and
languages, which are so instructive and so stimulating. Do not delay,
moreover, to give me some information regarding your own health and that
of your dear wife.

Weimar, July 30, 1804.

* * * * *

GOETHE TO WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT

August 31, 1812.

Faithful to its nature, Teplitz continues to be, esteemed friend,
unfavorable to our coming together. This inconvenience is doubly
vexatious to me now that, after your departure from Karlsbad, I
deliberately thought over the value of your presence, and wished to
continue our interviews. I was especially grieved that your beautiful
presentation of the manner in which languages received their expansion
over the world was not completely drawn up, although the most of it
remained with me. If you wish to give me a real proof of friendship,
have the kindness to write out for me such an abstract, and I shall
have a hemispherical map colored for myself accordingly and add it to
Lesage's _Atlas_, since, in view of my residence abroad for so much of
the year, I am compelled to think more and more of my general need of a
compendious and tabulated traveling library. Thus, with the assistance
of Aulic Councillor Meyer, the history of the plastic arts and of
painting is now being written on the margin of Bredow's _Tabellen_, and
thus in a very large number of cases your linguistic map will help to
refresh my memory and serve as a guide in much of my reading.

I would gladly have spoken with you in detail regarding Berlin and all
that which, according to your previous preparations and suggestions, is
going on there. Great cities always contain within themselves the image
of whole empires, and even though distorted by exaggerations which
degenerate into caricature, they nevertheless present the nation in
concentrated form to the eye.

State Councillor Langermann, whose good will and energy are so
beautifully balanced, has now delighted me for two weeks with his
instructive conversation, and both by word and by example revived my
courage for many things which I had been on the point of abandoning. It
is very enlivening indeed to re-behold the world in its entirety through
the medium of a truly energetic man; for the Germans seldom know how to
inspire in details, and never as a whole.

I here find an entirely natural transition to the information which you
give me--that our friend Wolf is not satisfied with Niebuhr's work,
although he preeminently s