his old friend Bunsen to Berlin in the spring of the following year. The object of their deliberations was the foundation of the bishopric of Jerusalem, for which the assistance of England was desired, and after a rather acrimonious dispute a bill to that effect was passed through the House of Commons. The first bishop went out towards the close of 1841, and though the widely-extended ideas which one party attached to the mission have not been fulfilled, on the other, the contemptuous suppositions of the High Church party have been proved incorrect.

The management of this business formed a turning-point in the life of Bunsen. In the summer of 1841, his old friends, under Sir R. Peel, were at the head of affairs, and almost simultaneously the post of Prussian ambassador was vacant. The king, who desired to stand on the most intimate terms with England, offered the Queen her choice of an ambassador, and it fell upon Bunsen. In 1842, his position, brilliant though it was before, was rendered more so by the arrival of Frederick William IV. at the christening of the Prince of Wales. At his house in Carlton-terrace Bunsen assembled all the celebrities of the world: he had found the new Capitol to which he had alluded on leaving Rome.

Next to

Bunsen's position was rendered much easier, through all the changes of the ministry, by the confidence and favour the Queen and Prince Albert showed him to the last. He was closely attached to Sir Robert Peel, who, in the few hours between his fall and death, asked several times for Bunsen, who was unfortunately not in the way at the moment. Arnold, however, his dearest friend was Julius Hare, the thorough German scholar, who, with Thirlwall, translated Niebuhr's Roman history. Finally, we may mention Lady Raffles, who attained a brilliant place in English literature by her biography of her husband.

Politically regarded, Bunsen's residence in London resembled that in Rome. The early period was a calm, concealing the coming storm, which did not escape the attention of the farther-sighted, though they could not anticipate its character and extent. The king and Bunsen frequently discussed these matters-as, for instance, during the Queen of England's stay at Stolzenfels and many despatches are in existence from Bunsen's hand, which, if published, would supply interesting material for the historian of that epoch of expectation. In his foreign policy, Bunsen's great desire was naturally an intimate alliance between England and Prussia as the two Protestant great powers. He had more reason to anticipate success, as the appearance of Frederick William IV. in England had rendered him excessively popular, while at the same time England was not regarded so askance as it is now by the Prussian Conservative or reactionary party, call it which you will. In his home policy, Bunsen was one of those men who desired quicker progress on the path of truly liberal institutions, and he constantly urged it, from the confident belief he entertained that delays were dangerous. His tendencies, which at an earlier date had been doctrinaire and somewhat romantic, grew constantly clearer under the influence of English society, and it was a fortunate thing for him that he had not been brought up in the confined atmosphere of Prussian bureaucracy."

During the stormy events of 1848, Bunsen stood by his monarch through good and evil report. He gave him valuable lessons in English constitutionalism, and the Prince of Prussia (the present king), whom the

events of March compelled to pay a rather undignified visit to London, is probably indebted to the envoy for the small amount of governing craft he possesses. Bunsen was elected to the national parliament by Schleswig, but circumstances prevented him taking his seat. He, however, addressed several circulars on questions of the day to the representatives. In January, 1849, he proceeded to Berlin, and laboured hard to induce the National Assembly in Frankfort to accept the Prussian hegemony. The mode of offering and declining the imperial crown, the ensuing conduct of the National Assembly, the insurrections in Baden and Saxony, and their suppression by Prussia, proved to him that his exertions were futile. Still he did not despond. Perfectly agreeing with Radowitz in his plans for German unification, Bunsen did his utmost to arouse the interests of England in the union of Germany under the leadership of Prussia. The Congress of Olmütz put an end to all these plans, and Radowitz proceeded to England in honourable exile, where he studied the construction of tubular bridges. In spite of the changes of government, however, Bunsen was still left at his post, and though many efforts were made to injure him in the king's opinion, they all failed. His every effort tended to keep up British confidence in Prussia. In the matter of Schleswig-Holstein, he did all in his power to save what he could, but it was a dark spot on his unblemished career when, as an obedient servant to his king, he signed the London protocol of May 8, 1852, recognising the integrity of the Danish monarchy.

