wife, finished for the occasion. He had strength to address his family in some tender and hopeful words, and his glowing faith gradually raised the spirits of the rest. Still he showed, for some hours each day, a wonderful capacity for work. He conferred daily with Kamphausen on the Old Testament, and went through the first three Gospels with his son Henry, whose Biblical scholarship gave him cordial delight. He received visits from several royal personages. Two days of comparative ease made it possible for him to receive Mr. R. B. Morier, and an animated political conversation delighted his hearers. He was taken to the Garden Pavilion once to see a cast of the head of Jupiter Olympus from the Vatican. He took two airings with his son George, conveying to him his last wishes, refraining from orders, but desiring, that, if it were possible, this and that thing should be done. On the 26th of October, he went out for the last time. On the 28th, Wolff thought he was dying, and said, "The struggle is fearfully prolonged!" During this day, his broken utterances were carefully preserved. He murmured much about "Eternal Love, Love that wills, Will that loves."-"Most precious Fannie, my first, my only love, in you I have loved what was eternal!" He remembered all his absent children,— the princes and statesmen of his native land. "If I have walked toward the throne," he said to his wife, "it was by your help." And how, among these deathbed utterances, should an American read without emotion the words,

"All power founded on supposed privileges must perish; it is all of evil. The United States have yet much to do,—much for their future, to purify themselves, to make themselves free.". "We only are, in so

far as we exist in love to God."

On the 4th of November, he was for a few hours quite himself; and, on the morning of the 12th, his beaming eyes "looked their last." Although he lingered till the 28th, the clouds of death continually overshadowed them. On the 1st of December, 1860, a bright and cloudless day, as he had desired, he was borne to his grave in the cemetery of Bonn. No hired official desecrated the occasion. The body was

borne in the arms of those who loved him, who constantly relieved each other. The boys of the Protestant school sang the hymn at the grave, and friends brought with their hands the earth that was to lie lightly on his breast. "His soul was joyful in God." Perhaps no man ever lived who combined more wonderful gifts,- a large heart with an almost universal intellectual grasp; a brotherly love for all men, of whatever nation or creed, with dignified loyalty to lofty station; a reformer's will and power to destroy, with the wise man's reverence for every thing holy on earth and in heaven. In England he attracted everybody by his sympathy and benevolence, by his wonderful brilliancy, his real humility, and his beaming personal beauty. God had been specially good to him, also, in giving him his wife. She was sweet, brave, strong, and inquiring. She valued all his great qualities so truly, that she had a perfect patience with his visionary faith in individuals; with his almost Arcadian simplicity and trust; with the hopefulness that was almost insane; with the buoyancy of spirit, which, if it often carried him over a dangerous abyss, sometimes was thought to prevent his feet, as well, from taking steady, manly hold of the earth he trod.

At last heaven has him, and from his green grave we catch the meaning echo of his life. On the stone is written what he so often said, "Let us walk in the light of the Eternal."

Of the book itself we have two things to say. We protest, again, against accepting a man's correspondence as a memoir of his life. It seems to us that the modern fashion of printing all a man's private letters the moment he is cold, grows partly out of the indolence of scholars, who will not trouble themselves to study the originals, and come to wise judgments concerning his bearing. We think also that it is impossible for near kindred to write a memoir that the world will finally accept. The exceptions to the statement are so rare, as to prove the rule. We protest also against several attempts, in these volumes, to give to Bunsen an orthodox position in theology and Christology which was not natural to him, and

VOL. LXXXV.-NEW SERIES, VOL. VI. NO. II.

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which he never occupied. We know these attempts are unconscious, and we admit the difficulties. Bunsen was so large a man, that he never could make an extreme statement without at once seeing the other side, and endeavoring to balance it. It was natural that liberalists, looking only at his wide intelligence, perfect fearlessness, and radical criticism, should class him with the most reckless extremists. It was quite as natural that those who loved him most tenderly should feel the glow of his personal devotion, and reject the representation hastily. His constant protest against the Christology of the churches, his friendship for Arnold and Renan, show very clearly what manner of man he was. Whatever those who stood round his bed might think, his murmured expressions of "love to Christ," "the only true way," &c., were perfectly consistent with this position.

