Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Interesting as we have found this book, still the perusal of two compact octavo volumes may deter some readers who might desire, at a rather less cost of time, to obtain an insight into the life and character of Niebuhr. To such readers the following abbreviated sketch may not be unacceptable. We must premise that the present work is founded on a memoir of Niebuhr published by his sister-in-law, Madame Hensler. This consists of a series of his letters divided into sections, each section being preceded by such biographical notice as was necessary to their explanation. The English author has retained this arrangement, adding, however, considerably to the narrative of Madame Hensler from other authentic sources, and omitting such of the letters as he judged might be devoid of interest. Nearly one-half of these, we are told, have been omitted—chiefly on the ground that they were on learned subjects, and might detract from the interest of the biography. We have no doubt that a sound discretion has been exercised on this point; nevertheless we trust that these two volumes will meet with sufficient encouragement to induce the author to publish that third volume at which he hints, and which is to contain “the letters referred to, together with the most valuable portions of his smaller writings.” We sincerely hope that one who has performed this task so well will continue to render the same good services to the English public. The arrangement we have alluded to—that of letters divided into sections, with a biographical notice at the head of each, sufficient to carry us over the ensuing section—seems to us very preferable to the ordinary plan of our memoir writers, who attach the explanatory notice to each separate letter. Under this last plan, one never settles down fairly to _letter-reading_. We cannot, of course, in the following sketch, retain the advantages of this arrangement, but must put together our facts and our quotations in the best order we can.

Idle and cursory readers, who have only heard or thought of Niebuhr as the provoking destroyer of some agreeable fictions—as the ruthless enemy of poetic and traditionary lore—will be surprised to find what a deep earnestness of conviction there was in this man, and how his enthusiasm for truth and for all virtue rises into romance. Once for all, let no man parade his love of poetry, with the least hope of being respected for it, who has not a still greater love of truth. Nay, if we reflect patiently and calmly upon this matter, we shall find that there is but one way to keep this flower of poesy in perennial bloom—it is to see that the waters of truth are flowing free and clear around it. We may be quite sure that to whatever level this stream, by its own vital force, shall rise or sink, the same fair lily will be seen floating just on the surface of it. Just where these waters lie open to the light of heaven, do we find this beautiful creation looking up from them into the sky.

The scene and circumstances amongst which the childhood of Niebuhr was passed, appear to us to be singularly in accordance with the future development and character of the man. They were favourable to concentration of thought, and to an independent, self-relying spirit; they were favourable to the exercise of an imagination which was fed continually by objects remote from the senses, and by knowledge obtained from books, or else from conversation with his father, who was both a learned man and a great traveller. If nature, in one of her freaks—or, let us say, if some German fairies, of an erudite species, had resolved to breed a great scholar, who should be an independent thinker—who should be devoted to books, yet retain a spirit of self-reliance—who should have all the learning of colleges without their pedantry, and read through whole libraries, and yet retain his free, unfettered right of judgment—how would they have proceeded to execute their project? Would they have thrown their little pupil at the feet of some learned professor at Bonn or Göttingen? Not at all. They would have carried their changeling into some wild tract of country, shut him up there with his books, and given him for his father a linguist and a traveller. They would have provided for him just those circumstances into which young Niebuhr was thrown. His childish imagination was no sooner kindled than he found himself wandering in all quarters of the globe, and listening to the stories of the most remote ages.

This father of our historian—Carsten Niebuhr—was himself a remarkable man; full of energy, of great perseverance, and of strong feelings. He had been one of five travellers despatched by the Danish Government on an expedition of discovery into the East. In crossing the deserts of Arabia, his four companions sank under the hardships and calamities they encountered. This was in the first year of their journey; nevertheless, he pursued his way alone, and spent six years in exploring the East. He had returned to Copenhagen, and “was on the point,” says our biography, “of undertaking a journey into the interior of Africa, when he fell in love with a young orphan lady, the daughter of the late physician to the King of Denmark.” He gives up Africa, and all the world of travel and discovery, for this “young orphan lady;” and a few years after his marriage, we find him settled down at Meldorf, as _land-schreiber_ to the province of South Dithmarsh—a civil post, whose duties seem chiefly to have concerned the revenues of the province.

This Meldorf is a little, decayed, antiquated town, not without its traditions of municipal privileges; and Dithmarsh is what its name suggests to an English ear—an open marshy district, without hills or trees, with nothing but the general sky, which we all happily share in, to give it any beauty. One figures to one’s self the traveller, who had been exploring the sunny regions of the East, or who had been living at Copenhagen, in the society of scholars and of statesmen, retiring, with his young orphan lady, to this dreary Dithmarsh, peopled only by peasantry. Even the high-road runs miles off from his habitation, so that no chance can favour him, and no passing or belated traveller rests at his door. He occupies his spare hours in building himself a house; in which operation there is one little fellow standing by who takes infinite delight. This is our Barthold George Niebuhr, who had been born in Copenhagen on the 27th of August 1776. He and an elder sister will be principal inhabitants of the new house when it is built, and their education be the chief care and occupation of the traveller.

