by the French revolution of the three days, from which he anticipated the relapse of Europe into barbarism, and a general war which would lay waste even his happy home on the banks of the Rhine. These apprehensions hastened his death, which took place at Bonn on the 2nd of January, 1831, the immediate cause being inflammation of the chest. In some of the conclusions laid down in his great work on Roman history, Niebuhr had been preceded by others. Such writers as Beaufort, for instance, had proved the early history of Rome to be fabulous. Niebuhr arriving at similar results proceeded further. He was not content to be a mere destroyer, but attempted to reconstruct Roman history from the historical elements latent in its fables. He is the founder of the modern science of historical reconstruction. Of the "Römische Geschichte" there is an excellent English translation begun by Julius Hare and Bishop Thirlwall, completed by Drs. William Smith and Leonhard Schmitz, who has also translated his lectures on the history of Rome, and on ancient ethnography and geography. For his biography and table talk the reader is referred to Lieber's Reminiscences of Niebuhr, and to Miss Susannah Winkworth's English version of the Lebens-Nachrichten über B. G. Niebuhr, aus Briefen desselben, by his early friend Frau Hensler.—F. B—y.
NIEBUHR, Carsten, the famous German traveller, was born on the 17th March, 1733, at Lüdingworth, a village in the district of Hadeln, called Land Hadeln, belonging to the kingdom of Hanover. His father was one of a class of small landowners in that district whose position nearly resembles that of the freehold yeomanry of Cumberland. His mother died when he was only six weeks old, and he was brought up under the care of a stepmother. After a preliminary education at the village school he was sent first to the grammar-school of Otterndorf, and afterwards to that of Altentruch. On the death of his father, who had bequeathed to him only a small sum of money instead of the freehold of his ancestors, he was withdrawn from school by his guardians, who wished him to follow the ancestral calling of a peasant. When he came of age, however, he chose for himself, in spite of their remonstrances, the profession of a land surveyor, and with that view commenced the study of geometry at Bremen, sacrificing part of his small capital for present support. He afterwards entered the gymnasium of Hamburg, and at the end of a year's training in mathematics was admitted a student of the university of Göttingen, 1757. Fortune now began to dawn upon the manful struggle in which he was engaged. An annual stipend belonged to the family, payable to any member of it studying at the university. This Carsten Niebuhr obtained. His ambition was now to enter the corps of royal engineers, and, with the advantage of mathematical instruments which his stipend enabled him to purchase, he continued his mathematical studies. A different career, however, was about to open for him. Michaelis, then professor of biblical literature in Göttingen, was desirous of sending one of his pupils to India and Yemen in order to investigate some philological matters connected with biblical criticism, and in 1756 he applied for assistance and patronage to the famous Baron von Bernstorf, the Danish statesman. In reply Bernstorf, in the name of his master. King Frederick V., requested Michaelis to nominate a person for the mission, informing him that the expense would be defrayed by his majesty. The minister added that it was the king's desire that a mathematician and a naturalist, named by Michaelis, should accompany the linguist. On the recommendation of Kästner, whom Michaelis consulted on the subject, Niebuhr was appointed the mathematical member of the expedition, and accordingly, pensioned by the Danish minister, he commenced the study of astronomy under the elder Tobias Mayer, and Arabic under Michaelis, taking lessons also in drawing. The professor and the student of Arabic had unfortunately little affection for each other, and their bickerings were manifold, but for Mayer Niebuhr always expressed the greatest veneration, which on the part of the famous astronomer was answered with the most cordial interest in the progress of his pupil. In particular, Mayer spared no pains to make the future traveller master of his method of determining longitude by lunar observations, and it will be remembered that when the first results of Niebuhr's applications of that method on his eastern journey were received at Göttingen, his old master, then on his deathbed, brightened up for a moment from his last lethargy to enjoy the tidings of his own and his pupil's splendid success. Of the £10,000 offered by the British parliament to the discoverer of the best method of taking longitudes at sea, a half thus came to the widow of Mayer, the