So my pedestrian prose has led you back, my friend, to the regions of the noblest of rhythms! It would make me proud, if the universe were not entitled to your favor. With even more modesty than the poor, for whose benefit the old man with the moss-grown beard[88] exhibits himself for the small compensation of five silver groschen. With what excellent taste you have transferred the English “_home_” into “_Daheim_.” Indescribably beautiful is your poetry, full of grace and delicacy, and of a solemn monition of what should have been extracted from nature and art, and the weapon of science. If my brother William, who, in his correspondence with Wolf, discoursed so largely on lax and severe hexameters, could but have lived to witness this family honor! Your advice, even when not clothed in verse, is law to me. I shall follow it at once; and you have made matters a great deal easier than they were. _Alea jacta sit!_ Could you, perhaps, dear friend, transfer the last ten syllables (or lines) of the Grand Ducal letter into your classic chirography, so as possibly to enable me to guess what it is that I am understood to have promised. Fremont’s portrait reminds one vividly of Chateaubriand. A biography of the former has just appeared in New York, dedicated to me—“Memoirs of the Life and Public Services of John Charles Fremont, by John Bigelow (?).” The dedication says; “To Alexander von Humboldt this memoir of one whose genius he was among the first to discover and acknowledge, is respectfully inscribed by the author.” Delicate words, a little artificially combined. There is a copy of the letter written to him from Sans Souci, in the King’s name, in 1850, accompanying the great prize medal for science and art, upon his having projected the most extensive barometrical level ever executed, from Missouri to the South Sea. It closes with the words of which Sans Souci has no reason to be ashamed: “_La Californie, qui a_ NOBLEMENT résisté à l’introduction _de l’esclavage_, sera dignement représentée par _un ami de la liberté et des progrès de l’intelligence_.”[89] The biography has passages of a strange romantic interest. At one time cold and hunger have driven a party to fury and almost phrensy, when they all pray and sing, and then an oath from Fremont that there shall not in any case be a resort to cannibalism. As soon as my own curiosity is satisfied I shall send you the book. For the present, you may occupy yourself with the miracle performed by the chaplain of an army division in Magdeburg, on a Mr. Assemann, in Quedlinburg. I have lighted upon it in my capacity of naturalist. It is to be found on p. 34. Gratefully yours, A. V. HUMBOLDT. NOTE BY VARNHAGEN.—The water color paintings by Hildebrandt, that of Humboldt among them, were exhibited in the hall of the Art Union, for the benefit of the poor. Price of admission, five silber-groschen.[90]