in Manchester 
London, 14 December 1855 

114 Dec. 1855. 
28, Deanstreet, Soho. 

Dear Frederic, 

The house arrest is beginning to become irksome. Not a single sip of free air yet. However, yesterday another 1,000 Germans sent off. Jones is finally supposed to come today. 

The evening before last I received a visit you won’t guess. Edgar Bauer – whom I haven’t seen for about a year – came and with him – Bruno. He has already been here for a fortnight and intends to stay about 6 months, “to put his assertion to the test”, an undertaking in which, the way he sets about it, he cannot possibly fail. The man has visibly aged, his forehead has grown larger, and he now more or less gives the impression of a pedantic old professor. For the time being he is lodging with Edgar, in a shack somewhere about the end of Highgate, and is sitting there in the midst of the deepest petty-bourgeois misery, seeing and hearing nothing. This he now takes to be London, and he believes that, apart from 30,000 privileged persons, all Englishmen live like Edgar Bauer. Hence his enormous hatred and “contempt” for the country. He feels as if he were living “in Treuenbriezen”. London is a veritable “prison”, if one comes from “Berlin”. On that occasion it also emerged that his present ideal is the “East Frisian”, “Oldenburg” and partly “Westphalian peasant” – these genuine nobles. He is also convinced that these louts cannot be dispelled by speculation, and that the modern levelling shabbiness, over which the man of “dissolution” laments, will founder against these || rocks. 

It was very curious to hear the “critique” make the confession that in the last analysis Berthold Auerbach is its real basis. In his view, with the exception of a few “purely commercial towns”, the towns in Germany are going under, but “the countryside” is flourishing splendidly. Of the industrial upsurge he knew not a syllable, though he did have a quiet lament over the fact that nowadays nothing is being done in Germany but “improvements”. 

The “English language” is “miserable”, completely romanised. Thereupon I consoled him by explaining that the Dutch and Danes say the same of the German language, and that the “Icelanders” are the only true chaps, not infected by Romance. 

The old boy has been much occupied with languages. He speaks Polish and therefore declares the Polish language to be the “most beautiful of all”. His linguistic study appears to have been very uncritical. For example, he considers Dombrovski to be much “more significant” than Grimm and calls him the father of comparative linguistics. He has also let the Poles in Berlin bamboozle him into believing that old Lelewel, in a most recent work, has refuted Grimm’s Geschichte der deutschen Sprache. 

By the way. He also told me that a thick volume had appeared in Germany (from the German side) against Grimm’s Lexikon. The whole volume consisted of the blunders that had been pointed out to G. 

Despite all his efforts to adopt a humorous air, great ill-humour and melancholy about the “present day” broke through. In Germany – horrible, indeed! – nothing is read and bought any longer except wretched compilations from the natural science field. When you come, we shall amuse ourselves a great deal with the || old boy. 

Koppen has been working for years on a book on Buddhism. Rutenberg is editor of the Staatsanzeiger. Herr Bergenroth, who has knocked about as a commission agent (commercial) in America (North and South), has returned sans argent and with illness. 

I am still waiting for the 2nd edition of the Times or Morning Post. Perhaps the news will force us to treat the Kars affair somewhat more hypothetically. For that, however, only very small changes (a few words in the conditional) would be necessary. I for my part believe that Kars has fallen. 

Today there is a not uninteresting article – as my wife tells me – in the Herald, on Bonaparte’s misgivings as to the true intentions of Viscount Palmerston. That Pam is on very bad terms with the Court you can see from the Times article against Prince Albert. At the same time the old manoeuvre again, to present Prince Albert as weighing upon the “Ministry”. 

Salut. 

Your 
KMI