he was recalled in disgrace, it must at all events be admitted that his recall was looked upon as such by a large party in Prussia, and by the Government of Rome. Only "the express will of the king interfered to prevent disgrace and mortification being added in order to give bitterness to the unavoidable fall." A message reached him at Trieste from the CardinalSecretary of State to let him know confidentially that the Pope would not receive him, though he was not to be officially informed of this determination. The reader will find in these volumes sufficient material to form an opinion as to the merits of the questions at issue between Prussia and Rome, which led to this final rupture: it is not our purpose to give here the details of the dispute nor to judge how far Bunsen was to blame for the turn affairs took; all we wish to show is, that these twenty-two years--the best part of life, from the age of twenty-five to forty-sevenwere virtually thrown away in this half-political existence, for which he was so ill suited, and for which the result proved him so unfit. None of his schemes, at least none that were of national importance, came to any thing; of all his political labors he reaped nothing but disappointment and the hatred of the dominant parties in both countries; and the only material intellectual result of his studies in the Eternal City was a single book, "The Description of Rome," a work which he had no desire to write, but in which he became entangled by his earnest wish to help a needy friend, and which during eleven years -from 1818 to 1829-proved a most serious embarrassment and impediment to progress in his own favorite pursuits. This was the beginning, and the end was like the beginning. He was born with a wonderful love and aptitude for study, but the greater part of his life was passed, not in study, but in the performance of political duties-ministerial, diplomatic, and advisory-for which he had neither love nor aptitude, and which resulted in a series of melancholy failures. And it may even be doubted if his studies, far-reaching and unwearied as they were, have given to the world any books or any discoveries of any enduring value. Truly, it seems as if Bunsen's epitaph should be that which is so falsely written on the tomb of Keats: "Here lies one whose name is writ on water."

Great is the temptation to give a full account of Bunsen's long and active life, and to extract from these two crowded volumes many pages of their overflowing wealth of anecdote and insight into public affairs. But

our space forbids any such indulgence, and we shall think ourselves fortunate if we can give our readers any sufficient notion of their general contents.

Christian Carl Josias Bunsen was born in Corbach, in the principality of Waldeck, on the 25th of August, 1791. He was, as his biographer naïvely remarks, "the child of parents advanced in life, who had married (in 1790) for the sake of companionship and mutual care in old age, and probably little anticipated such blessing upon their union." The mother died in 1819, the father in 1820; both parents living to see their son established in life and on the high road to distinction and honor. The father appears to have been a man of character, energetic, decided, and conscientious, and with a strong desire to give his son all the advantages of education that he perceived him so well fitted to improve. He stinted himself in order to lay up money to meet the expenses of his son's university education, and by dint of hard work and strict economy, he had laid aside a hundred thalers, which, when added to the fifth part of the yearly stipend allowed by the Government of Waldeck-for Bunsen had to share this allowance of fifty thalers with five fellowstudents!-enabled Bunsen to enter the University of Marburg, where, however, he re-. mained only a year, finding it too small for the opportunities he needed. Singularly enough, the mother of Bunsen seems to have left but little trace upon the life of her son. At her death he speaks of her with filial affection, but nothing indicates that, spiritually or intellectually, he was under any special obligations to her. His half-sister Christianafor Bunsen's mother was his father's second wife-seems to have exercised the strongest moral influence upon him of all with whom he came in contact in his earlier years. She was a woman of most marked and independent character, and the story of her life is one full of romantic details. But we have no space to more than allude to it here. In 1809 Bunsen left Marburg for Göttingen, where Heyne, "full of years and of honor, received and treated him with paternal kindness, perceiving from the first that he had to do with a student of uncommon gifts and acquirements." Bunsen was at this time eighteen years of age. Heyne seems to have exercised a strong and healthful influence over his mind, and a few allusions to him in the scanty records of this most interesting period of our subject's life explain the secret of that influ ence in the similarity of character and habit

of mind of the scholar and his master. In 1813 insen writes to his friend Agricola, from Göttingen:

