination is tolerably developed 
in me, but as to reasoning I am painfully slow. Nobody 
was less intended by nature for a critic. I do not possess 
the least mathematical (faculties) and philosophical faculties, 
though I flatter myself of having a tolerable mechanism for 
observing in my brain.” 
Gradually the day has begun to decline. “ The shades of 
eve are falling fast.” The future lies no longer like an un- 
bounded plain before the eyes of the two friends, and in 
their letters to each other is expressed the foreboding of the 
coming night. 
Liebig to Wohler. 
“ Munich, January 2, 1869. 
“ I cannot begin the new year without expressing the wish 
that heaven may grant us the joy of spending the few years 
we have still to live in untroubled friendship. The in- 
creasing signs of old age warn us to put our houses into order. 
We are rolling on an inclined plane, and the end is not far 
off, but nothing will ever change our hearts.” 
A year later Wohler writes to Liebig : — 
“ Gottingen, May 2, 1869. 
“ Life seems to me like a bad comedy ; it bores me, and 
yet I do not like to leave the theatre, because I always hope 
that something better may come. ‘ Give me back my youth,’ 
says the poet in Faust.” 
With the following words Liebig greeted his friend at the 
close of the year 1872, when the shadows of the coming 
separation were already gathering round them 
