s, and making the first suggestion about Neuchatel and its
museum, as a place where the aspiring naturalist might secure something
more substantial than "brilliant hopes" to live upon; next, that from
Agassiz to his father, who begs to be told as much as he can be supposed
to understand of the nature of this work upon fossil fishes, which
called for so much time, labor, and expense; and, almost immediately,
Agassiz's letter to his parents, telling them that Humboldt had, quite
spontaneously and unexpectedly, relieved his present anxieties by a
credit of a thousand francs, to be increased, if necessary. Humboldt had
shown a friendly interest in him from the first, and had undertaken to
negotiate with Cotta, the publisher, in his behalf; but, becoming uneasy
by the delay, and feeling that "a man so laborious, so gifted, and so
deserving of affection ... should not be left in a position where lack
of serenity disturbs his power of work," he delicately pressed the
acceptance of this aid as a confidential transaction between two friends
of unequal age.

Indeed, the relations between the "two friends," one at that time
sixty-three, and the other twenty-five, were very beautiful, and so
continued, as the correspondence shows. Humboldt's letters (we wish
there were more of them) are particularly delightful, are full of wit
and wisdom, of almost paternal solicitude, and of excellent counsel. He
enjoins upon Agassiz to finish what he has in hand before taking up new
tasks (this is in 1837), not to spread his intellect over too many
subjects at once, nor to go on enlarging the works he had undertaken; he
predicts the pecuniary difficulties in which expansion would be sure to
land him, bewails the glacier investigations, and closes with "a touch
of fun, in order that my letter may seem a little less like preaching. A
thousand affectionate remembrances. No more ice, not much of
echinoderms, plenty of fish, recall of ambassadors _in partibus_, and
great severity toward booksellers, an infernal race, two or three of
which have been killed under me."

The ambassadors _in partibus_ were the artists Agassiz employed and sent
to England or elsewhere to draw fossil fishes for him in various
museums, at a cost which Humboldt knew would be embarrassing. The ice,
which he would have no more of, refers to the glacier researches upon
which Agassiz was entering with ardor, laying one of the solid
foundations of his fame. Curiously enough, both