other half being assigned to Harrison. In the autumn of 1760 Niebuhr proceeded from Göttingen to Copenhagen, where he was well received by Bernstorf. The other members of the expedition were Von Haven, an indifferent linguist, with none of the enterprising spirit of his mathematical colleague; Forskaal, a Swedish naturalist of great repute, versatile and energetic in a degree which commanded the highest respect of his companions; Dr. Cramer, an incapable physician; and Bauernfeind, a drunken draughtsman. On the 10th January the travellers set sail on board the Grönland, a Danish man-of-war, and touching at Marseilles and Malta, proceeded through the Dardanelles to Constantinople. Here Niebuhr had an attack of dysentery which nearly proved fatal, so that the party were detained nearly two months, and when they at length embarked for Alexandria, it was in a vessel in which the plague made havoc among the crowded passengers. In Egypt the travellers spent a whole year, from the end of September, 1761, to the beginning of October, 1762. Niebuhr, along with Forskaal and Von Haven, made during this year an excursion to Mount Sinai. He took the latitude and longitude of Cairo, Rosetta, and Damietta; made maps of the Nile in the Delta, and a plan of Cairo; measured the pyramids, and copied inscriptions from obelisks and sarcophagi. In October, 1762, the expedition embarked at Suez on a Turkish vessel for Djidda, and reached Loheia, the first point of their destination in Yemen, about the end of the year. Niebuhr made as often as opportunities offered astronomical, geodetical, geographical, and nautical observations, from which he constructed a chart of the Red sea, which was the best until it was superseded by modern surveys. Along with Forskaal he made several excursions into Western Yemen, where he defined the geodetical position of localities, whilst his friend made botanical collections. After the members of the expedition had returned to the seacoast. Von Haven died at Mochha in the latter part of May, 1763. Niebuhr himself was again attacked by dysentery, but rallied shortly, and set out with his surviving companions to Sana. Forskaal, however, died on July 11, 1763, at Jerim. The survivors were well received by the Imâm, who invited them to spend a year in Upper Yemen; but such was their despondency at the moment that they neglected the opportunity thus presented of fulfilling the original plan of their expedition. They hurried back to Mochha to embark on board an English vessel, on which they hoped to escape from death by reaching India. Thus they were driven by a foolish panic from Sana, a place of comparative security, into the jaws of death on the coast. They were obliged to spend more than the whole of August at Mochha before they could sail for India. Having been attacked by fever, as might be expected in the Tehama about August, Bauernfeind and their European servant died at sea; Cramer reached Bombay, but died there after lingering a few months. Thus of the six Europeans who had set out together Niebuhr alone was left. At Bombay Niebuhr was well received by the British merchants, among whom he gratefully remembered especially a younger son of the Scots of Harden, a jacobite family of Roxburghshire. When thirty-five years later Niebuhr's son Barthold studied in Edinburgh, he was befriended there by the same merchant, now retired from business, who had been kind to his father in India. Niebuhr numbered also among his friends a Captain Howe, R.N., a brother of Admiral Lord Howe and of General Sir William Howe. The captain presented Niebuhr with charts of the Indian and Arabian coasts, and received in return the chart of the northern part of the Red sea. British vessels had not then been north of Djidda. Niebuhr endeavoured to learn at Bombay as much as possible from the Hindoos and Parsihs, visited the rock-temples of Flephanta, copied the sculptures, and visited Surat; but having been informed of the death of Tobias Mayer, to whose revision he trusted for the arrangement of his observations, and having lost by the death of his Swedish servant his only assistant, he henceforth omitted the observations of longitude which formerly had chiefly engaged his attention. After having spent fourteen months at Bombay, Niebuhr visited Mascate and the interesting province of Oman, and proceeded by Abushehr and Shiras to Persepolis, where he spent more than three weeks in measuring the ancient structures and in copying inscriptions, until he was compelled to desist by the death of his Armenian servant and by an inflammation of the eyes. He returned by Shiras to Abushehr, and then proceeded across the Persian gulf to Basra; thence in November, 1765, by the Persian places of pilgrimage—Meshed-Ali and Meshed Hoessin—he journeyed to Bagdad, where he arrived July 6, 1766. In Aleppo he