Barthold is in his sixth or seventh year when his father writes thus of him:—

“He studied the Greek alphabet only for a single day, and had no
further trouble with it: he did it with very little help from me. The
boy gets on wonderfully. Boje says he does not know his equal; but he
requires to be managed in a peculiar way. May God preserve our lives,
and give us grace to manage him aright! Oh if he could but learn to
control the warmth of his temper—I believe I might say his pride! He
is no longer so passionate with his sister: but if he stumbles in the
least in repeating his lessons, or if his scribblings are alluded to,
he fires up instantly. He cannot bear to be praised for them; because
he believes he does not deserve it. In short, I repeat it, he is
proud; he wants to know everything, and is angry if he does not know
it.... My wife complains that I find fault with Barthold
unnecessarily. I did not mean to do so. He is an extraordinarily good
little fellow; but he must be managed in an extraordinary way; and I
pray God to give me wisdom and patience to educate him properly.”

Here we have “his picture in little;” the wonderful quickness and application, the extreme conscientiousness, and the warmth of temper which distinguished the man Niebuhr through his career. But who is this Boje, who says “he does not know his equal?” And how happens it that there is any one in Meldorf—a place, we are told, quite destitute of literary society—who is entitled to give an opinion on the subject? This Boje was ex-editor of the _Deutsches Museum_, and translator, we believe, of Walter Scott’s novels; and has been lately appointed prefect of the province. His coming is a great event to the Niebuhrs, a valuable acquisition to their society, and of especial importance to young Barthold; for Boje has “an extensive library, particularly rich in English and French, as well as German books,” to which library our youthful and indefatigable student is allowed free access. French and English he has, from a very early age, been learning from his father and mother. Are we not right in saying, that no Teutonic fairies could have done better for their pupil? By way of nursery tale, his father amuses him with strange accounts of Eastern countries, of the Turks, of sultans, of Mahomet and the caliphs. He is already a politician. “He had an imaginary empire called Low-England, of which he drew maps, and he promulgated laws, waged wars, and made treaties of peace there.” Then comes Boje to give him his first lesson upon _myths_. The literary prefect of Dithmarsh, writing to a friend, says:—

“This reminds me of little Niebuhr. His docility, his industry, his
devoted love for me, procure me many a pleasant hour. A short time
back, I was reading _Macbeth_ aloud to his parents, without taking any
notice of him, till I saw what an impression it made on him. Then I
tried to render it intelligible to him, and even explained to him how
the witches were only poetical beings. When I was gone, he sat down,
(he is not yet seven years old,) and wrote it all out on seven sheets
of paper, without omitting one important point, and certainly without
any expectation of receiving praise for it; for, when his father asked
to see what he had written, and showed it to me, he cried for fear he
had not done it well. Since then, he writes down everything of
importance that he hears from his father or me. We seldom praise him,
but just quietly tell him when he has made any mistake, and he avoids
the fault for the future.”

Very surprising accounts are given of the boy’s precocious sagacity in picturing to himself a historic scene, with all its details, or following out the probable course of events. These accounts are rather _too_ surprising. When the war broke out in Turkey, it so excited his imagination that he not only dreamt of it, but anticipated in his dreams, and we suppose also in his waking hours, the current of events. His notions were so just, and his knowledge of the country, and the situations of the towns, so accurate, that, we are told, “the realisation of his nightly anticipations generally appeared in the journals a short time afterwards.” One would say that the fairies had indeed been with him. Madame Hensler’s narrative partakes here, in some measure, of that marvellous character which accompanies family traditions of all kinds, whether of the Roman _gens_ or the Danish household. But on other occasions, and from Niebuhr’s own words, we learn that, owing to his minute knowledge, his most tenacious memory, and his vivid imagination, he, at a very early time, manifested that spirit of quite philosophical divination which led him to his discoveries in Roman history. We say quite philosophical divination; for we do not suppose that Niebuhr claimed for himself, or his friends for him, any mysterious intuition into the course of events; but there is occasionally, both in the memoir and in the letters, a vagueness of expression on this subject which might lead to misapprehension, and which one wishes had been avoided.

We must now follow this precocious pupil to the University at Kiel. A lad of seventeen, we find him already a companion for professors. Writing home to his parents, he says of Dr Hensler:—“My ideas about the origin of the Greek tribes, the history of the colonisation of the Greek cities, and my notions in general about the earliest migration from west to east, are new to him; and he thinks it probable that they may be correct. He exhorts me to work them out, and bring them into as clear a form as I can.” Meanwhile, he is to be occupied, heart and soul, in studying metaphysics under Reinhold, one of the most celebrated disciples of Kant. To enumerate the studies in which he is alternately engaged, would be to pass in review the whole series of subjects which are taught in a university; just as, at a somewhat later period, to enumerate all the languages which he had learnt, would be simply to name in order every language which a European scholar, by the aid of grammar and dictionary, could learn. His father, with a very excusable pride, makes out, in one of his letters, a list of his son’s attainments of this kind: he was, more or less, master of some twenty languages.

