reminded him of the dying request of his wife, that, at all events, he should finish his history)—with such assiduity that he completed the half of the third volume, revision excepted, in the course of the winter.

In 1824 a domestic calamity fixed his determination to relinquish all thoughts of resuming his duties at Rome. Whilst he was at Berlin tidings reached him of the illness of his four younger children and the death of the infant. This event raised him (says his biographer) above other crosses and cares, and turned his thoughts to that which he still possessed, but might lose. He again, therefore, solicited his release, and at length obtained it, with a provisional salary equal in amount to that which he had received before he left Berlin. And thus, at last, he obtained that leisure to devote himself to studies which he ever regarded as his true vocation, and now decided to settle in Bonn.

The incidents of the brief remainder of his earthly career are of a calmer and more domestic nature than those which marked his more public life; but there is a deep and melancholy interest about them which causes them to belong especially to the impressions which this work has left upon ourselves. We seem to catch presages that his sun would go down whilst it was yet day. The following extract of a letter to Madame Hensler brings before us in vivid colouring a destined man on whom the storms of life had fallen with saddening force. It is dated Berlin, May, 1824 :

"Here the recollections of former years rise up like ghosts before me at every step. In the Thiergarten, where there is not a path that does not remind me of the past, it is sometimes more than I can bear; and yet I cannot help going there again and again. It is so distinctly before my eyes-how we used to walk there in 1810, Amelia (his first wife) and you, and I-how in the autumn often, and summer, when I was full of life and energy, and my history was daily growing under my hands, I found recreation and refreshment in Amelia's society .... And then came, afterward, those heartrending drives with my dying wife, &c. My sorrow is seldom relieved by tears. When I pass the house where my highest happiness departed, a shudder runs through me. I cannot enter the house.'

The letter ends thus:-"My Lucia is very ill-my angel child! If the worst were possible! I at a distance-my poor Gretchen alone in her grief."

Speaking of the influences of the same place over his happiness, he elsewhere says "Where such innumerable recollections crowd on upon me that I seem like a spectre to myself."

The presaging gloom to which we allude again breaks out in such a passage as this to his wife ::-"I did not mean that I expected none but positively gloomy days for myself; but that it is only with and through you all that serenity and cheerfulness can be diffused over the evening of my life." So far as posterity is concerned, the most important period of Niebuhr's life must be considered to be that spent in his last home at Bonn from 1825 to 1831; for here, amidst scenes and opportunities congenial to his nature, he effectually carried out, as far as life allowed him, the dying injunction of his beloved wife that he should finish his "Roman History." At Bonn, too, he commenced a series of lectures on history, antiquities, and geography. In the civil affairs of the town and neighbourhood in which he had chosen to dwell, he took so active an interest that his loss was keenly felt by its inhabitants.

His daily habits were very simple-as indeed those of all men must be who hope to work much, well, and regularly. He disliked needless show and luxury in domestic life. Nor did his deep devotion to the most absorbing literary pursuits belie his character as a husband, father, and pater-familias. He rose at seven and retired to rest at eleven-dined simply at one-walked immediately afterwards-and drank tea at eight, when any of his acquaintances were welcome guests. But, during the hours spent in his study, he gave up himself so wholly to his pursuits as to accomplish vast results. Amidst such labours and enjoyments as these the remaining years of his life passed away.

The last year of all was marked by a catastrophe which painfully affected his spirits. His new house, in the arrangement of which he had taken such pleasure, was burnt down in the night of February 6, 1830. A trait of his character on the sad night of this event, which touched him to the quick, is quite characteristic of his noble, unselfish, nature. After he had seen his wife and children safe in the house of a neighbour, he said sadly, but with composure, to a friend— "It is indeed a misfortune; but I do not feel nearly so overcome and depressed as I did in the night of the battle of Bautzen when I was near head-quarters, and believed the cause of my country to be, if not lost, in the most imminent peril." Contrary to his fears, his most precious manuscripts were saved from the flames, and the greater part of the books, though many of them were of course much damaged. He immediately commenced building another house on a larger scale,

On the evening of the 25th of December, returning from the hot news-room, under much excitement from the political news of France, in a bitter frosty night air, he caught a chill, against which he took refuge in his bed from which he never rose again, but for one hour, two days afterwards. His illness was pronounced to be an attack of inflammation on the lungs. During a brief illness, his faithful wife, who exerted herself beyond her strength in nursing him, fell ill too, and was obliged to quit him. And then it was that his spirit was bowed down, and, turning his face to the wall, he exclaimed with sad presentiment-"Hapless house! To lose father and mother at once." To his children he said, "Pray to God, children: He alone can help us." And those around

him saw that in silent prayer he himself was seeking comfort. Again he rallied, and sought from books that mental aliment without which it seemed he could not live; but, on the afternoon of the 1st of January, 1831, he sunk into a dreamy slumber, from which, awakening, he spoke of pleasant images that had floated before his eyes in sleep. In his dreams, he muttered words in French. As night progressed, consciousness gradually faded away. Once more it returned, and he asked, suspiciously, about a particular kind of medicine that he knew was reserved for extreme cases-" Am I so far gone?" These were his last words; and, within the hour in which he spoke them, he died.

