It is so long, my dear Baron, since you paid us a visit, that when you feel inclined to judge for yourself, you will be more than gratified by the real progress we have made in the departments of which you are the acknowledged master. The place of Jaeger, whose loss was greatly to be regretted, is well filled by Endlicher—a man of eminent genius; Baumgarten and Ettinghausen, are savans of great distinction. The Polytechnic School goes on admirably and is training up savans, and thoroughly educated mechanicians. Roesel is the best optician of our time, and the young Voigtlander follows in his footsteps. The establishment of Baron Charles Huegel has opened a new and vast field to botany. The arts and sciences advance quite to one’s liking; all that is wanted is a supervisor like yourself. You complain, my dear Baron, at finding yourself the oldest of the foreign members of the Institute; this indeed is a dreary lot, but it is inevitable and quite natural—provided one does not commit the folly of going off before the others. I have the same feeling—and that in a field which is certainly the greatest of all fields. Of all the Kings and the Ministers of State in office, between the year 1813 and the year 1815, the King of Prussia and myself are the only survivors! And yet the time does not embrace more than a quarter of a century—so true is it that twenty-five years are quite an historical epoch. Let us not lose courage at such trifles, but go on as if they were nothing at all. My sincerest homage, dear Baron. METTERNICH. 43. HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. THURSDAY, _April 9th, 1840_. Here are two Salamanders. The _black_ (black bordered) king of Denmark is not only a Norwegian constitutional, but also a mineralogical king, who has written pretty good memoirs on Vesuvius. The predecessor having been an astronomical king, who proposed prize questions on comets, presented _great_ men like General Mueffling and myself with chronometers, and died of a comet on the night of the discovery of Galli’s comet, the Danish astronomers were, probably, rather anxious for _their heavenly_ pursuits under the reign of such an _earthly_ (or rather subterranean) monarch. I was called upon to remind the King of his old predilection for me. I therefore resorted to the pretext, never before made use of by me, of congratulating him on his accession to the throne. This is the cause of the black drama. The letter is plain and sensible. A. HT. Please read in Mr. Quinet’s the passage on Goethe and Bettina, and return the venom to me. 44. KING CHRISTIAN VIII. OF DENMARK TO HUMBOLDT. COPENHAGEN, _the 13th January, 1840_.