In this philologist, however, there was no want of poetic feeling or vivid imagination. When reading the ancients, he completely lived in their world and with them. He once told a friend who had called on him and found him in great emotion, that he often could not bear to read more than a few pages at a time in the old tragic poets; he realised so vividly all that was said, and done, and suffered. “He could see Antigone leading her blind father—the aged Œdipus entering the grove—he could catch the music of their speech.” Neither in this youth, so stored, so fed with books, was there any deadness of heart towards the living friend. We have some letters full of a painful sensitiveness at the apprehension that his correspondent had forgotten or grown cold towards him. The gravest fault in his character was too quick a temper; but if this led him to take offence unjustly, he was always sufficiently just and generous to seek for reconciliation. Least of all had his erudition or his erudite labours quenched the moral enthusiasm of his nature. From childhood up to manhood, from manhood to his latest day, the same high sense of moral rectitude pervaded all his judgments, and influenced all his actions. The same boy who would not receive praise if he did not think he deserved it, in after years would not draw a salary if he did not think it was rigidly earned, nor accept a present even from a municipality—from the city of Geneva—for rendering a service which he had spontaneously performed. At the university of Kiel we find him breaking with an intimate friend, and much to his own regret, because he finds that friend holding philosophical tenets destructive, as he thinks, of the sentiment of moral obligation. “He is a fatalist and indifferentist. I subscribe to Kant’s principles with all my heart. I have broken with M., not from any dispute we have had, but on account of the detestable conclusions which necessarily follow from his opinions, conclusions that absolutely annihilate morality. I really loved him notwithstanding, but, with such principles, I could not be his friend.” Considering the singular and precarious tenure by which a Kantian holds his faith in the freedom of the will, this was rather severe dealing, not a quite perfect example of philosophical toleration; but it shows, at least, that the heart was in the right place.

Up to this moment have not the fairies done well? But now comes a new element into the calculations, a new phase of the drama, with which no fairies condescend to deal. Young Niebuhr like the rest of us _must live_, must earn the wherewithal, must choose his career, his profession. Here the fairies forsake him. Here, in more true and prosaic style, he is unfaithful to himself. We cannot but regard it as the great and continuous error of his life, that he did not devote himself to learning as his profession. He could have done so. At the very same time there came an offer of a professorship, and a proposal to be the private secretary of Count Schimmelman, the Danish minister of finance. He chose the latter. That the professorship offered to him was connected with but slender emolument, can have had little to do with the determination, because other and more eminent and more lucrative professorships would have speedily been open to him, and because the mere love of money was never a strong inducement in the mind of Niebuhr. Political ambition seems to have been the motive that turned the scale. Looking now at his life as an accomplished completed career, it is impossible not to regret this choice. We see ten of the most precious years of his early manhood wasted in financial and other public business, which a hundred others could have transacted as well; it is, in fact, a mere fragment of his life that is exclusively or uninterruptedly devoted to letters. He is more frequently at the head of some national bank, or revenue department, than in the professor’s chair; and the author of the Roman history has to say of himself, that “calculations are my occupation; merchants, Jews, and brokers, my society.”

Niebuhr had, whilst at the university, formed an acquaintance which led afterwards to a matrimonial engagement. Amelia Behrens, younger sister of Madame Hensler, who was the daughter-in-law of the Professor Hensler previously mentioned, seems from the first to have thoroughly appreciated the high character and great attainments of the young student. She herself must have been a woman of very superior mind; she had great sweetness of temper, and was in every way calculated for the wife of the ardent, generous, hasty, but affectionate Niebuhr. The first mention that is made of Miss Behrens is not very auspicious. In a letter to his father, he has been lamenting his painful timidity and bashfulness before ladies, and thus continues,—“However much I may improve in other society, I am sure I must get worse and worse every day in their eyes; and so, out of downright shyness, I scarcely dare speak to a lady; and as I know, once for all, that I must be insupportable to them, their presence becomes disagreeable to me. Yesterday, however, I screwed up my courage, and began to talk to Miss Behrens and young Mrs Hensler. Now, in gratitude and candour, I must confess that they were sociable enough towards me to have set me at my ease, if my shyness were not so deeply rooted. But it is of no use. I avoid them, and would rather be guilty of impoliteness, by avoiding them, than by speaking to them, which I should now feel to be the greatest impoliteness of all.” Circumstances, however, after he had left the university of Kiel, brought him into social and unreserved communication with the family of the Behrens; and this lady whom he avoided, dreading her precisely because she _did_ interest his youthful imagination, became his betrothed.

Here the biography takes a very eccentric course. Niebuhr not only comes to England on foreign travel, which is precisely what we should expect of such a person, but he settles himself down at Edinburgh as a student. _The life seems to go back._ After having entered on official duties, engaged himself to be married, and thus pledged himself to the real business of life, we see this erudite youth, with his tale of twenty languages nearly complete, entering the classes at Edinburgh, and writing about them as if he were recommencing his university career. If this work of Madame Hensler were one of old date, and we felt authorised to exercise upon it that conjectural criticism so fashionable in our times, we should boldly say that the authoress, deceived by the similarity of name, had intercalated into her series some letters of _another Niebuhr_; we should dispute the identity of the Niebuhr who writes from the university of Edinburgh, with him who passed through the university of Kiel, and was afterwards, for a short time, secretary to Count Schimmelman. Such conjectural emendations being, however, altogether inadmissible, we must accept the facts and the letters as they are here given us.

