1860.] 591 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S FAREWELL TO HER SON. (FROM WARD'S HISTORICAL PICTURE.) EAVILY falls the wrath of God upon us— HEAV Dark is thy doom, and mine, my own sweet son! Clasp me yet closer. Say, His will be done! Clasp me yet closer!-let me feel the beating Have pity on me, for my heart will break; For His-for mine-preserve a gentle spirit; Recall our dying words-'tis all forgiven! Live for thy country-make her cause thine own; Than a blest people round a righteous throne. Farewell, farewell!-from my whole soul I bless thee! Think of thy mother—always, always love her! My boy, my boy!-Cast down, yet not despairing, Nay, I resist no longer, sirs:—but spare him These threats and gestures, and I will submit: We must, we must..! the time is come to sever- .. O God! that I could die to rescue him!.. A. H. D. ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT AT THE COURT OF BERLIN.* THE annoyance felt by men of scrupulous honour in this country at the supposed breach of confidence in the rapid publication of the correspondence between Alexander von Humboldt and Varnhagen von Ense, and the malicious character of some extracts that have been largely circulated, have doubtless prevented many persons from finding in this volume all it suggests and reveals. Not only the indecorum of the act, but also the general untruthfulness of the result of the publication of private letters, have been already so well discussed and exemplified in a previous number of Fraser,t that we will now only state some circumstances which peculiarly affect the work before us-for besides the courtly and literary gossip, besides the intellectual rank of the writers, besides the rough license to which notorious and exalted names are subjected, there is a matter of moral interest in these pages which may well deserve some comment and illustration. Varnhagen von Ense was an indefatigable collector of autograph letters, and he has left behind him one of the largest collections on record. Unlike many other amateurs, he attached the main importance to the characteristic or historic contents of the documents he amassed, and a considerable portion of this volume is taken up by contributions received from Humboldt for this purpose. He appears however to have had some compunction as to the retention of Humboldt's own letters to himself as part of his treasure, and, however much it might have afflicted him in his dilettante pursuit, he would probably have destroyed these revelations of Humboldt's innermost life, had not the writer himself distinctly expressed his notions on the subject: Make yourself quite easy in the possession of my irre * verences (impietäten),' is the sense of Humboldt's letter of 1841; 'when I am gone, which will not be long first, do exactly as you please with them; they are your property.' Now on another occasion, Humboldt complains of the unjust historical impression which is conveyed by accidental and transitory epistolary phrases, and illustrates this in his own case by a passage in which Schiller tells Körner that he, Humboldt, is 'a man of very limited understanding, who, notwithstanding his restless activity, will never attain any eminence,' at the very time that their relations were of the most intimate character, and after Schiller had written in a former letter that he was a far more gifted and higher-minded man than his brother. Humboldt also quotes a letter from a collection of autographs in Augsburg, in which a friend writes, "Alexander Humboldt again accompanies the king to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in the sole capacity of bloodhound,' and adds, 'Such are the representations on the stage of life for the benefit of a credulous posterity!' He therefore knew very well what he was doing when he authorised Varnhagen to keep his letters, although perhaps he never anticipated that they would appear in any such concrete form as this: he may rather have expected that the facts and opinions contained in them would come out incidentally at different intervals, when the chief actors in the scene might have passed away: but in any case he was clearly willing to take upon himself the responsibility, whatever it might be, without anxiety as to any pain he would inflict or any irritation he would excite. It is therefore not Humboldt or the friends of Humboldt who are injured by this publication, but those persons of high social and literary station who are roughly and often unjustly criticized. With Briefe von Alexander von Humboldt an Varnhagen von Ense. Leipzig, 1860. + 'The Publication-of-Letters Nuisance,' Fraser's Magazine for April, 1860, p. 561. 