Poor and lonely did I arrive in this place. Heyne received me, guided me, bore with me, encouraged me, showed me in himself the example of a high and noble energy and indefatigable activity in a calling which was not that to which his merit entitled him. He might have superiutended and administered and maintained an entire kingdom without more effort and with yet greater efficiency than the University for which he lived: he was too great for a mere philologer, and in general for a professor of mere learning in the age into which he was cast; and he was more distinguished in every other way than in this. Consider what it was to have guided the stud. ies, influenced the mental cultivation of two generations during half a century!-and, what is more, to have estimated and rated at its just value a far higher condition of intellectual development with a measure of insight and devotedness just the reverse of what was attributed to him by the narrowness of opinion founded only on the casual and insignifi

cant utterances of his mind. And what has he established or founded at the cost of this exertion of faculties?

It was in February, 1810, that Bunsen was recommended by Heyne as teacher of the German language to our countryman Mr. William B. Astor, and thus commenced an acquaintance that soon ripened into a friendship which was never broken, and which led to important results in Bunsen's education. First, it insured his independent position at the University, and Mr. Astor took so much pleasure in the society of his young teacher that he afterward sought his companionship in his travels through Gerinany and, still later, in Italy. On their return he invited Bunsen to Paris, and then to Rome, but in accepting this last invitation he got no further than Florence, for on meeting his friend there he was informed that his father had suddenly recalled him to America; and the two young men parted not to meet again for forty-one years. Mr. Astor warmly urged upon his friend to accompany him to America; but Bunsen, whose mind was at that time absorbed in oriental studies, begun in Paris, and pursued there with his all-devouring German zeal, could not be persuaded to think of any new plans until his scheme of visiting India and there studying the parent language and the parent civilization on its native ground had been carried out. This second visit to Italy was made in 1816, and his long residence there may thus be said to have been begun

by what looks like an accident, although Bunsen, with his peculiar and most deeply, earnestly held views of Providence, would never have looked upon it in that light. It was while he was travelling to Florence to meet Mr. Astor

that he was placed in momentary embarrassment by his resemblance to Napoleon I. and his family, at one of the stopping-places of the Diligence between Lyons and Marseilles. He was called out by the police from the table d'hôte, where he sat with his companion of the Diligence, and subjected to close examination as a supposed Napoléonide, having, in spite of prohibition, crossed the frontier from Germany: the testimony, however, of all his fellow-travellers to his having occupied a place in the Diligence in their company all the way from Paris, and of one of them that he had seen him at Paris, was finally admitted to be satisfactory.

After Mr. Astor's departure he remained for some time in Florence awaiting the arrival of Niebuhr, whom he had met in Berlin the previous year, and with whom he had entered at once into relations of deep intellectual sympathy. He writes to Lücke on the occasion of his first meeting with the historian:

It would be hard to describe my astonishment at his command over the entire domain of knowledge. All that can be known seems to be within his grasp, and every thing known to him to be at hand, as if held by a thread. And, later, to Agricola, from Florence:

You must imagine what I feel, in wandering with Niebuhr over the ruins of the ancient, pre Roman, Etruscan magnificence, and then again among the splendid monuments of the destroyed liberty of the modern Athens, the city of Dante and Machiavelli. What can be more venerable and affecting than the melancholy, the mourning of a great man over the human race? (Bunsen alludes here to Niebuhr's constitutional hopelessness and despair over the problem of human life in history and in the present.) It is like the Divine Spirit in human form, beholding with human sadness the vain rushing of the generations of men towards an abyss; or like Prometheus witnessing and deploring from his rock the gradual extinction of the sparks he had kindled. And with all this wide grasp of contemplation, what a clear and single eye has Niebuhr for every thing individual, what a certainty in his knowledge of fact; in a word, what inward completeness!