Niebuhr’s motives for this residence in Scotland were, according to Madame Hensler’s account, of a very miscellaneous description. Besides the advantages to be derived from visiting a foreign land, “he was to brace up and strengthen both his mental and physical energies in preparation for active life.” Why this should be better accomplished as a student in Edinburgh than as a citizen in Copenhagen, we do not apprehend; nor what there was in the air of Denmark that had enfeebled the spirit of self-reliance or of enterprise. But we are told that “he had become too dependent on the little details of life. He felt that he stood, so to speak, outside the world of realities.” Therefore he sets himself down for a year as a student at Edinburgh.

London, of course, is first visited. He speaks highly of the English. Throughout his life he entertained a predilection for our countrymen, and extols the integrity and honesty of the national character. We feel a certain bashfulness, a modest confusion, when we hear such praises; but, as national characters nowhere stand very high, we suppose we may accept the compliment. Occasionally we sell our patriotic votes, as at St Alban’s and elsewhere; occasionally we fill our canisters of preserved meats with poisonous offal; and there is not a grocer’s shop in all England where some adulterated article of food is not cheerfully disposed of. Nevertheless, it seems we are a shade more honest than some of our neighbours. The compliment does not greatly rejoice us.

However, it is not all praise that we receive. He finds “that true warm-heartedness is extremely rare” amongst us. We shall be happy to learn that it is commonly to be met with in any part of the world. He laments, too, the superficiality and insipidity of general conversation. “That narrative and commonplaces form the whole staple of conversation, from which all philosophy is excluded—that enthusiasm and loftiness of expression are entirely wanting, depresses me more than any personal neglect of which, as a stranger, I might have to complain. I am, besides, fully persuaded that I shall find things very different in Scotland; of this I am assured by several Scotchmen whom I already know.”

In this full persuasion he sets forth to Scotland. We have an account of his journey, which, read in these railroad times, is amusing enough. The translator of the letters has evidently been determined that we should not miss the humour of the contrast. Niebuhr gives his absent Amelia as minute a description of the mode of travelling as if he were writing from China. After describing the post-chaises, “very pretty half-coaches, holding two,” and the royal mail, rapid, “but inconvenient from the smallness of its build, and particularly liable to be upset,” he proceeds to the old-fashioned stage-coach—

“In travelling by this, you have no further trouble than to take your
place in the office for as far as you wish to go; for the proprietor
of the coach has, at each stage, which are from ten to fifteen English
miles at most from each other, relays of horses, which, unless an
unusual amount of travelling causes an exception, stand ready
harnessed to be put to the coach. Four horses, drawing a coach with
six persons inside, four on the roof, a sort of conductor beside the
coachman, and overladen with luggage, have to get over seven English
miles in the hour; and, as the coach goes on without ever stopping,
except at the principal stages, it is not surprising that you can
traverse the whole extent of the country in so few days. But, for any
length of time, this rapid motion is quite too unnatural. You can only
get a very piecemeal view of the country from the windows, and, with
the tremendous speed with which you go, can keep no object long in
sight; you are unable also to stop at any place.”

After three days’ travelling “at this tremendous speed,” he reached Newcastle, from which the above letter was dated. The rest of the journey was also performed with the same unnatural rapidity. By some chance he made acquaintance with a young medical student, and the two together commenced housekeeping in Edinburgh on a very frugal and sensible plan.

The letters which Niebuhr wrote to his parents from Edinburgh, and which contained his observations on the graver matters of politics and of learning, were unfortunately burnt; those which were addressed to his betrothed have been alone preserved, and these chiefly concern matters of a domestic and personal nature. We hear, therefore, very little of the more learned society into which, doubtless, Niebuhr occasionally entered. With Professor Playfair he formed an intimacy which was afterwards renewed at Rome. Other names are mentioned, but no particulars are given. The subjects which he principally studied in Edinburgh were mathematics and physical sciences. Philological and historical studies he prosecuted by himself, and by way of recreation. “In these departments he regarded the learned men there as incomparably inferior to the Germans.” A Mr Scott, an old friend of his father’s, and to whom he brought letters of introduction, was the most intimate acquaintance he possessed. The quite patriarchal reception that he received from Mr Scott and his family will be read with interest. As to his impressions of the Scotch, as a people, these are extremely various: he is at one time charmed with their unexampled piety; at another, he finds it a dreary formalism; and then, again, from the height of his Kantian philosophy, he detects a shallow French infidelity pervading the land. Such inconsistencies are natural and excusable in a young man writing down his first impressions in a most unreserved correspondence. But there would be very little gained by quoting them here at length. We pass on from this episode in the life, and now proceed with the main current of events.

On his return to Copenhagen, Niebuhr was appointed assessor at the board of trade for the East India department, with some other secretaryship or clerkship of a similar description. Thereupon he married, (May 1800;) and in some letters written soon after this event, he describes himself as in a quite celestial state of happiness. “Amelia’s heavenly disposition, and more than earthly love, raise me above this world, and as it were separate me from this life.”

