MY DEAR M. DE HUMBOLDT—I take the liberty of commending to your goodness shown so often to myself and to Frenchmen generally, M. Duvergier de Hauranne, who goes to Germany to show it to his young son. You know our country too well for me to tell you what important and always honorable part has been sustained by M. Duvergier de Hauranne in our assemblies, where he has ever been faithful to the cause of rational liberty; and not faithful alone, but eminently useful. Having returned to private life and devoted himself to study, he goes to see your excellent country, and I thought I could not do better than to recommend him to your kindness. To his young son it will be an imperishable recollection to have seen the illustrious savan who does the greatest honor to the century, and whom we Frenchmen have the vanity to consider as French, and belonging to us no less than to Germany. I do not write on current affairs here, for M. Duvergier de Hauranne knows them, and can make you acquainted with them better than any other man. Accept the renewed homage of my respectful attachment. A. THIERS. 212. HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. BERLIN, _June 19th, 1857_. To my greatest joy, a beautiful portrait of yourself was brought me by Mr. Richard Zeune, during an excursion to Tegel. I know not which most to admire, the fresh, vivid, characteristic likeness of features so dear to me (the talent of the skilful Miss Ludmilla Assing), or the writing of your hand, so pregnant in thought and expression. The latter I have copied myself and shown it to my friends, because it is to be ranked with the best of what our language contains in the sententious compression of ideas. The unexpected arrival of the brothers Schlagintweit from Cashmere, Thibet, and the Kuen Luen mountains, which bound Thibet on the north, as the Himalaya on the south, has unreasonably delayed my acknowledgment of your kindness, as they are going to the King at Marienbad, without, it is to be hoped, the three hundred and forty boxes they have brought with them. All the _passes_, even those most convenient for travel, are 18,000 feet high. From the liberal grand ducal power (not liberal in the prosaic sense of filthy lucre), not a syllable, probably because he is expecting us to send him fresh proposals, fresh victims. No one but the honorary Hungarian monk[95] and the princess is now a riddle to me. Yours most faithfully, A. V. HUMBOLDT.