What comes after reads almost tragical. Only nine days after Madame Niebuhr died, and about the same hour of the night. Though she, too, was labouring under an inflammation of the chest, yet there seems no doubt that she died of a broken heart. Unable to shed tears, she prayed to God for that relief. But only once, as she gazed upon his picture, did a slight moisture dim her eyes. Thus, no relief came to her heavy heart. She frequently sent for her children, and gave them parting counsels. And so she died, and rests in that same grave with her husband, over which the present King of Prussia has erected a monument to the memory of his former instructor and counsellor. The children were placed under the care of their loving aunt, Madame Hensler, at Kiel.

We know that on the most solemn of all the subjects which can seize upon man's heart, the true enquiry is--not how a great man died-but how he lived? Nevertheless, we could have wished that something had been told us of the precise grounds of his confidence as he was passing through the "dark valley of the shadow of death;" for the wonderful

imagery of those words yields a true description, as it appears, of Niebuhr's last stage. We own to no particular liking to what we must call the gossip of the dying chamber. A few words will suffice to tell us all we ask to know; and we willingly consign the incidentally uttered remarks to the fond memories of those, for whose comfort, and into whose ears they were spoken. But to tell us how he died in peace, cannot be an undignified, as it is the crowning act of a great man's life. We think it only justice to the translator of the "Letters" to record our judgment of the admirable skill with which she has performed her task. It is to her praise that they read like originals. Of the work itself, we entertain no doubt that, with some modifications, it will take rank with our first class biographical literature; for, though the living Niebuhr belonged to his fatherland, the dead Niebuhr belongs to all mankind.

ART. III.-The Saxon in Ireland; or, the Rambles of an Englishman in Search of a Settlement in the West of Ireland. London: Murray. 1852.

VARIOUS tribes of mankind have become extinct after having acted their part for many generations; or rather they have lost their former appellations by becoming identified with more powerful sections of the human family. Large rivers are indebted to the tributary streams that flow into them during their progress to the ocean and contribute materially to their celebrity and utility. In like manner, the Saxon adventurers that first emigrated to this country not only received frequent accessions to their numbers from the continent, but in process of time the previous inhabitants of south Britain became so intermingled with their warlike invaders that the original distinction between the conquerors and the vanquished became eradicated, and the fabled descendants of Brutus lost both their language and their name. The Danes afterwards aided considerably to increase the population and resources of England; and at a later period the Normans, after having first appeared in the invidious character of successful soldiers, were completely amalgamated with the former inhabitants, and did much to promote the glory of the Anglo-Saxon name, which was once thought to have been extinguished in the blood shed at the disastrous

battle of Hastings. Since then, both the Netherlands and France have contributed some of the most intelligent and enterprising of their sons to augment the number of the inhabitants, and did much to further the individual capabilities of this island. There are few, if indeed any, in England who have descended exclusively either from Celt or Saxon, Dane or Norman. The Celtic inhabitants of the mountanous districts of Scotland and of the Principality are the only parties who have the least claim to what may be comparatively called an unmixed descent. Nations, like individuals, become exhausted through age, and need an occasional infusion of new blood to prevent fatal paralysis.

One of the principal occasions of Ireland's misfortunes has been, not that the Anglo-Saxon race have for centuries possessed in that island a political ascendancy, but that they had not hitherto succeeded in obliterating all perceptible distinction between themselves and the descendants of those who occupied that island prior to the reign of the first of our Plantagenets. A unity of language is absolutely necessary to perfect national assimilation; and it will be a happy day for the Celtic inhabitants, both of Great Britain and Ireland, when their own vernacular languages shall be everywhere superseded by that which is justly entitled to be considered the mother tongue of the united kingdom. A people sunk so low as the native Irish can never themselves succeed in effecting either a political or social renovation. What Ireland might have been, if Englishmen had never settled there, is exceedingly problematical; but the probability is that her inhabitants, if they had for the last six centuries been left without foreign interference, would ere this have sunk so low in the scale of civilisation as to have rendered an amelioration of their condition hopeless. It is to the Saxons, and not to the Celts, that Ireland owes whatever has tended to diminish the enormous evils which have for ages been preying upon her vitals; and which, without the influence of the calumniated Sassenach, would have reduced her population to a level with the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands when first visited by Captain Cook. The occasion of most of Ireland's misfortunes has been, not the numbers, but the paucity, of Anglican settlers in that island-we mean that they were too few to effect a thorough change in the language, habits, and preferences of that country. The jealousy existing between different sections of the human family, when inconveniently contiguous, can be removed only by amalgation. We beg our readers to observe that we are not refer