Then come official promotion and increased occupation. Nevertheless his favourite studies are never altogether laid aside. The day might be spent at his office or in the exchange, in drawing up reports, in correspondence or in interviews with most uninteresting people, and when the night came he was often exhausted both in body and in mind; yet, “if he got engaged at once in an interesting book or conversation, he was soon refreshed, and would then study till late at night.”

Towards the end of 1805 a distinguished Prussian statesman, whose name is not here given, and who was then at Copenhagen on a mission from his government, sounded Niebuhr on his willingness to enter the Prussian service in the department of finance. After much hesitation and some correspondence, Niebuhr finally accepted a proposal made to him of “the joint-directorship of the first bank in Berlin, and of the _Seehandlung_,” a privileged commercial company (as a note of the editor informs us) for the promotion of foreign commerce. Such were the labours to which Niebuhr was willing to devote the extraordinary powers of his mind—such were the services which his contemporaries were willing to accept from him. But we have only to glance at the date of these transactions to call to mind that we are traversing no peaceful or settled times. We are, in fact, in the thick of the war. Whilst Niebuhr was working at his assessorship in Copenhagen, that city was bombarded by the English; and now that he goes to take possession of his directorship in Berlin, he has to fly with royalty itself before the armies of Napoleon. The battle of Jena, and many other battles, have been fought and lost, and the French are advancing on the capital. Flight to Memel, ministerial changes, alternate rise and fall of Von Stein and Count Hardenberg—in all these events poor Niebuhr was now implicated. When peace is made with Napoleon, we find him despatched to Holland to negotiate a Dutch loan, the Prussian government being in great distress for money to pay the contributions imposed upon them by the French. Then follows some misunderstanding with Count Hardenberg, who has succeeded to power, which happily interrupts for a time the official career of our great scholar. He is appointed Professor of History in the university of Berlin. In Michaelmas 1810 the university reopened, and Niebuhr delivered his first course of lectures on the history of Rome.

For about three years we now see him in what every one will recognise as his right and legitimate place in the world, and labouring at his true vocation. His lectures excited the keenest interest—he was encouraged to undertake his great work, _The History of Rome_: it is in this interval that both the first and second volumes were published. An extract from his letters will show the pleasant change in his career, and give us some insight into the position he held in the university.

“Milly (his wife Amelia) has told you that the number of my hearers
was much greater than I had anticipated. But their character, no less
than their number, is such as encourages and animates me to pursue my
labours with zeal and perseverance. You will feel this when I tell you
that Savigny, Schleiermacher, Spalding, Ancillon, Nicolovius,
Schmedding, and Süvern were present. Besides the number and selectness
of my audience, the general interest evinced in the lecture exceeds my
utmost hopes. My introductory lecture produced as strong an impression
as an oration could have done; and all the dry erudition that followed
it, in the history of the old Italian tribes, which serves as an
introduction to that of Rome, has not driven away even my unlearned
hearers. The attention with which Savigny honours me, and his
declaration that I am opening a new era for Roman history, naturally
stimulates my ardent desire to carry out to the full extent the
researches which one is apt to leave half finished as soon as one
clearly perceives the result to which they tend, in order to turn to
something fresh....

“With a little more quiet, my position would be one more completely in
accordance with my wishes than I have long ventured even to hope for.
There is such a real mutual attachment between my acquaintances and
myself, and our respective studies give such an inexhaustible interest
to conversation, that I now really possess in this respect what I used
to feel the want of; for intercourse of this kind is quickening and
instructive. The lectures themselves, too, are inspiriting, because
they require persevering researches, which, I venture to say, cannot
remain unfruitful to me; and they are more exciting than mere literary
labours, because I deliver them with the warmth inspired by fresh
thoughts and discoveries, and afterwards converse with those who have
heard them, and to whom they are as new as to myself. This makes the
lectures a positive delight to me, and I feel quite averse to bring
them to a close. What I should like, would be to have whole days of
perfect solitude, and then an interval of intercourse with the persons
I really like, but not to remain so many hours together with them as
is customary here. It would be scarcely possible to have less
frivolity and dulness in a mixed society. Schleiermacher is the most
intellectual man amongst them. The complete absence of jealousy among
these scholars is particularly gratifying.”

It is not long we are allowed to pause upon this agreeable and fruitful era of intellectual activity. Two volumes, however, are published of that history of which it is not here our purpose to speak, of which we would not wish to speak lightly or inconsiderately, which we admire and would cordially applaud, but which, we feel, has not yet received its exact place or value in the historical literature of Europe. We have not the time, nor will we lay claim to the profound erudition requisite, to do full justice to Niebuhr’s _History of Rome_. We do not regret, therefore, that the present occasion calls for no decided verdict; and that it does not devolve on us to draw the line, and show where just, and bold, and discriminating criticism terminates, and where ingenious and happy conjecture begins to assume the air and confidence of history. On one point there can be no dispute—that his work exercised a great, and, upon the whole, a most salutary influence on historical criticism. It is not too much to say, that no history has been written since its appearance in which this influence cannot be traced.

