Potsdam, July 4th, 1854. In the age of crystal palaces.
It was but the other day, in glancing at a letter of Gneisenau’s, of 1818 (in the pointless biography of Stein,[[69]] p. 262) that I stumbled upon a passage, doubtless long familiar to you: “H. strives again for the centre, but there are wanting to him confidence, esteem, character, and courage.” Sheer personal hatred alone can have moved the vain Gneisenau to speak thus disreputably of my brother. I recollect, indeed, to have heard of him, that Gneisenau was hostile to him when he was dismissed. By-the-by, what was said by all parties in those times on political institutions looks to me now, and did so already in the years 1815–1818, as if I was reading a book of the thirteenth century on physical science; fear of provincial estates was alone praiseworthy—c’est de la bouillie pour les chats.
On this letter Varnhagen remarks in his diary, July 5th, 1854:—“I found a long letter from Humboldt, who communicated to me, accompanied by fine remarks, the latest number of the Herald of Peace, a letter of Bunsen—four closely-written quarto pages—and another by Robert Froriep, of Weimar. ‘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.’ Farther: ‘I disengaged myself from the new “Stahl-Ranke” council, for reasons, which are not those of old age; I resigned.’ Then he speaks of Froriep’s plays of imagination, who wishes to build a crystal palace to control the climate in the ‘deserted town of barracks,’ Potsdam, with a loan of one and a half million of thalers! Finally, he blames Gneisenau’s misjudgment on Wilhelm von Humboldt, pronounced in a letter of 1818, which Pertz communicates in his ‘pointless Biography of Stein;’ and Humboldt rightly condemns the mean misjudgment of his brother.
“The letter of Bunsen is written in a very unconnected manner—Humboldt calls it an ‘unkempt’ one, which characterizes it admirably. Bunsen intends to live for the future in Bonn, but he complains that the university has deteriorated so much, particularly the theological faculty. Dorner and Rothe have been jostled out, and their places are held by the most mediocre and narrow-minded people to be found in all Germany, such as Lange and Steinmeyer; from Hengstenberg’s study, through Gerlach, all bends, he says, to ignorance and darkness, the present gloomy period of the most intellectual king of the century will come to be deplored even more grievously than the age of Woellner; every thing is imbued with the reactionary political character of the squirearchy; hypocrisy and real infidelity can grow out of this unholy system, and a most violent reaction must ensue; body-guards and policemen can enforce any political programme as long as it lasts; but the German never submits to the enthralment of the mind, and his curse will pursue through all the centuries those who have attempted it. Thus writes Bunsen! But he writes thus now as a deposed favorite! How was he, and for what did he work before? For the same ignorance and darkness. Quite like Radowitz, who also played the liberal at last!”
160.
VARNHAGEN TO HUMBOLDT.
Berlin, July 8th, 1854.
With emotions of gratitude I received the dear letter of your Excellency. Yet a sign of life, indeed, a sign of the most vigorous life! Whenever the question could arise how you felt and thought in this gloomy time, such a sheet would be the most decided answer, the most brilliant testimony, to a sentiment and activity which always kept on in the same direction, and never proved false. The letter from London—the epithet “unkempt” is singularly happy. I send back dutifully, as directed; how I should have liked to incorporate it with my collections! It is a remarkable sign of the present situation; many expressions in it strikingly significant. Had the writer but expressed himself thus before his last personal experience! The scientific renown which you believe in danger from the threatening deluge of writings seems to me to have stood from the first upon unsafe ground, upheld by external props, with which it must fall inevitably. Perhaps a political career will be open to him again, but certainly not through literary aid, for which, in part, this sudden literary taste seems intended. Silent rest would be far more useful. But this can hardly be expected in the place selected, where Catholic hatred is already alive, and nourishes and strengthens that political rancor which will continue in vigor, fed with fuel from here.
The late Prince Wittgenstein once congratulated me that I had not to sit in the Council of State, and that was the old Council, of which your Excellency also was a member! How much more must I congratulate you on your escape from the new one, of which Stahl and Ranke are members! To the latter, no one will dispute the part of the clown; to the first, every one will accord that of the sophist.
The words of Gneisenau, which Pertz alludes to in Stein’s Leben (v. 262), are so entirely inapplicable to William von Humboldt that one would be tempted to interpret the H. differently, if an acceptable conjecture could be found. I have myself, indeed, heard from Gneisenau’s lips expressions of dissatisfaction, but never such extravagant ones, which might be contradicted so easily and perfectly. What Gneisenau blamed chiefly in your brother was that he never tried, by the respect which he commanded and by the superiority of his mind, to unite all those of equal sentiment into a communion, by which much might have been undertaken and effected. But this reproach, if it be one, Gneisenau himself deserved as well, and received from his adherents! The book of Pertz is full of aspersions and incongruities, which, indeed, in most cases originate in Stein himself, but are confirmed by Pertz in blind partiality; he, while communicating everything, even in many cases things which do not belong to the subject, leaves out important documents without hesitation as soon as he finds them not entirely for the benefit of his hero. The same will take place when he writes the biography of Gneisenau, for which the hand of a tactician would seem to be the first desideratum.
The pious quaker-sheet was already known to me; one could hardly have thought such monstrosities practicable in the English language! But our time abounds in such. The psychographer takes the place of the moving table; they try to enforce my faith in the absurdity; I excuse myself, that at my time of life a man is a little backward, and that I have just arrived at table moving, but of that they do not want to hear any more. This reminds me of something, I will not suppress! It of course happens often, that remarks of your Excellency, in particular such made at the royal table, come to the ears of the public, and are repeated with zeal, and by this assume widely different forms; thus, quite recently, a reply to Herr Senfft von Pilsach, in which the original form seemed lost to a great extent, it would certainly be desirable if the latter were always authentically preserved.