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thrones of Germany. The Polish revolution which immediately followed filled up the measure of his alarms. He thought it only remained for Russia and France to contend for universal dominion, and we presume he anticipated that Sclavonic barbarism would prevail; for he once said that he might himself have wished to retire to the United States; but that he would rather that his children should grow up German subjects of Russia, than Anglo-American citizens. In his universal despair no ray of hope came from England. The Greek war had placed a final barrier between him and the allies of Turkey, which was not removed by the battle of Navarino,—an event which seems to have satisfied no one. In 1828 he had been alarmed at the failure of the Russian armies, and doubtless regretted that the treaty of Adrianople delayed the expulsion of the Turks from Europe. This was the only form of Liberalism in which he would have sympathised, and unfortunately it was in the adoption of this that England was most backward. The growing power of the movement party during Lord Liverpool's and the succeeding administrations, and the universal abandonment of Lord Londonderry's system, completed the process of alienation which had long been going on in his mind. The degeneracy and decline which he believed to be spreading through the world had already advanced so rapidly, as he thought, with us, that our condition strongly reminded him of that of the Romans in the third century after Christ. He was well aware of the respect which was paid to him in England, but, as he remarks, after reading an eulogistic review of his History, he derived no pleasure from it. He thankfully appreciated however the service which Mr. Hare and Mr. Thirlwall rendered him by their admirable translation, and he sent with just pride to his distant friends Mr. Hare's eloquent defence of his character against the Quarterly Review. He also urged Mr. Thirlwall to send him the sheets of his History of Greece, that he might have it translated under his own eye by Classen, and that he might himself continue it down to the Roman conquest.

M. Bunsen, who mentions with pleasure the respect felt for Niebuhr in England, illustrated as it is by the fact that more copies have been sold of the English translation than of the original, must we think read with pain the bitter expressions

of censure and dislike with which in later life he always spoke of our country. For ourselves, while we are firmly convinced that his fears were unaccountably exaggerated, we are more inclined to take warning than to cherish resentment. That his alarms pointed to a real danger, we believe; and where we cannot understand his opinions, we are bound to suspect our own dullness of apprehension.

On the breaking out of the July revolution Niebuhr had cautioned the students, in an earnest address, against any attempts which might be made to tamper with their allegiance to their king and country. In the uncertainty of the future he urged on the completion of his second volume, which he published in the summer, with the well known preface in which he expressed his sorrowful anticipations. He had now lived seven years at Bonn. On Christmas-Eve, 1830, he caught a cold which confined him to his bed, and on the second of January 1831 he died. His wife attended him during his illness day and night, till she was also unable to leave her room; yet she crept once more, when she could not stand by herself, to see him. She could not weep? and once only when his picture was brought her her eyes were moistened. Nine days after her husband she died of a broken heart, and was buried in the same grave, which has been decorated with a monument by the affection of the Crown Prince of Prussia. The children went under the protection of Classen, who long devoted himself to the son of his patron and friend, to join their chosen and natural guardian Dore Hensler, who had acted a mother's part by their mother, and for more than thirty years had been their father's friend, confidante and guide." She has directed my life," he told De Serre, "like "a guardian angel; and now like a departed spirit stands be"fore me and above me in a better world: a friend who has "awakened and inspired the best powers of my heart and my "intellect."

In person Niebuhr was small and weak, his habits were temperate and regular, and he had the good sense to find time for conversation and domestic enjoyment in the midst of the most severe studies. He entered with earnest sympathy into all the little interests and conventional jokes of his family and friends, and he writes with quite as much eagerness about

