Berlin, May 28th, 1857.
I am uneasy, my dear friend, about Weimar. The Grand Duke is everywhere, except in Weimar “Athens.” What will become of our warmly recommended? Has he been spoken to by the eloquent Prince? You have not wished me joy to the order bestowed upon me by the “Hamburg Moniteur” as Grand Officier, which Guizot gave me fifteen years ago. Raumer’s conversation is very interesting; he was at Pesth, at Milan, dined with the Archduke, and called on Cavour. He has again returned with something of a hankering after the Austrian régime in Lombardy, like the Republicans when they visit the United States, where arsenic, the torture, or Fremont-worshipping negroes, cause a criminal colic to Cuba-mad Buchanan. Multa sunt eadem sed aliter. The Russian Minister of Enlightenment, Noroff, who had a leg shot off by the thigh at Borodino, and who has carried his wooden leg to Jerusalem and Egypt, and even to the top of the Pyramids, is here, and attends as a guest, sitting among the students, the lectures of Johannes Mueller and Diderici. His companion, the young Count Ouwaroff, the author of a great work on Hellenic antiquities in the Chersonese, attends the lectures of Michelet and Boeckh. Both are very agreeable men. The former is accused of being over spiritual, but not intolerant; both are much pleased with the freedom of our student life, and with the absence of policemen from our university building. I did not care to disabuse the mind of the one-legged Raumer, as they will leave soon. Decipitur mundus.
With old affection, your tiresome
A. v. Humboldt.
Note by Varnhagen.—“The United States, where arsenic, the torture, or Fremont-worshipping negroes, cause a criminal colic to Cuba-mad Buchanan.” This passage alludes to the circumstance, that at a hotel in Washington, the President, and many others with him, were seized with a violent colic after dinner, so that suspicions of poison were entertained; and it was only after a legal investigation that the whole was found to have been caused by impure water.
By the Translator.—“Fremont-worshipping negroes” must refer to the slaves who were reported to be in insurrection soon after the accession of President Buchanan, in Tennessee or Kentucky, and of whom it was said, that they believed Fremont and all his men to be encamped at the bottom of the Cumberland river, ready to emerge for their delivery.
209.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
Potsdam, Thursday. In haste,
June 4th, 1857.
A truly grand ducal letter, indelicate without excuse, cutting off every prospect, as he said “Au revoir” on going away, after the preconcerted shibboleth. Silence as to the costs, which are unnecessarily heavy. You and I shall cease “steering in the ocean of investigation,” as acquaintance with the party proposed does not suffice to determine him. I have a mind to answer somewhat mockingly. It may be agreeable to you, my esteemed friend, to enrich your archives with an autography of Thiers, who is now an Orleanist. Duvergier de Hauranne also came here after a pilgrimage to Eisenach. The Duchess is going to England. Preserve both letters, the bad one and that which is simply good.