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[312]

We append here, a little out of the regular course, a letter from Humboldt, which shows that he too was beginning to look more leniently upon Agassiz's glacial conclusions.

Humboldt to Louis Agassiz.

Berlin, August 15, 1840.
I am the most guilty of mortals, my dear friend. There are not three persons in the world whose remembrance and affection I value more than yours, or for whom I have a warmer love and admiration, and yet I allow half the year to pass without giving you a sign of life, without any expression of my warm gratitude for the magnificent gifts I owe to you.1

I am a little like my republican friend who no longer answers any letters because he does not know where to begin. I receive on an average fifteen hundred letters a year. I never dictate. I hold that resort in horror. How dictate a letter to a scholar for whom one has a real regard? I allow myself to be drawn into answering the persons I know least, whose wrath is the most menacing. My nearer friends (and none are more dear to me


1 Probably the plates of the Fresh—Water Fishes and other illustrated publications.

Houghton, Mifflin and company, New York, Boston, 1885.

Tufts University provided support for entering this text.

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A. De Humboldt (2)
Louis Agassiz (2)
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August 15th, 1840 AD (1)
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