While in Florence, Bunsen supported himself by giving instruction in French to an English gentleman by the name of Cathcart, who, like Mr. Astor, and, indeed, like every

one who came into intimate relations with him, had been strongly drawn to him, and was never wearied with exploring the curiosities of Florence, and afterward of Rome, in his company. We must pass rapidly over the long period of Bunsen's residence in Rome. He went thither partly by the advice of Niebubr, who encouraged him to hope for assistance from the Prussian Government in the prosecution of his studies, but he was enabled to go there, in the first place, by the employment furnished him by his pupil, Mr. Cathcart, who continued his studies for some time longer under Bunsen's direction. Shortly after his arrival, he became acquainted with the family of his future wife, Miss Waddington, who with her father and mother and two sisters were living in Rome. In February, 1817, he writes to his favorite sister Christiana, and tells her of this new acquaintance; in April he informs her that he is in love, and on the 1st of July he was married. From

this time Bunsen's private and domestic happiness was uninterrupted, except by the death of one child who was taken away in infancy, and late in his life by the miserable accident that crippled in a moment his daughter Matida. In a life of seventy-nine years there are few men who have so few afflictions to mourn

over. In November of the same year, 1817, Brandis, Niebuhr's assistant in the Legation, being obliged to return to Prussia, Bunsen offered to fill his place, and thus began his long diplomatic career which ended only six years before his death, in 1860. We wish we had space here to quote the beautiful prayer found in his journal, and written there at the beginning of his life in Rome. It will be found at page 120 of vol. i., but, like much that is of the highest interest in this book, we can only refer to it at this time. We must, however, make room for an extract from a letter to Brandis, in which he takes leave as it were of the favorite branch of study of his University.days" the last instance, or nearly so, of studying in learned leisure. Soon after this date, the task-work on the 'Description of Rome' drew him more and more into a vortex; and when once free from this, the subjects of his life's meditation engrossed all the powers and time not claimed by his office."

I have passed the last week in great enthusiasm for old Lysias, having entered more closely than before into his life and political character, as it may be elicited from his undoubted Orations. . . . I begin now to understand the justness of Niebuhr's democratic

tendency with respect to Athens. . . . When one comes to be better acquainted with the aristocracy of Athens, the cruelty and insolence of their conduct, the absence of all counteraction of democracy, except by the steady oppression of an oligarchy, and to discover their panegyrists to consist of fools or rascals, or at best of coxcombs, like Xenophon,-then one understands that there was no alternative between a democracy, such as Demosthenes craved, purified by a return to simplicity of life, strengthened by warlike exercises, and by the dismissal of corrupt orators and magistrates, and the admission of Alcibiades as tyrannos.

And then follows an admirably clear statement of the position of Plato in relation to his times, showing a power of insight that it is greatly to be wished had been applied to the writing of history, but which, alas, we are not often to meet with in the field into which circumstances now drive Bunsen. His life in Rome had, at the beginning, a little leisure, and much enjoyment, although the former was soon swallowed up in the increas ing duties of his position. During Niebuhr's absence, in 1823, he was advanced to the post of Chargé d'Affaires; then, during a visit to Berlin, in 1828, he was made Privy Counsellor of Legation, and continued in charge of the embassy, as Resident Minister,

until his recall in 1838.

Among the events full of interest to Bunsen and his wife in these days, were the creations of Thorwaldsen's genius which abounded in the years 1820, '21, and '22. Once they were fortunate enough to find him . . . in the act of adding the last touches to the clay in which he had modelled his statue of Mercury. He dilated then upon the course of sensations and images, rather than of reflection which had brought him to fix upon the position of a sitting figure in perfect repose, but in an evidently animated promptitude for action, as upon a subject to which he would delight in giving shape, if he could find a situation to furnish it with a full, and intelligible, and satisfactory meaning. "And then," he said, "I hit upon Mercury, who, having played on the Pan-pipe to subdue Argus into slumber, at the instant of observing that his purpose has been accomplished, is removing the musical instrument from his lips (which are thus not hidden nor disfigured), and with the right hand is grasping the sword's hilt, but, still, motionless, is watching lest the eyes should open again." The conception of Christian art was foreign to the mind of Thorwaldsen, and only in compliance with the wishes of his native Sovereign did he steel his courage to the attempt after having failed in accomplishing for the King of Bavaria a group of the

three women at the sepulchre-the design of which he destroyed in utter dissatisfaction."