1860.] His Relation to the two Kings of Prussia. most of these judgments, however, it is probable that Varnhagen heartily agreed, and his representatives may possibly share his feelings, and there is more literary discourtesy than breach of confidence in any fault that has here been committed. Our concern, however, at this moment is with the figure of Humboldt himself as the writer of these petulant and discomfortable letters. The position of Humboldt at Berlin was the cause of sincere gratification to all those who loved to see genius successful and rewarded, and also the source of much envy on the part of all whose merits had never been acknowledged either by prince or people as they thought was deserved. His intellectual eminence indeed was so unchallenged, that when he passed from writing a chapter of Cosmos, to his daily reserved place at the royal table opposite the king, there was no pretence either of favouritism or of service-it was the fair and honourable interchange of the highest social station and the noblest mental powers; the patronage was on both sides. Who suspected the deep discontent that lay at the bottom of that old man's heart? Who believed that he was seeking refuge from that courtly splendour, and even from that royal friendship, in secret satire and confidential depreciation of all about him poured into the ear of a literary contemporary of whose complete sympathy he was well assured? And yet there can be nothing in this volume very new or surprising to those who really understand the temperament and culture of Humboldt, and the character of the society in which he moved. 'Under an appearance,' he writes, 'of outward splendour, and in the enjoyment of the somewhat fantastic preference of a high-minded prince, I live in a moral and mental isolation.' Rahel had said long before, 'Humboldt was a great man when he came to Berlin, then he became an ordinary one.' May not the meaning of these two paragraphs be, that Humboldt at Berlin : 593 had always been the courtier and as such in a false position? In a French novel called Barnave (if we remember right, by the Bibliophile Jacob) there is an excellent character of an old German Baroness, who, having accompanied Marie Antoinette to the Court of France, is at length compelled by the menaces of the French revolution to return home, and resume her former state and dignity to her son's congratulations on the recovery of her independence, she can only mourfully reply, 'Comment vivre sans servir?' This feeling is incredibly strong in a country where the multiplicity of small courts has enfeebled the self-reliance of the upper classes, and to few Germans would it seem incompatible with any literary or scientífic attainment, or even with consciousness of moral power. There must have been something of it latent in Humboldt himself, or so large a portion of his life would not have been spent in the formalities and requisitions of a courtier's existence. His royal intimacy indeed had begun with the father of the present king; and his relations, both with that sovereign and his court, were happier and more natural than at the period of this correspondence. He himself was younger, and more in harmony with the events of his time. That king, though far inferior to his son in accomplishment and erudition, was a philosopher in his way, and of a school which tended to results not far different from those familiar to the thinkers of the eighteenth century. This tone of mind_naturally extended itself to the household and frequenters of the palace, and became habitual even in the camp, combining itself curiously with the material restrictions of a military régime. Thus Heinrich Heine sang Handle the drumstick and care not for life, Kiss, if you like her, the sutler's wife : The freedom too of religious speculation which Goethe has claimed as the ancestral privilege of the German mind, was still congenial to good society; and although in his later years the king had seemed inclined to measures of violence in the enforcement of a Lutheran statereligion, the latitude of opinion in the higher circles still savoured of the days of Frederick the Great. In such an atmosphere, both Humboldt and Varnhagen von Ense could breathe freely, and associate agreeably even with men of reactionary politics and aristocratic prejudices. It will astonish many to read the specimens here exhibited of the correspondence between Prince Metternich and a man whose political opinions he must have regarded as dangerous and detestable, but whose knowledge he could reverence, and of whose friendship he was proud. With the new reign came a mode of thought and an estimate of men and things to which it was difficult, if not impossible, for the great minds which had battled through the glories and the ruins of the French Revolution to do justice. M. de Talleyrand used to say that only those who had lived to the conclusion of the last century could realize the worth of the world to man; and we can fairly test the depth of those impressions by their endurance to the very last in the nobler spirits that had traversed the whole round of disappointment, and to whom all faith might well seem illusory and vain. In what condition do I leave the world,' writes Humboldt in 1853, I who remember 1789, and have shared in its emotions? However, centuries are but seconds in the great process of the development of advancing humanity. Yet the rising curve has small bendings in it, and it is very inconvenient to find oneself on such a segment of its descending portion.' In such a temper as this sentence implies, neither Humboldt nor Varnhagen could see anything but hypocrisy or morbid sentiment in the religious medium through which both philosophy and manners were now regarded; and in the prevalent fashion of increased moral earnestness they could discern little besides affectation, prejudice, and wilful ignorance. When the audacious neologisms of Bruno Bauer shocked the Court, Humboldt merely wrote-Bruno has found me pre-Adamitically converted; when I was young, the Courtclergy held opinions much the same as his. The minister who confirmed me told me that the Evangelists had made a variety of notes, out of which, in later times, biographies had been poetically