From Alexander Humboldt, as well as from Varnhagen von Ense, we learn a good deal of the inner life of kings and queens and princes in Berlin. There is something almost painful in reflecting on the kind of life which Humboldt must have led among these people, whom he so cordially despised, and whom in his private chroniclings he so held up to scorn. The great philosopher assuredly had a huge treasure of hatred locked up in his heart. He detested and scorned these royal personages, who so blandly patronized him, or were sometimes so rough in their condescending familiarity. Nothing takes the gilt off the life of courts so much as a perusal of what Humboldt has written about it. One hardly cares to think of so great, and on the whole so noble a man, living a life of what seems so like perpetual dissimulation; of his enduring these royal dullards and pert princesses, and doubtless seeming profoundly reverential, and then going home of nights to put down on paper his record of their vulgarity, and selfishness, and impertinence. Sometimes Humboldt was not able to contain himself within the limits of court politeness. The late King of Hanover (father of the now dethroned King George) was a rough brutal trooper, who had made himself odious in England as the Duke of Cumberland, and was accused by popular rumors of the darkest crimes--unjustly accused certainly, in the case where he was charged with the murder of his valet. The Duke did not make a very bad sort of King, as kings then went; but he retained all his roughness and coarseness of manner. He once accosted Humboldt in the palace of the late King of Prussia, and in his pleasant graceful way asked why it was that the Prussian court was always full of philosophers and loose women--describing the latter class of visitors by a very direct and expressive word. "Perhaps," replied Humboldt blandly, "the King invites the philosophers to meet me, and the other persons to please your Majesty!" Humboldt seems to have had little liking for any of the illustrious personages he met under the roof of the King of Prussia. A brief record he made of a conversation with the late Prince Albert (for whom he expressed a great contempt) went far when it was published to render the husband of Queen Victoria more unpopular and even detested in Ireland than another George the Fourth would have been. The Irish people will probably never forget that, according to the statement of Humboldt, the Prince spoke contemptuously of Irish national aspirations, declared he had no sympathy with the Irish, and that they were as restless, idle, and unmanageable as the Poles--a pretty speech, the philosopher remarks, to be made by the husband of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Some attempt was made when this record of Humboldt's came to light to dispute the truth of it; but Humboldt was certainly not a liar--and anyhow the Irish people believed the story and it did no little