The account of Bunsen's studies in the ancient choral music of the Latin Church, in which he became greatly interested; the narrative of the burning of the church S. Paolo fuor le muri (16th July, 1823), which he and his family witnessed from their house on the Capitol; the death of Pius VII., and the election of his successor Leo XII., with the 'ceremony of the adoration of the new Pope (that being the literal expression), when the Pope is actually placed upon the High Altar, and adored by the higher clergy during the Te Deum; the glimpse of Madame Récamier -we have already had a glimpse, but only a glimpse, of Göthe ;-his intercourse with Capaccini and the many interesting details of the character of that remarkable man; his acquaintance with Overbeck and Julius Schnorr-Overbeck, whom Madame Bunsen calls a heavenly-minded man, seemingly because he withdrew from all society with those who did not share his religious opinions!—the reader can hardly fail to find these details interesting. In 1827 Bunsen was summoned to Berlin for the ostensible purpose of bringing with him the Raphael-The Madonna of the Lante Family-which he had recently brought for the King of Prussia for the sum of £1,700; but in reality his presence was needed at the capital for political consultation and advice. On this period we cannot linger, although some of the events show Bunsen in his very best light as the real statesman in the largeness and elevation of his views, though hardly as the politician. At this time occurred, perhaps, the most serious event in Bunsen's public life-his forcing the King's attention to his protest against the compulsory attendance of the Catholic soldiers in the army to the services of the Protestant Church, and his perseverance until the King promised a reform of that abuse. Lighter matters are the details of his social life at Berlin. He hears Sontag sing for the first time in "Ioconde," "the music of which is too insignificant for her talent, but she sings like a nightingale and is very engaging." He goes to a lecture by Alexander von Humboldt on Physical Geography-"one of the most interesting that could be imagined; never had I heard a man before communicate within so short a time such an amount of fact and of general views, both new and important." He meets General von Grollmann, the first military head in the army. "As to Waterloo, he insisted that Wellington's choice of position VOL. II.-24

was admirable, and that the assertion was unfounded, that he had not taken precautions against a possible necessity of retreat after the battle." About this time we begin to hear of Bunsen's acquaintance with Dr. Arnold, begun in Rome the previous year, but now first carried on by letter. This acquaintance was from the first a friendship, and it lasted until Arnold's untimely death, in 1848. In 1828 we find Bunsen writing from Rome that two thirds of his time is devoted to the purchase of works of art for the Prussian Governinent. Among these are mentioned a second Raphael, an early work, and several fine early Florentine pictures, with a special commission to purchase vases in Corneto, Apulia, and Sicily. Among a crowd of personal details concerning people of less public interest, take this likeness of Chateaubriand: "The sight of Chateaubriand, just arrived as French ambassador, has been a gratification of curiosity, and nothing more. He is a vain being, standing in the midst of a room full of guests in his own house, with eyes fixed on the ceiling, as the only mode of looking over their heads, for he is low of stature, and though he avoids speaking, he yet presents his face to observers. The head and features are well chiselled, on a scale too large to be in proportion to the rest of his figure." Again, in 1832, "we saw Sir Walter Scott often during the first week of his being here. The first meeting with him was a shock, as I was not prepared for his difficulty in speaking; but though his animation is gone, his conversation is much of the same sort as formerly, most interesting and original." Knowing that popular poetry had always attracted him, Bunsen sought out the German ballads of the War of Liberation in 1813, and after giving him an idea of the sense, made his sons sing them. Scott was evidently pleased, and observed of that noble struggle, quoting a verse of the Requiem, "Tantus labor non sit cassus.' ." He called the two boys to him, and laid a hand upon the head of each, with a solemn utterance of "God bless you!" There is a brief but interesting mention made of Bunsen's acquaintance with Rio, the French writer on art, and of Rio's enthusiasm in the study of the Welsh literature, he himself being a native of Bretagne; and indeed, Bunsen seems to have met and entered into sympathy with all the scholars and literary men of his time. In 1838 he leaves Rome and makes his first visit to England, to which, after a short interval spent in Switzerland, he was to return in 1841, and remain as Minister