constructed.' There can be no better illustration of the invincible repugnance of such men as these to the intellectual tastes predominant in the king's society, than their misapprehension of the character and opinions of Chevalier Bunsen. It was natural enough that a somewhat arrogant aristocracy should resent the affectionate favour of the king towards a self-made man of letters, and should suspect him of designs dangerous to the interests of their order, and involving social and political change. political change. But Humboldt and his correspondent could not be affected by such motives; indeed, the former was himself amenable to very much the same accusations -so much so, that he habitually absented himself from Court when the Emperor Nicholas formed part of the circle, and the King of Hanover openly expressed his contempt when he told him at his own table, 'that there were two classes of persons always to be had for money to any amount-strumpets and professors.* It was mainly the pietistic tendency in the writings and supposed influences of Chevalier Bunsen that made him an object almost of animosity to Varnhagen, who personally knew him little, if at all, and of occasional unfriendly sarcasm to Humboldt, who ought to have known him better. The visit of the King to England on the occasion of the baptism of the Prince of Wales was * As we heard the story at the time, the word was not 'Professor,' but 'Federvieh,' i.e. writing animals. 1860.] Humboldt and Bunsen. represented by these parties as an act of prostration on the part of Prussia at the feet of the British Tories, who never troubled their heads about it; and the mutual arrangements for a Protestant bishopric of Jerusalem, as the enthronement of an episcopal bench at Berlin, which has certainly not resulted from that very harmless proceeding. By a singular fatality Bunsen was looked upon in this country with much suspicion and ill will, as a latitudinarian and neologist, while he was abused and persecuted as an evangelical fanatic on the banks of the Spree. If in truth a theological sympathy may have been a bond of union between him and his sovereign and a stepping-stone towards his advancement in life, we know of no instance in which this interference led either to injustice or to intolerance, which unfortunately cannot be said of the religious counsels that have prevailed in the later years of the monarch who deserved a happier destiny. When the day of trial came which was to determine whether Chevalier Bunsen as а public man stood on the side of absolutism or constitutional liberty, of progress or of reaction, he was not found wanting: and by surrendering without hesitation the highest and most lucrative post of his profession rather than subserve a policy which he deemed unworthy of his country and injurious to mankind, he dispersed the clouds of calumny and prejudice which had so long obscured his name. When we read the present Regent of Prussia's confidential communi cation to Humboldt, of his personal knowledge that the hostile course of Russia, with all its disastrous consequences, would have been arrested in its commencement by the steadfast resistance of Prussia in co-operation with France and England, we must appreciate the sacrifice which Chevalier Bunsen made to enforce that line of action, no less than the prescient wisdom which dictated his resolution. That Humboldt valued and honoured this conduct cannot be doubted; but even in doing so he 595 cannot altogether refrain from an intermixture of the old sarcastic leaven with the most sagacious truths. 'Bunsen writes that he is expecting a fourth edition of his letters (Signs of the Times). This excellent, or rather this useful, book, being so extensively bought and read, does it prove that the German public has been less chloroformed for action than we imagine! Dubito. We buy the Signs of the Times, but scarcely five in one hundred of us will go to the poll: it is too troublesome-we are thinking. Again: 'It was hardly politic, I think, in Gott in der Geschichte to accept the royal offer in spite of its repetition. I am sorry for it, for he is a man that I respect, and much will be attributed to him of which he is altogether innocent.' Humboldt himself could not have been an active and earnest politician. The largeness of his views, derived from such long and accurate observation of Nature and of Man, must have induced that indifference to the immediate contingencies of human affairs which is at once the penalty and the consolation of the highest and the fullest minds; otherwise it is difficult to conceive how he for so many years endured the continual society of public men whose principles and conduct he must have regarded with animosity or disdain, and the occurrence of daily events distressing to his feelings and repulsive to his judgment. It was by this abstinence that he probably retained an influence which he could frequently exercise to mitigate the severity of cases of individual oppression, and sometimes to sustain the really noble and imaginative spirit of his royal master above the sordid policy of expediency and of fear. In these efforts he scorned no assistance that offered itself, not even that of the wilful, witty, and benevolent Bettina von Arnim, whom the king treated with the same kind of admiring indulgence that Goethe had before him, allowing her to say and write whatever she pleased, and, it may be, taking from her wayward wisdom advice |