[7.]
My dear M.,—I did not thank you immediately for your delightful and instructive letter, because there were many points on which I wished to write fully. The last decisive crisis of the German-European business has at length arrived, and I have had the opportunity of doing my duty in the matter. But I have been doing nothing else since last Saturday, nothing Chinese even. I recommend the inclosed to you. The young man is a good and highly informed German bookseller. He has of course written just what I did not tell him, and omitted what he ought to have said, “that he had been here for five years with the first booksellers, and before that was trained under his father in Bonn; that he understands English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish.” I have only heard what is good of him. How grateful I feel to you for having begun the Index of Egyptian words at once! We wanted one here for a special purpose, so our trouble has not been thrown away. I now perceive how impossible it is to understand the Egyptian language and history thoroughly without Chinese. In the chronology there is still much to be done.
We have as yet held our own in London and Warsaw as against Vienna. But in the Schleswig-Holstein question we have the whole world, and unfortunately our own peace of July 2d, against us. Radowitz has worked most devotedly and honestly. When shall we see you again?
[8.]
By return of post thanks and greetings to my dear M. Your proposal as to Schütz is excellent. Let me know if I am to write to Humboldt. I draw a totally different lesson from your news of the loss of the Veda MS. Wait till a good copy arrives, and in the mean time pursue your philological studies in some other direction, and get on with your Introduction. You can work more in one day in Europe than in a week in India, unless you wish to kill yourself, which I could not allow. So come with bag and baggage here, to 9 Carlton Terrace, to one who longs to see you.
F. must have gone mad, or have been far more so politically than I imagined. The “Leader,” edited by him and N., is (as Mills says) red and raw! and, in addition, badly written. It is a pity for prophets and poets to meddle with realities, instead of devoting themselves to futurity and poetry. George is happy in the intellectual wealth of Paris life, and quite perplexed at the perverseness and follies of the political cliques. He promises to write about the acquaintance of Lamenais and George Sand. I am well, but fully use the right of a convalescent, and hardly go anywhere.
Friend Stockmar sends a report from Erfurt, where the Parliament meets on the 26th to receive the oaths of the Directory and the Ministers of the Union. Usedom, Pertz, and Co. are quite mad in their enthusiasm for the Black and White, as I have openly written to them.
[9.]
Mr. Eastwick, the translator of Bopp's Grammar, tells me that he and Murray wish for an article on this work in the “Quarterly Review” for January, 1851; so it must be sent in in November. Wilson refuses, as he is too busy. I believe you could best write such a review, of about sixteen pages [pg 402] (£16). If you agree to this, write a line to me or direct to Eastwick, who would then get a letter from Lockhart with the commission for you. God help Schleswig-Holstein!