Plenipotentiary until 1854. Nothing can be richer than that portion of these volumes that relates to his residence in England during this long period. What a splendid procession of names passes before us in this review! Almost every famous man in England, in whatever department, is mentioned in some characteristic way. "I have been to Rogers, and saw his beautiful house and collection. It is not that poets are wealthy in England, but rich men write verses, i. e., measured prose. He is an amiable old man in manners, in whom the habits of mercantile life have helped to counteract that corrupt voluptuousness extending to intellect, so usual among old bachelors delighting in the fine arts." "I made Lord Mahon tell me about his own works and studies. Among other things, he mentioned that the Duke (Wellington) is so fond of children that he has always those of some relation for a month at a time in the country, and plays with them for hours at football, letting them plague him as much as they please, and is like a child himself among them." "As to Carlyle's Lectures, they are very striking; rugged thoughts, not ready made up for any political or religious system; thrown at people's heads, by which most of his audiences are sadly startled." "Buckland is persecuted by bigots for having asserted that among the fossils there may be a preAdamic species. How,' say they, is that not direct, open infidelity? Did not death come into the world by Adam's sin?' I suppose then that the lions shown to Adam were originally destined to roar throughout eternity!" He is at Oxford on the day when degrees are conferred. "All the doctors and heads of houses marched in; they were differ ently greeted-some with applause and some with hisses; but on the appearance of Dr. Arnold, applause long and loud took place, with but one solitary attempt, soon drowned, at disapprobation." Then came the conferring of degrees; among the names are Herschel, Bunsen, and Wordsworth; then the reading of poems and prize essays-"An English poem on the Religions of India and their anticipated fall before the preaching of the Kingdom of Peace, by Ruskin, whose beautiful architectural drawings I have seen." "I had a delightful dinner-party at Rogers' Pesterday, with Gerhard, Hamilton, Westmacott, Williams, &c., &c.; all quite in the

style of a rich Roman of the time of Augustus

original drawings by Raphael and others after dinner, vases before; the beautiful Titians, &c., of the dining-room ingeniously lighted, so that the table alone was in shade." When in Switzerland he writes: "Professor De Wette was present . . . his appearance is shrunk and withered, with deep furrows of reflection and of sorrow in his countenance, and the expression of high and spiritual seriousness. . . . His life is ebbing out-his soul full of doubts and his heart full of grief, without friends and without a community to belong to."

The second volume is taken up with the narrative of Bunsen's residence in England as Minister from Prussia, and is full of interesting details concerning public men and events, details too numerous for us ever to attempt a selection. The most interesting parts are those that relate to the Queen and Prince Albert. Bunsen's report of the Queen confirms the public notion of her high character and her devotion to duty. We are also brought into the thick of events during the Revolutions of 1848, and learn much as to the political manoeuvres of the times. The chief interest of the volume lies in the insight it gives us, not merely into the religious opinions of Bunsen, but into the position of the religious parties in England, at least of the High-Church Party, of the followers of Newman and Pusey, and of what Miss Cobbe calls the first Broad-Church Party, to which, if to any, Bunsen belonged. His name is sometimes associated with Rationalism, but most improperly. He had no sympathies in that direction, and seems to have had no relations with the leaders of the party. He left England in 1854, and the remaining six years of his life was a brief happiness of rest from politics, and devotion to his favorite studies. commend these volumes to our readers; they present a deeply interesting period of a varied and important life, and if the record, as we began by saying, leaves no very cheerful im pression on the mind, but seems rather to be the brilliant chronicle of disappointments and failures, perhaps it is only so, as every picture must be of a human life that has been passed in the pursuit of lofty and ideal aims in the midst of the difficulties and impediments that beset the greatest souls in proportion to their greatness.

We