that no graver counsellor would have dared to offer.

How grateful must have been the expansion of opinion with so congenial a mind as Varnhagen von Ense to one who must have been but too conscious that he was looked upon by the society in which he lived as a sort of moral Helot an example of what a man might come to, when drunk with knowledge! No amount of diplomatic reserve could have made him acceptable to his fellow-courtiers, and it was only as a link between the intellectual qualities of the sovereign and the literature and science of the nation that he could feel himself in his legitimate vocation. In the various and remarkable creations of Art which have elaborately decorated the least lively of cities,-in the great geographical and antiquarian explorations which Prussia has of late years undertaken, some of them in connexion with English enterprise-in the composition and production of costly works of national or general interest in the judicious and delicate relief of destitute men of letters, the authority of Humboldt was continuously and powerfully exercised without a suspicion of favouritism or partiality. Those who have had the good fortune to see him in the midst of that assembly of notable men whom the King of Prussia brought together on the festival of his 'Order of Merit,' will not forget with what ready reverence he was greeted by all-poets, historians, painters, sculptors, geographers, physicians, philosophers, professors of all arts and learning, as their intellectual chief, and how tranquilly he rested on his great reputation with the free and good will of all around.

Apart from these useful and honourable functions, these letters cannot fail to suggest the question whether the connexion of Baron Humboldt with the Court of Prussia was one which can be regarded with satisfaction relatively to the dignity of literature and the worth of the human mind. And yet, if not this, what position of any man of genius or the highest erudition in the constant intimacy of any

court is desirable or even tenable? Enjoying the entire esteem and real friendship of two sovereigns, one of them a man of grave intelligence, proved by many severe vicissitudes of fortune and a foremost figure in the catastrophes of modern Europe, the other a most pleasant and accomplished gentleman, full of generous impulses, and only deficient in the sterner purpose and more explicit will that his times required, Humboldt remains as unindulgent to the princely character as if he were an outer democrat, and falls foul even of our amiable Prince Consort, who approached him with a cordial admiration' which would have been very agreeable to any English writer. And when the Grand Duke of SaxeWeimar is very solicitous that Humboldt or Varnhagen should find him. a private secretary, and the person selected does not happen to suit him, the friends attribute his rejection to the circumstance of the candidate not being of noble birth, adding an anecdote illustrative of that Prince's exclusive notions, which has caused him to insert his autograph, This is a lie,' in the copy deposited in the public library at Weimar. What philosopher at court can keep his judgment clear and his temper cool, where the wise and kindly Humboldt has so failed?

The wide gulf which in this country separates the men of thought from the men of action is assuredly no small evil. In its effect on the political and social character of the upper ranks it maintains a low standard of mental labour, content with official aptitude, with adroit representation, and with facility of speech, and disparaging the exercise of those spontaneous and constructive faculties which should alone give a man the command of his fellows in a reflective age; it encourages the consumption of a large portion of life in amusements which become occupations, serious frivolities only differing from vices as barren ground differs from weeds, and really perilous to the moral peace of the community, by contrasting

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the continuous task of the working thousand with the incessant pleasure of the selected few. On the other hand, the isolation of the literary class has not only deformed some of our highest works of fiction by caricatures of manners and motives with which the writers have not been sufficiently familiar, but has also engendered a sense of injustice which shows itself in wrong susceptibilities, in idle vaunts, in uncharitable interpretations, and in angry irony. These painful feelings may rather increase than diminish with the practical equality that is advancing upon us with such rapid strides, and the imagined barrier may be all the more formidable when it ceases to rest on the palpable inequalities of fortune and the real dissimilarity of daily existence.

In France, where the avenging Revolution had levelled to the ground decayed institutions and perverted privileges, and where we ourselves had witnessed the prosperous power of a government resting on the claims of intellectual superiority and employing its chief men of letters in all the highest offices of the state, we now witness the complete preponderance of material force and material wealth, a professed contempt for idéologues imitative of the First Empire, and the dread of Socialism serving the same purpose as the terrible reminiscence of Jacobin excesses in former days. Who can predicate what will there be the relation of literature to society if a new generation grows up in the present obscuration of political life, and accustomed to look on free intelligence as subversive of public order, and on purely mental occupation as inferior to the arts of calculation or destruction? In Prussia, in the worst of times, there was a liberty of political and philosophical speculation which rendered it possible for Humboldt to be a courtier without corruption, and to combine these effusions of occasional spleen with a real regard for his king and country.

Let, however, no displeasure at the separation or even hostility of the two superiorities, either here

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or elsewhere, blind us to the paramount importance of the independence of the literary character. So noble indeed was the nature of Alexander von Humboldt, that it preserved, under an almost life-long weight of patronage, the elevation of his intellect and the integrity of his heart. His indefatigable industry was unimpeded by the constant round of small duties and vapidamusements,and the luxurious security of his official position never blunted his eager interest in the new acquisitions of all science, and in the fresh developments of literature. It was thus his signal good fortune to retain to the last, not only the wonderful stores of knowledge accumulated through so many years, but also the art to reproduce and dispose them for the delight and edification of mankind. Some affectation in demeanour and expression was the inevitable consequence of a factitious mode of life, but we would attribute much of the hyperbolic tone that pervades a portion of this correspondence, to the traditional habits of a former generation, when adulation was polite and the best friends were ceremonious, rather than to any infection of disingenuous manners. But so notable an exception to ordinary rules and expectations as the career of Humboldt, must not make us desire that those who occupy the heights and pinnacles of human mind' should be exposed to similar temptations. We would not purchase any advantage, however great, for the powerful, at so costly a price as the sacrifice of that which is the only sure sign of the progress of nations, and the very core of civilization itself, the combination of moral strength with intellectual culture. It is the evidence of this which gives much worth to the desultory contents of the volume before us. It is thus that we rejoice at the sense of dissatisfaction, at the criticism of the great, at the consciousness of an incomplete and jarring existence, at the struggle to escape from a conventional world to the confidences of a genial and undoubted friendship, that pervade these pages.