As the King held his churching on Thursday, I dined in Charlottenburg to-day, and can give you news agreeable to us, that the King, as he told me, had known of the day of honor[[67]] (not by Uhden!!)[[68]] and had prepared everything for it long ago. The ingredients of the spiritual or material feeding are buried in Cimmerian darkness.
Your faithful
Humboldt.
The Prince of Prussia knows nothing of the invitation for noce et festin.
159.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
My American connexions having entailed upon me the predilection of the Peace Society, I am molested by them with many of their writings and tracts. But the last number of the “Herald of Peace” is so remarkable on account of the political movement of the pietistic peace Quakers, that perhaps it will amuse you for one moment, my dear friend, to read for yourself the testimonies. Destroy the sheet!
The missive, at the same time, is intended for a sign of life, that is, of most intimate and faithful friendship for you in these sad times of weakness and folly. I have disentangled myself from the new “Stahl-Ranke” council, for reasons which are not those of old age; I resigned. I add an unkempt letter of poor Bunsen, which you must keep quite secret, and send it to me, if there is an opportunity, to my Berlin residence. First Heidelberg and afterwards Bonn, constantly vibrating between the perturbating recollections of two archbishops. With the dangerous tendency of the noble man for theological dispute, and for his newly-invented apostolic church, under the firm of Hippolytus, a residence in England, that is to say, in the country between London and Oxford (on account of the books), would be more favorable than Bonn. The Anglican High Church, intolerant though it be, is less inconvenient in a free country, than a ministerial church diet in Prussia. Moreover, in the interest of Bunsen’s scientific reputation, I look forward with dread to the impending productions, full of hypotheses on aboriginal nations, Egyptian, Indian, and excavated Assyrian Semitic, as also on the situation of Paradise, for which a map has been ordered at Kiepert’s. Maps on the creeds of nations can ascend from the ship-fastening myth at the ocean and the Himalaya mountains to the Ararat and to Aramea Kymbotas, even to the Mexican Coxcox, vagaries, not unknown to the Mormon bible. (See Supplement.)
The Weimar fancies are of a more exhilarating kind; controlling the climates by means of crystal palaces, which, at the same time, are taverns, and make superfluous Nicos and Madeira, and demand only a capital of one and a half millions of thalers, an undertaking in the deserted Potsdam town of barracks. And such a device, hatched in the brains of a well-informed man like Froriep.
In faithful friendship, yours,
A. Humboldt.