Marcus's learning great E, or Cornelia's flowered frock for her birth-day, as about consuls or cabinets. "I shall teach "little Amalie to write, myself," he said, "for her mother has "no time for it, and the poor little thing might be jealous of "Marcus if one of us did not teach her." To his dependents he was kind and considerate. "I wish I had taken the go"verness's room, when we got into the house first," he told his sister-in-law, " but, anti-revolutionist as I am, I am too much of "a democrat to turn her out now, in right of superior rank.” We have endeavoured not to criticise Niebuhr's historical genius, but to show its admirers the outward circumstances under which it was developed. Savigny, who from his relation to the historian and his own qualifications has a better title to speak of the great work than any man now living, may be allowed to excuse our silence, by his declaration that no just opinion can be formed of it during the present generation. We cannot perhaps better express our general view of his distinctive characteristics than by calling him the Cuvier of ancient history. His knowledge of comparative mythology and history enabled him to place every isolated fact in the proper place of the skeleton from which it had been severed. To the unsuspecting victims of traditionary dogmatism he may appear a teacher of scepticism; but the critic will recognise the fact that his aims were always positive. He cared nothing for the proof that Romulus and Remus were not suckled by a wolf, except as the easy first step in the discovery of the origin of Rome. His subject in the first two volumes was so obscure, and the results of his inquiries so exclusively the product of his own sagacity, that it is difficult to say how he would have succeeded as a narrator of undisputed events. In minor writings his language is perhaps too warm and zealous ; as for instance in the attack on Xenophon, which is translated in the Philological Museum. But he was quite as much in earnest about the Peloponnesian war, as we are about the ballot, or the corn laws. It may be useful to know that in his boyhood his studies were almost exclusively confined to original classical authors: he made acquaintance with commentators, after he had thoroughly familiarised himself with the thoughts and habits which produced the words which they illustrated. His closer knowledge of modern authors began

with Dante, and extended over the principal works and much of the popular literature of every living language. His chief worship was paid to Goethe, but he freely blamed his Italian Travels, his Wilhelm Meister's Years of Travel, and others of his later works, in which he thought that a worldly and sneering spirit prevailed. He liked Scott's and Cooper's novels, but on his death-bed he got tired of the diffuseness of one of the works of the American writer, and requested Classen to read to him Josephus instead.

We have quoted many expressions which concern his political opinions, but to a great extent we must leave them in the obscurity in which we find them. He was through life an alarmist, and time must show whether he was right in crying aloud, or the world in not regarding him. For the last ten years of his life he was unalterably convinced that an age of barbarism was returning. Even earlier he prophesied the extinction of the great rival churches; of Protestantism with its heartless abstractions, and of Popery with its effete falsehoods but he acknowledged that in England Christianity stood unmovable (felsenfest.) It is remarkable that he should have been accused of connexion with revolutionary societies, and that the paternal wisdom of the enlightened government of Austria should have proscribed his Kleine Schriften; nevertheless that his name should even yet be a mark for abuse to the theoretical enthusiasts of freedom. The truth was that he clung to constitutional rights,-if plebeian, from sympathy, if aristocratic, from principle, but still to something founded on custom and history, which is always the common terror of the Jacobin and the despot. He had suffered much annoyance through life from the paltry insolence of oligarchy: even in Rome he was indebted to the respect paid him by the high-born French ambassador, Count de Blacas, for his exemption from the contempt or condescension of his fellowdiplomatists. Yet he was firmly convinced that equality can make no resistance to despotism, and that a privileged class is the only permanent guardian of freedom. He would never accept the predicate of nobility, and remembered with pride that his father had refused it before him. " Do you think I would insult my family, as if I was too good for them ?" said the proud and simple old man. A peasantry of freeholders,

independent local administration, division of ranks with strict confinement of each to its constitutional functions, religious reverence for the historical constitution, and utter rejection of foreign interference, were the requisites which he demanded in a free state. Representation he valued little except when it had developed itself as in England by degrees from the national wants; and in general he thought that the right of citizens was not to govern except as it might be incidentally necessary to their being well governed. His views are the more important because he stands among his own countrymen almost alone in the preference of experience and practice to theory: they will we hope be more fully known hereafter. In the mean time for many reasons we cordially recommend to our readers the study of his character and opinions.

ARTICLE V.

1. Correspondence relative to the affairs of Canada. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty, 1840.

2. Papers respecting Emigration. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed March 10, 1840. No. 113. 3. Correspondence with the Secretary of State relative to New Zealand. Presented to the House of Commons by the Queen's command, in pursuance of an address to Her Majesty of the 8th of April, 1840.

THERE is no subject which attracts a greater share of public interest at present than the plan recently adopted by the government for the management of our colonial lands, and the arrangements made for conducting emigration on the selfsupporting system. Many conflicting statements and exaggerated descriptions have been lately circulated by rival parties interested in directing emigration into particular channels, with a view of influencing in the choice of a settlement that

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