unseasonable invectives against modern philosophy. This burst of arrogance was, however, as quickly followed by one of modesty. It had cost him in London, he says, at the rate of nine guineas a year to have a hairdresser, so in Edinburgh he availed himself of the liberty of wearing his hair plain. The piety, so characteristic of the Scotch, he designates as strict and rather pedantic, and as causing him much embarrassment; but he denounces in still stronger language the dissoluteness of a fellow-student. He writes indeed of the "universal licentiousness" of young Englishmen, and says "they are only happy in the enjoyment of sensual pleasures." This a most unmerited condemnation of the Edinburgh students, many of whom will work enthusiastically eighteen hours a day, when even the wondrous Niebuhr was satisfied with twelve. But Niebuhr attached an importance to conversation and every trifling expression that we never dream of in this country, and was therefore only calculated to mislead him. Many a young man talks of misdeeds that he never commits, and affects an indifference to feelings and conduct that he is far from really entertaining.
After residing a year and a half in London and Edinburgh, Niebuhr returned to Holstein, whence he started early the ensuing year to Copenhagen, having obtained an appointment, the income of which enabled him to marry Amelia Behrens, and take her with him to the Danish capital. In 1806 he left Copenhagen for Berlin, where he accepted the situation of joint-director of the first bank that was founded in Prussia. The opening of the University of Berlin, at Michaelmas, 1810, brought him forward as a lecturer on Roman history; and the lectures which he delivered in this and the following year were published in 1811, and contain the germs of those new combinations and discoveries for which he will be best known to posterity. Niebuhr's studious life was interrupted by the war of liberation in 1813-14, and in which he took an active part. In 1816 he was sent as ambassador to Rome, and on his return from Italy he retired to Bonn, where he gave lectures on Roman antiquities and various subjects, and ultimately died in 1831.
The truly valuable work before us contains illustrations of all these eventful epochs in the historian’s life; and although it is evident, from many passages, that Niebuhr was what would be called in this country a Freethinker, and from a fault in his mental constitution, which adhered to him through life—that of measuring his fellow-creatures by an ideal and far too high a standard—he was also a philosophical republican; yet, as his mind was imbued with a pure devotional spirit, albeit of a philosophical character, as his morals were untainted, his virtues genuine, and his republicanism ideal and not practical, there is no portion of this truly learned and good man's letters, that may not be read with advantage to the heart, and improvement of the understanding. The character presented to the reader, it has been justly remarked, is that of one wise and noble far beyond the generality of men. His letters, indeed, constitute a study for the moralist not less than for the scholar; there is a vein of reflection, and an unceasing flow of suggestive thought that pervades them, which, as in the instance of Goethe, render it impossible to tear oneself from the perusal of such a thoughtful, instructive, and delightful correspondence.
