and a higher title—that of a ‘King of Ostphalia’ is already proposed. The King jestingly calls him by that title already. He counts upon England and France, and willingly flatters and accommodates Bonaparte, who would meet with little difficulty in being the recognised Protector of a new Rhenish Confederation. So much for Germany and Teutonism. It is betrayed most assiduously by its sworn defenders. Finally, Humboldt added: ‘When a man has the misfortune to be compelled to live among such wretches as this Gerlach, Raumer, and the rest who have crept into this Court.’... He went from me to the Koethener Strasse to look at a picture, and left me much excited. I could not keep in mind and write down one-tenth of all he said.” Varnhagen adds, on the 12th of August, Humboldt said of the situation of Prussia, it reminded him of a trial he once heard in Paris; the lawyer had to ask damages for a box on the ear, and had exclaimed triumphantly at the close: “Au fond nous n’avons pas reçu le soufflet, nous n’avons eu que le geste!” 169. HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. BERLIN, _January 13th, 1856_. Smile, dear friend (you are fully justified!) at the strange lines of Princess Lieven, and at my troublesome inquiry. Madame de Quitzow, who has not written to me for twenty-five years, wants to know, whether the Emperor Paul, in the epoch of his political insanity, had made the proposition through Kotzebue, that the ministers for foreign affairs should measure swords personally instead of the armies. I was at that time (1799 and 1800) in the deltas of South America, and was entirely ignorant of the anecdote which the Russian Princess now, as it appears to me, so occidental in her predilections, desires to corroborate. The obscure researches I have made would seem to lead to the result that the duel was to be waged not by the ministers but by the monarchs themselves. I pray you, noble friend, to write me a few lines on what your excellent memory supplies, and still more I pray you to tell me consoling words about your health at the return of the injurious cold weather. Bunsen writes me that he expects a fourth edition of his letters. Does the great reading demand for this excellent or rather useful book indicate that the German public is less chloroformed against action than we had supposed? _Dubito._ The German landlord of a (dicunt) very dirty hotel, which glories in my name in California for many years—beside a more cleanly one of “Jenny Lind,”—sends me German California papers from time to time. In a discourse on the moral and intellectual state of the English, the French, and the Germans, the editor recently said: “We Germans are a nation of thinkers, deeply occupied with the world of ideas, we also have the _great advantage_ before the members of other nations who live here, that we care little