In every other respect, this memoir deserves great praise for its unflinching truth, with no hint or glint of unpleasantness anywhere. We hear that it has produced a great social excitement in England, because it goes so freely into the interiors of English homes. Nowhere do we get so pleasant a glimpse of the royal family. All the differing voices in regard to Victoria are gracefully harmonized on the pages of the baroness; and we find that the dignity of the queen is preserved, in spite of the affection of the wife and the fondness of the mother, and the cheerful chat which seems so vapid on the royal pages. Certainly, all women should bless Albert and Victoria, who knew how to appreciate whatever was noble and inspiring in art, philanthropy, science, or literature, and who have kept the court of England clean in a social and domestic sense for more than thirty years.

It is said that, when Bunsen first went to England, Exeter Hall received him with delight. There are few traces of Exeter Hall in these volumes. The great heretic, whose advocate in the "Essays and Reviews" had to stand so furious a storm of theological rebuke, was a great pietist, as well as Christian in every fibre of his feeling; but that appeased nobody! He chose to go through the natural to the divine. The stupid world of priests, Protestant and Catho

lic alike, strove in vain to drive him into the supernatural. Whatever be the value of the dogmatic results of his labors (and this is not the place to discuss a question, which stimulates afresh our enthusiastic interest), the impetus of the spirit which he imparted to theological inquiry can never be lost. It may, however, be said that few of those who pronounce against his judgments are qualified to consider them. They generally confess at the outset that they have not read the books, to which he gave the arduous study of fifty years, and the best powers of a mind open at his latest hour to fresh convictions.

The poor student, who helped himself forward by teaching gymnastics, succeeded Niebuhr at Rome, and was adopted into a wealthy English family when he was penniless, because a woman's heart foresaw his great renown, and prophesied his eventual dignity. Beloved by his king as few men are beloved by their equals, he was not only made the Prussian Minister to England, but throughout his life represented to the English mind, in a far higher degree than any other man, whatever was eminent in learning and theology, charming in character and distinguished in rank, on the Continent. Goethe never took such possession of the English mind as the ovation offered Bunsen at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance showed; for Goethe was no religionist, and did not know the meaning of that thoroughly English word, "home."

From first to last Bunsen was detested by the German aristocrats; but the best bread of the aristocracy came to his table without the asking. It was because he believed in a natural aristocracy that he accepted the life barony offered by his dying king, and sacrificed some of the most precious hours of his last years to the Chamber of Peers. "Civilized slavery," he said plainly, "was the only term which represented the political position of Germany." So absolutists, politicians, priests, were all against him: but God was with him, humanity is for him, the Church moves in the tramway which he spent his life in grading; and, whatever the result to him, his life stands a magnificent monument to the fact, that to simple manhood all the best powers of earth and heaven are for ever tributary.

ART. IV. -THE MATHER PAPERS.

Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Vol. VIII. Fourth Series. Published at the Charge of the Appleton Fund. Boston: Published for the Society by Wiggin & Lunt. 1868. 8vo.

AN honest pride in the character of their ancestors, and a desire to perpetuate the memory of their deeds, were among the peculiar traits of the English race brought hither by the founders of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Colonies; and they have lost little of their real strength by the lapse of time, though they assume here a somewhat different form from that which arrests the attention of every thoughtful traveller in England. Both Governor Bradford and Governor Winthrop rightly estimated the magnitude of their undertaking; and fortunately they left invaluable records of the early history of the colonies of which they were the chief pillars. Inspired by their example, their successors were not unmindful of the duty devolving on each generation to gather up and preserve the traditions of the elders.

"A particular or two more," writes Secretary Morton to Increase Mather, in a letter first printed in the volume before us, "I would propose unto you, which is, that you would please (if you shall see mature cause and reason) to be instrumental to set on foot and put forward a General History of New England; if this may be thought by the judicious (yourself and others) to be the time."- Mather Papers, p. 595.

Three years after the date of this letter, the General Court ordered,

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"Whereas it hath been thought necessary, and a duty incumbent upon us, to take due notice of all occurrences and passages of God's providences towards the people of this jurisdiction, since their first arrival in these parts, which may remain to posterity, and that the Reverend Mr. William Hubbard hath taken pains to compile a history of this nature, which the Court doth with thankfulness acknowledge; and as a manifestation thereof do hereby order the Treasurer to pay