Both volumes were received in a most cordial and encouraging manner by his friends and by the public, and materials for a third volume were being collected, when suddenly we hear that our professor—is drilling for the army! Napoleon’s disastrous campaign in Russia has given hope to every patriotic German to throw off the degrading yoke of France. Niebuhr, though by his father’s side of Danish extraction, was, in heart, wholly a German. When the Landwehr was called out he refused to avail himself of the privilege of his position to evade serving in it—he sent in his name as a volunteer, and prepared himself by the requisite exercises. Meanwhile, till he could do battle with the musket, he fought with the pen, and edited a newspaper. “Niebuhr’s friends in Holstein,” writes Madame Hensler, “could hardly trust their eyes when he wrote them word that he was drilling for the army, and that his wife entered with equal enthusiasm into his feelings. The greatness of the object had so inspired Madame Niebuhr, who was usually anxious, even to a morbid extent, at the slightest imaginable peril for the husband in whom she might truly be said to live, that she was willing and ready to bring even her most precious treasure as a sacrifice to her country.”

French troops were now constantly passing through Berlin, on their way from the fatal plains of Russia. The dreadful sufferings which they had manifestly endured did not fail to excite a general compassion; but their appearance excited still more the patriotic hopes of the citizens to liberate themselves from the degrading domination of France. Berlin was evacuated by the French. Then came the Cossacks, following in the route of the common enemy. “They bivouac,” says a letter of Niebuhr, “with their horses in the city; about four in the morning they knock at the doors, and ask for breakfast. This is a famous time for the children, for they set them on their horses, and play with them.” Here is an extract that will bring the times vividly before us. Niebuhr is writing to Madame Hensler:—

“I come from an employment in which you will hardly be able to fancy
me engaged—namely, exercising. Even before the departure of the
French, I began to go through the exercise in private, but a man can
scarcely acquire it without a companion. Since the French left, a
party of about twenty of us have been exercising in a garden, and we
have already got over the most difficult part of the training. When my
lectures are concluded, which they will be at the beginning of next
week, I shall try to exercise with regular recruits during the
morning, and, as often as possible, practise shooting at a mark.... By
the end of a month, I hope to be as well drilled as any recruit who is
considered to have finished his training. The heavy musket gave me so
much trouble at first, that I almost despaired of being able to handle
it; but we are able to recover the powers again that we have only lost
for want of practice. I am happy to say that my hands are growing
horny; for as long as they had a delicate bookworm’s skin, the musket
cut into them terribly....

“I mentioned to you a short time since, my hopes of getting a
secretaryship on the general staff. With my small measure of physical
power, I should have been a thousand times more useful in that office
than as a private soldier. The friend I have referred to would like me
to enter the ministry. Perhaps something unexpected may yet turn up.
Idle, or busy about anything but our liberation, I cannot be now.”

It is impossible to read the account of these stirring times _just now_, without asking ourselves whether it is probable that our own learned professors of Oxford and Cambridge may ever have their patriotism put to a similar trial. Perhaps, even under similar circumstances, they would act the wiser part by limiting themselves to patriotic exhortations to the youth under their control or influence. Of one thing we feel persuaded, that there would be no lack of ardour, or of martial enthusiasm, amongst the students of our venerable universities. After a few months drilling and practising, there would be raised such a corps of riflemen from Oxford and Cambridge as fields of battle have not often seen. How intelligence _tells_, when you put a musket in its hands, is as yet but faintly understood. We, for our own part, hope that the _voluntary principle_ will here arouse itself in time, and do its bidding nobly. For as to that ordinary militia, which is neither voluntary service nor thorough discipline, where there is neither intelligence, nor ardour, nor professional spirit, nor any one good quality of a soldier, we have no confidence in it whatever: we would not willingly trust our hen-coops to such a defence; there is neither body nor soul in it. As a reserve force from which to recruit for the regular army, it may be useful. But to drill and train a set of unwilling servitors like these, with the intention of taking the field with them, would be a fatal mistake; for it would lull the nation into a false sense of security. But a regiment of volunteers of the spirited and intelligent youth of England, we would match with entire confidence against an equal number of any troops in the world. Why should not there be permanent rifle-clubs established in every university, and in every town? These, and our standing army, increased to its necessary complement, would constitute a safe defence. Volunteers, it is said, cannot be kept together except in moments of excitement. And this was true while the volunteers had only to drill and to march; but practice with the rifle is itself as great an amusement as archery, or boating, or cricket, or any other that engages the active spirit of our youth. There is a skill to be acquired which would prompt emulation. There is an art to learn. These clubs would meet together, both for competition, and for the purpose of practising military evolutions on a larger scale, and thus the spirit of the institution would be maintained, and its utility increased. Nor would it be difficult to suggest some honorary privilege which might be attached to the volunteer rifleman. Such, we are persuaded, is the kind of militia which England ought to have for her defence; such, we are persuaded, is the only force, beside the standing army, on which any reliance can safely be placed.