Bunsen's unbending courage and faith, combined with his natural elasticity of mind and sanguine temperament, kept him upright through these heavy trials; and he felt consoled for the constant attacks made on him by his unshaken affection for his king, and confidence in the crownprince, whose acquaintance he had formed in a time of despondency. Brighter prospects appeared for the envoy, when the beginning of the Eastern war- -that struggle of the Western Powers against the Northern Colossus seemed to afford Prussia once again the opportunity for a grand policy. Through the confidential position in which he stood to influential personages, Bunsen learnt everything that went on, and, therefore, strongly advised a close alliance of Prussia with the Western Powers. Believing, however, in the necessity and inviolability of such a policy, he went further than the tendencies of the Prussian court justified him in doing. Who can say what results energetic action on the part of Prussia might have produced? Perhaps the war would have been preventedperhaps, though, the map of Europe reconstituted. But the king was determined on keeping peace, and the result has not proved him in the wrong. The hopes which Bunsen had aroused in London, the court of Berlin believed it could only put a stop to by a disavowal of its envoy. The king wished to retain him in his service, but Bunsen would not listen to any proposal for his temporary retirement, and sent in his resignation, which was accepted in the summer of 1854. He left London, accompanied by the most unequivocal signs of sympathy, respect, even admiration, from all classes of society, from the ministers and the press down to the working men, who recognised in him a kindred spirit: the very porters and watermen offered him their gratuitous services as he embarked. But though his position was so high in England, when he settled down at Heidelberg he felt at length satisfied and truly happy,

for he could now devote all his leisure hours to those studies which had been the mainstay of his life.

In his charming villa, Charlottenberg, opposite Heidelberg Castle, the summer months brought him frequent visits from German and English friends, to whom he devoted his evenings, while the day belonged to severe labour. He stood in close relation with many of the celebrated men who do honour to the university, and he was greatly affected and surprised by a visit from his old pupil, Astor, who came from America expressly to see "his oldest and best friend." In autumn, 1857, the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance took him to Berlin, on an invitation. from the king, whose honoured guest he was. It was a last and glorious meeting, for it proved how little the king had been biased by the repeated attacks made on his old friend's religious works, and which attacks Alexander von Humboldt once brilliantly refuted, by reading aloud to the court circle the more important passages. Once again religious and clerical matters and plans were discussed between the pair in the old confidential way; and the king understood his friend and the changes that had taken place in him, and which estranged him from dogmatism though not from Christianity, better than many a theologian did. Immediately after Bunsen's departure from Berlin, the king, whom he was destined never to see again, was attacked by that illness whose sorrowful clouds were only rendered endurable to him and his by the affection of a wife, who displayed on the throne not only the picture of a Sister of Charity but also of a Christian partner.

To this journey is also attached Bunsen's elevation to the House of Peers. Frederick William III. had many times offered it him, but it had been as constantly declined; Bunsen's pride was opposed to a title with no estate to support the dignity, and in this he resembled Niebuhr. He had often intended to buy an estate in Germany, and in that case the peerage would have seemed to him neither contrary to the character of a free citizen nor to the organisation of a free state. Now he had given up all thoughts of such a purchase, but he hoped to see it eventually realised through one of his sons; and it was chiefly for this reason that he accepted a title, but on the first page of his Biblical work he remained, as before, Christian Karl Josias Bunsen.

The only time he sat in the House of Peers was on October 25, 1858, that memorable day for Germans when the regency of the Prince of Prussia was announced to both Houses. This was his last visit to Berlin, although he frequently saw the prince regent and his family, who were all equally well disposed to him, on the Rhine. The desire to draw him permanently to Berlin, to take the place Alexander von Humboldt had held as the king's ear, failed partly through the difficulty of finding a shape for such a position, but more through the claims of Bunsen's own health, for during latter years he had grown very corpulent, and required a good deal of exercise to get the better of his asthmatic sufferings. For this purpose he spent the winter of 1858 at Cannes, with his wife and a portion of his family, among whom we may specially mention his son. Ernest, who, having no special tie in England, paid his father the most devoted attention during the last years of his life. This residence in a southern climate on the shores of the Mediterranean, where sky, earth, and sea recalled the happy Roman years of his youth, had the best

CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

result, so that he returned thither in the autumn of 1859. This second visit to Cannes led to an intimacy with De Tocqueville, who was himself at death's door, and it seemed to have an equally favourable effect with the first. But the early months of 1860 produced a painful change, so that in May Bunsen was compelled to quit Cannes with broken health and under great suffering, and he settled down for the last time at Bonn, for he wished, at least, to die in his native land. And here, too, he was enabled to carry out one of his dearest wishes-residing in a house of his own, where he had his family around him.

