To Joseph Hooker   15 July 1869

15/7/69

I appreciate fully, my dear Dr Hooker, all the interest you have unknowingly to me taken in my welfare, and the very generous efforts you made in promoting my social position. I have but little or no claims on you for such manifestations of your consideration, and shall always treasure the kind feelings, which prompted them.

I have myself grown more indifferent to worldly honor, as I gradually advanced in years, and as with this advance in age my hopes of life become more and more blighted. There was a time, when recognition or encouragement from the throne might have had some influence on my life,¹ but I fear that time has passed. But to you, surrounded by a florishing² family, who grows young again in his descendents, honors from the throne ought to have charms, for the sake of your children and child's children; and as long as such honors are not completely abolished, no one among men of science deserves them more in your country than yourself. Bentham, standing childless like myself in the world, has perhaps, as you seem to think, little to gain from wordly³ honors, after he stamped his illustrious name on the vegetation of every country; but even he should not decline to accept a royal Gift, were it only to recognize the ruling powers of reward and were it only to discourage not theses powers in recognizing the claims of others, though their labors are of so very much less importance.

You speak of your great fathers emoluments!⁴ I can sympathize with you. How much more could we all have done had we better been supported by the state. My own income is only about half that of my neighbour Ellery, the Astronomer, and only about 1/3 (one third!) of that of Prof McCoy. Indeed it is so small that I could build no domesticity upon it.

With grateful remembrance

Ferd von Mueller