These letters have created the most lively sensation all over Germany, where, within a few weeks after their first publication, a fifth edition has already appeared. In the present eventful state of affairs they have been hailed as fresh and startling evidence of the fact, that liberal principles and a strong feeling of German nationality and unity have long been steadily gaining ground, even among the highest classes of Prussian society. Opinions and sentiments, such, for instance, as those recorded in the “Diary” after Letter CXXXIV., become portentous signs of the times when uttered by men in the position of Humboldt and Varnhagen. To this feature of the book, far more than to “the delicious bits of scandal” in it—as has been surmised, the powerful effect which it has produced from one end of the country to the other is mainly to be attributed.

The fair editor of the original Letters has expatiated at some length on the propriety of publishing them so soon after Humboldt's death. This is a question with which the publishers of the English version can have no concern. The book having once been brought before the world, the correspondence, and the effect produced by it, become matters of contemporary history, which ought not to be withheld from the public of any civilized country. Some objection may be made that certain passages, which bear upon living persons here, have been retained in the translation.