His birthday, August 25, 1860, assembled a large circle of his family and friends around him, and gave him a perfect consciousness of the happiness which was so bounteously vouchsafed him. But he knew that the end was at hand, and regarded it calmly, while his family watched his gradual sinking sorrowfully, and had only one hope, that he might die without pain, for the physicians had at length declared his disease to be a chronic heart affection, threatening to terminate in a painful and acute dropsy. All the members of his family whom duties did not call elsewhere remained by his side, and a visit from the present Queen of Prussia, whose lofty mind and amiable character he had long known and revered, gave him a further proof of the opinion he was held in by that royal house, three heads of which he had faithfully served. Friends came and went; he could enjoy their society for hours, and be active in his old way; his mind was ever fresh, and every moment his body granted him was devoted to mental exercises. But the nights constantly became more restless through the difficulty of respiration, and his weakness grew more perceptible.

On the night of October 28 his condition was such that the physician His mind then seemed to and his family believed his end close at hand. overcome his body, and he burst forth into language, a portion of which we may be permitted to repeat, as it has already been published by a friend of his family. He spoke of earthly hopes-his hopes of Italy, the country of which he had so long been a guest; more warmly still of his hopes for Germany, Prussia, the royal family, and England. He mentioned friends of his youth and his old age, and the members of his family, for each of whom he had a blessing. Nor did he forget the struggles of them. "I part from this world without his life, but he did not dwell upon a feeling of hatred for any man." Did he think of his uncompleted work, his translation of the Bible? During the last months the question had lain heavy on his mind whether he would be permitted to carry out to But now that the hour had arrived the end this highest task of his life. when he knew that this hope was denied him, not a complaint passed his lips; there was no painful reference to what was left unfinished, but only silent devotion. Even the highest aim of earthly existence, toiling in the service of the Lord, was with him no tie to life. He welcomed in death liberation from the earthly and the sinful, and the fulfilment of all his desires. "It is sweet to die for with all my defects and weaknesses, I have lived, willed, and striven solely for what is noble. The most glorious thing, however, was to have known my Saviour!" How highly had he esteemed this earth and human existence upon it! but now these "It is a wondrous glance from above lay behind him and beneath him. at this life and this world. Now I first recognise what a dark existence

A GERMAN IN ROME.

we have led here. Up, up, higher and ever higher! Not darker, no, brighter and yet brighter! I live in the kingdom of God! How pleasant are thy dwellings, Lord Zebaoth!”

But he was not yet permitted to go to these dwellings. A sudden removal of the disease to the feet gave him temporary relief, and a few days free from suffering, alternating with violent convulsions, and fearful pains in the mouth: the growing weakness rendered any consecutive sentence more and more difficult, and at last almost impossible, while his efforts to speak, and a few disconnected words, revealed how active the mind within was. Thus matters went on for a month; but on the morning of November 29 he let his head sink in slumber on the bosom of the faithful mate, who was now by his side as she had been for three-andforty years.

On December 1, beneath the parting beams of a pleasant winter sun, Bunsen was buried in the Bonn cemetery, in which Niebuhr had found a resting-place a generation previously, and Ernst Montz Arndt just a year before.

A GERMAN IN ROME.

ALTHOUGH SO many books have been written about the Eternal City, we can hardly call to mind one that is really satisfactory in every point, because all are more or less affected by a sectarian bias. While Mr. Maguire blows a flourish of trumpets in praise of the paternal government of Pio Nono, Mr. Dicey politely sneers at the backwardness of that government with regard to everything connected with comfort, cleanliness, and civilisation-to indulge in a pleasant alliteration-or, while About ignores the religious aspect of the case, except in so far as it may serve his purpose, orthodox Frenchmen consider Rome more renowned in its decadence than in its golden prime, as carrying out Madame de Staël's notion of a petrified religion. All these authors, however, approach their subject with a certain soupçon, and after a perusal of their works, the reader has a species of dazed notion as to the rights and wrongs of the Roman question. Under these circumstances we have welcomed the publication of Hermann Lessing's "Torso and Korso," in which he regards Roman life from its cheerful aspects. Through his pages we propose to canter, stopping here and there to cull some illustrative passages, which, at any rate, will possess the charm of novelty.

Since Rome has surrendered her material supremacy and retired into private life, she has solely dealt in the fine arts, which give the Eternal City a certain modern varnish. Just as there are university towns which are exclusively arranged for the wants of students, and commercial cities in which the merchant rules, so on the Tiber the power has passed into the hands of the artists, and the abbes have quite retired into the back

*Torso und Korso: aus dem alten und neuen Rom. Von Hermann Lessing. Berlin: J. Springer.