Separated from you, my dear intellectual friend, by the prolongation of my dreary sojourn at Potsdam, my first approach to you is to petition. You, you alone are my literary adviser, you who combine such depths of feeling with so wonderful a command of the harmonies of language. In my extreme old age, timidity in regard to my own powers increases in an almost morbid degree. A separate volume is to contain a selection of the sonnets of my brother, in which there is not always a perfect consonance between form and substance. I crave your permission to come to you to-morrow, Tuesday, at one o’clock, to read you a preface I have been compelled to write! By all means send a verbal assent by the bearer. With indestructible friendship, yours, A. V. HUMBOLDT. 153. HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. BERLIN, _August 31st, 1853_. For once in this gloomy time, when a fell simoom blows from the Pruth to the Tajo, I have had a real and a keen delight—your return, your encouraging message, and even the assistance I implored. Your superb letter finds me at the _bon à tirer_ of a little, I hope unpretending, preface to the sonnets. As it will be unfortunately impossible to-morrow (on Friday the King arrives at Potsdam, when I must hand him a good many things, according to promise), I take the liberty of sending you my proof sheets this evening. I beseech you to be severe in your treatment of these sheets, with which I have incorporated a remarkable fragment (in illustration of the ideas and frames of mind manifested in the “Letters to a Lady Friend”) and to note on a separate piece of paper what I ought to _alter_, and especially what I ought to _substitute_. I follow _you_ implicitly. I dislike the phrase on page 4, “_Schoen_ errungene Himmelsgabe.”[58] The pious fragment is an autograph, nearly illegible, and requiring some emendation in the construction of the sentences; thus on page 11: Perhaps you prefer the phrase “_bei_ Anerkennung.” The phrase is heavy, even now. On p. 14 you will not disapprove of “eben nicht,” in place of “haben nie gerade,” which is still more vernacular. The four lines stand there like a fallen aerolith. They must be preserved at all hazards, if only on account of their _freedom_. Could not you help out page 13 below somewhat? Is the close of the phrase “voice of conscience—has laid” clear to you? It is not so to me. Perhaps a few words would make the sense clear. Roma, the verses to me from Albano, and all the choruses and Pindarus will form another volume. With old affection and profound esteem, Yours, A. V. HUMBOLDT.