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[500] both sides of his head, and his face is red, so that he has not the intellectual look that belongs to his character; but he reveals himself at once in his conversation. He seemed to understand our present politics in America pretty well, and said he supposed President Jackson was ‘a sort of Tory by instinct, who, having settled his power on the most absolute radicalism, uses it with very little restraint.’ His sympathies, of course, are all with our old Federalists, of whom he knew a good deal.

Some company came in, and among the rest the Baroness von Arnheim, who has recently published a most ridiculous book, containing a sentimental correspondence, which, under the name of ‘Bettina,’ or ‘Little Betty,’ she carried on with Goethe when she was nearly forty years old and he above seventy, representing herself in it as a little girl of fifteen desperately in love with him. I saw it in Dresden, and thought it disgusting; and did not wonder that Mrs. Austin, in London, told me she had refused to translate it from the manuscript, because she thought any well-taught Englishwoman would be ashamed to have anything to do with a book which seemed to claim the reputation of an intrigue that undoubtedly never existed. I could not get through it, though it is all the rage with multitudes in Germany. But this evening I perceived by her conversation that she must be the Bettina, whose other name I did not know, and I told her so . . . . . It is generally understood that Goethe had taste enough to be very little pleased with the sentimental and indecent nonsense of this lady's correspondence, though it was full of the most violent admiration and adoration of himself. Few of his letters appear, and they are very cool in their tone. Mad. d'arnheim was the mother of two or three full-grown children when she composed all this nauseous galimatias.

May 27.—This morning, early, Humboldt sent me a truly courtly note, to say that he had made arrangements to have certain collections opened for us to see,—not forgetting, however, at the end of all his courtliness, to give a cut at M. Ancillon,—and at eleven o'clock he came in his carriage to take us to see them. First, he carried us to the Bau-Akademie,—the Academy of Architecture, an institution which has been arranged and formed by the King to suit Schinkel. . . .

From the Academy of Architecture, M. de Humboldt carried us to the University, a large and massive palace, built by Frederic II. for his brother Henry, 1757-64, and given by the present King for purposes of knowledge. His object was to show us the collections in

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