All honour to the historian who unravels for us the obscurities of the past! Nevertheless, one simple truth will stare us in the face. We take infinite pains to understand the Roman _comitia_; we read, not without considerable labour, some pages of Thucydides; yet the daily English newspaper has been bringing to our door accounts of a political experiment now enacting before us, more curious and more instructive than Roman and Grecian history can supply. The experiment, which has been fairly performed on a neighbouring shore, gives a more profound lesson, and a far more important one, than twenty Peloponnesian wars. That experiment has demonstrated to us that, _by going low enough_, you may obtain a public opinion that shall sanction a tyranny over the whole intelligence of the country. A man who, whatever his abilities, had acquired no celebrity in civil or military life, inherits a name; with that name he appeals to the universal suffrage of France; and universal France gives him permission to do what he will with her laws and institutions—to destroy her parliament—to silence her press—to banish philosophy from her colleges. It is a lesson of the utmost importance; and moreover, a fact which, at the present moment, justifies some alarm. It is not intelligent France we have for our neighbour, but a power which represents its military and its populace, and which surely, if we are to calculate on its duration, is of a very terrific character. But we must pursue our biographical sketch of the life of Niebuhr.

Although our professor never actually shoulders that musket of which we have seen him practising the use, and gets no nearer to the smoke of powder than to survey the battle of Bautzen from the heights, he is involved in all the civil turmoils of the time. He is summoned to Dresden, where the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Russia are in conference together. He follows the Sovereigns to Prague; he is again despatched to Holland, to negotiate there for subsidies with the English commissioners. Saddest event of all, his domestic happiness receives a fatal blow in the death of his wife. She must have been a woman of tender spirit and elevated character. She entered ardently into all the pursuits, and shared all the fame, of her husband. A few days before her death, Niebuhr, as he was holding her in his arms, asked her if there was no pleasure that he could give her—nothing that he could do for her sake. She replied, with a look of unutterable love, “You shall finish your history, whether I live or die.”

The history, however, proceeded very slowly. When public tranquillity was restored, Niebuhr did not return to his professor’s chair; he went, as is very generally known, to Rome on a diplomatic mission. Here he spent a considerable portion of his life; and although his residence in that city might seem peculiarly favourable to his great undertaking, yet it proved otherwise;—either his time was occupied in the business or the ceremonial attached to his appointment, or his mind was unhinged. Besides, we have seen, from his own confession, that he needed such stimulants as those he found at Berlin, of friends, and conversation, and a literary duty, to keep him to one train of inquiry or of labour. It was very much the habit of his mind to propose to himself numerous works or literary investigations. We have amongst his loose memoranda of an earlier date one headed thus, “Works which I have to complete.” The list comprises no less than seven works, every one of which would have been a laborious undertaking. No scheme or outline of these several projected books was to be found, but the writer of the Memoir before us remarks that we are not to infer from this that such memoranda contain mere projects, towards whose execution no step was ever taken.

“That Niebuhr proposed,” says Madame Hensler, “any such work to
himself, was a certain sign that he had read and thought deeply on the
subject; but he was able to trust so implicitly to his extraordinary
memory, that he never committed any portion of his essays to paper
till the whole was complete in his own mind. His memory was so
wonderfully retentive that he scarcely ever forgot anything which he
had once heard or read, and the facts he knew remained present to him
at all times, even in their minutest details.

“His wife and sister once playfully took up Gibbon, and asked him
questions from the table of contents about the most trivial things, by
way of testing his memory. They carried on the examination till they
were tired, and gave up all hope of even detecting him in a momentary
uncertainty, though he was at the same time engaged in writing on some
other subject.”

Niebuhr married a second time. Madame Hensler, accompanied by her niece, had visited him in his affliction; their presence gradually cheered him; and Margaret Hensler, the niece, “soothed him with her gentle attentions, and gave him peculiar pleasure with her sweet singing. After some time he engaged himself to her, and married her before he left Berlin.”

We have now to follow him to Rome. The correspondence is here, as indeed throughout these volumes, very entertaining; and it would be utterly impossible to convey to our readers, in our brief survey, a fair impression of the sort of interest this work possesses. The memoir may be regarded as merely explanatory of the letters, and the letters themselves are not distinguished so much by remarkable passages as by a constantly sustained interest. They are not learned, for the erudite portion of the correspondence has been omitted, but they are never trivial; they perpetually suggest some topic of reflection, and are thoroughly imbued with the character and personality of the writer. We have lately had several biographies of eminent men written on the same plan, the letters being set forth as the most faithful portraiture of the man; but in none of these, so far as we can recall them to mind, are the letters at once so valuable in themselves, and so curious for the insight they give us into the character and feelings of the writer.

In reading Niebuhr’s letters from Italy, we must always bear in mind that they are written by one of warm and somewhat irascible temper, and who has a standard of moral excellence which would be thought of a most inconvenient altitude by the people of any country in Europe. He is honest as the day, but open to receive very sudden and much too strong impressions. We must also look at the date of his letters, and ask ourselves what changes may have taken place since Niebuhr wrote. With these precautions, they will be found to convey many very instructive hints. From his first entrance into Italy to the last hour of his residence, he expresses the same opinion of the low standard of intellectual culture amongst its educated classes. Whilst he is yet at Florence, he writes thus:—

“My preconceived opinion of the scholars and higher classes in Italy
has proved perfectly correct, as I was convinced would be the case,
because I possessed sufficient data to form an accurate idea of them.
I have always allowed the existence of individual exceptions, as
regards erudition; but even in these cases, there is not that
cultivation of the whole man which we demand and deem indispensable. I
have become acquainted with two or three literary men of real ability;
but, in the first place, they are old men, who have only a few years
longer to live; and when they are gone, Italy will be, as they say
themselves, in a state of barbarism; and, in the second, they are like
statues wrought to be placed in a frieze on the wall—the side turned
towards you is of finished beauty, the other unhewn stone. They are
much what our scholars may have been sixty or eighty years ago. No one
feels himself a citizen....

“The three genuine and intellectual scholars of my acquaintance,
Morelli, Garatoni, and Fontana, are all ecclesiastics. They are,
however, only ecclesiastics by profession, for I have not found in
them the slightest trace either of a belief in the dogmas of
Catholicism, or of the pietism which you meet with in Germany. _When
an Italian has once ceased to be a slave of the Church, he never seems
to trouble his head about such matters at all. Metaphysical
speculations are utterly foreign to his nature, as they were to the
old Romans._ Hence the vacuity of mind which has become general since
the suppression of freedom, except in the case of those who find a
sphere of action in writing literary and historical memoirs. Their
public men are immeasurably behind the Germans in knowledge and
cultivation.”

What matter for reflection there is here, the reader will not need our assistance to point out. Let those who censure Protestantism for the spirit of speculation it is connected with, either as cause or effect, consider how important a part that speculative tendency plays in sustaining the intellectual activity of a people.

When Niebuhr arrives at Rome, the picture that he draws is still darker. Even the antiquities of the city seem to have given him little pleasure; he was more disturbed at what had been taken away than gratified by the little that remained. Then, although he well knew that the life of an ambassador at Rome could not be free from restraint and interruption, yet the courtly formalities he was compelled to observe were far more vexatious than he had anticipated. Housekeeping, too, perplexed him. Things were dear, and men not too honest. “Without a written agreement nothing can be done.” In a letter to Savigny, he writes thus:—

“Rome has no right to its name; at most, it should be called New Rome.
Not one single street here goes in the same direction as the old one;
it is an entirely foreign vegetation that has grown up on a part of
the old soil, as insignificant and thoroughly modern in its style as
possible, without nationality, without history. It is very
characteristic that the really ancient and the modern city lie almost
side by side.

“There are nowhere any remains of anything that it was possible to
remove. The ruins all date from the time of the emperors; and he who
can get up an enthusiasm about them, must at least rank Martial and
Sophocles together.... St Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel, and the Loggie,
are certainly splendid; but even St Peter’s is disfigured internally
by the wretched statues and decorations.... Science is utterly extinct
here. Of philologists, there is none worthy of the name except the
aged De Rossi, who is near his end. The people are apathetic.

“This, then, is the country and place in which my life is to be
passed! It is but a poor amends that I can get from libraries, and
yet my only hope is from the Vatican. That we may be crossed in
every way, this is closed till the 5th of November, and to have it
opened sooner is out of the question; in other respects, all
possible facilities have been promised me by the Pope himself,
Cardinal Gonsalvi, Monsignor Testi, and the Prefect of the library,
Monsignor Baldi. This last is now engaged in printing, at his own
cost, a work on which he has expended six hundred scudi, without
hope of receiving any compensation for it. It is on seventeen
passages in the Old Testament, in which he has found the cross
mentioned by name.... At Terni, I found the old art of
land-surveying still extant: I rode along what was probably an
ancient ‘limes,’ found the ‘rigor,’ and the ‘V. Pedes.’ I shall go
there again, if I live till next autumn. It is a charming place.
There are at least fifty houses in the town, among them one very
large, which date from the Roman times, and which have never yet
been observed or described by any traveller. Several of the churches
are Roman private houses. If one could but discover in Rome anything
like this! I long inexpressibly to have it for my burial-place.
Everything is ancient in Terni and its neighbourhood—even the mode
of preparing the wine. Oh to have been in Italy five hundred years
ago!”

One of the most agreeable topics mentioned in the period of his biography, is the interest Niebuhr took in the new school of German art then springing up at Rome. Every one, from prints and engravings, if from no other source, is now acquainted with the works of Cornelius, Overbeck, Veit, Schadow, and others. They were then struggling with all the usual difficulties of unemployed and unrecognised genius. Niebuhr neither possessed, nor affected to possess, any special knowledge of art, but he was delighted with the genuine enthusiasm of his fellow-countrymen; he kindled in their society; he was persuaded of their great talent, and exerted whatever influence he possessed in obtaining for them some high employment. He wished that the interior of some church or other public building should be placed at their disposal, to decorate it with suitable paintings. The scattered notices that we find here of these artists we pass over very unwillingly, but we must necessarily confine ourselves to the course of our narrative.