Barthold George, the illustrious historian of ancient Rome, was born at Copenhagen the 27th August 1776. He was son of the oriental traveller, Carsten Niebuhr. His family for many generations had been settled in Hadel, the north-western province of Hanover, where they occupied a small patrimonial estate. The elder Niebuhr had been employed by the Danish government on an exploring expedition in Arabia, in the year 1760, in which he exhibited remarkable abilities and energy. On his return, after suffering great hardships, he received an appointment in Copenhagen, married, and had two children,—a daughter named Christiana, and a son, Barthold George, a few years her junior. The mother was also a German by birth; so that Barthold, though born in Denmark, was himself German on both sides, and learnt the German as well as the Danish language in his nursery. When he was two years old his father removed to Meldorf, the capital of South Denmark, a district of Holstein, lying on the shore of the German Ocean, between the mouths of the Elbe and Eyder, which, though subject to Denmark, was occupied by a population claiming closer connection by origin and language with its German than its Danish neighbours. The inhabitants of this border-land had secured in the middle ages a certain political independence, of which they still retained the traces in their habits, their feelings, and their municipal institutions. From these institutions, in which the distinction of classes was strongly marked, Niebuhr drew many illustrations of his theory regarding the relations between the patricians and plebeians of ancient Rome.

The bent of Niebuhr's genius, and his habits of mind, may be traced more clearly than in most cases to the circumstances of his early years. From his father he derived his interest in languages, in geography, and in the manners and institutions of different nations, together with unwearyed diligence and great earnestness of character. To his mother he owed apparently his moral and physical susceptibility; he was easily affected by change of climate and temperature, and liable to fits of peevishness and irritability; while at the same time he was endowed with great warmth of heart, and gained the devoted affection of his friends and family. From his father's employment as a fiscal agent in Denmark he acquired his turn for the subject of finance. Accustomed from his infancy to the marshes and moors of his province, it was not till late in life that he acquired a taste for picturesque scenery; to the last the fens of Holland and the plains of the Campagna had more interest for him than the romantic glories of the Alps and Apennines. Meldorf seems to have afforded him no companion of his own age, and but little society among his elders, which could assist in expanding his intellect; but Boje, the prefect of the district, an intimate friend of his father's, was a man of cultivated mind and literary taste; and young Niebuhr delighted in listening to their conversation, and, as he grew up, in devouring the contents of their libraries. Marvelous stories are told of the quickness of his observation, and his powers of memory. His first political interest was excited by the war between Russia and Turkey in 1787, the course of which he followed, or, if his father may be believed, anticipated, with the map before him; and the information he displayed in matters of history, geography, and statistics, was from the first extraordinary. In 1790, his thirteenth year, he was placed at the gymnasium of Meldorf; in 1792 he was removed to a commercial school at Hamburg, and in 1794 was admitted into the university of Kiel. The system of education at a small German university such as Kiel, was very similar to that, little noticed and soon to be forgotten, pursued in our East India College at Haileybury. The students, about 100 in number, lived in habits of easy intercourse, and often of affectionate friendship, with the professors and authorities, frequenting their little parties, and associating with their wives and daughters. The course of study, ranging over two years, was wide, but necessarily superficial, exercising the memory more than the understanding; the students attending, with considerable latitude of choice, the lectures of teachers in the learned languages, in German and Danish history, in jurisprudence, logic, metaphysics, natural philosophy, chemistry, "aesthetics," and philology, and probably others, delivered orally and taken down in writing; great stores of which manuscripts, more or less methodically arranged, they carried away with them to form the basis of future works or lectures of their own. On all these subjects Niebuhr gained crude masses of information which none but a mind of extraordinary activity, such as his own, could have digested. But a more important acquisition than all this learning, for the future development of his character, was the friendship of Madame Hensler, the widowed daughter of one of the professors, a woman of remarkable sense and intelligence, towards whom, being six years her junior, he continued through life to entertain the most respectful regard, with whom he corresponded, without reserve, on all his thoughts and feelings, and whose younger sister he afterwards married. Here he also formed many valuable intimacies; e.g., with the two Counts Stolberg, with Count Adam Moltke, with Voss, Jacobi, Reventlow, and Schlosser.

At Easter 1796 Niebuhr left Kiel. The reputation of his abilities had become known to Count Schimmelmann, the Danish minister of finance, who offered him the place of private secretary. The elder Niebuhr, it seems, had looked forward to his son following his own steps as a geographer and explorer; but he felt that the delicacy of his health was an obstacle to the realization of this plan, and he now advised him to accept this opening to official life at home. Niebuhr accordingly went to Copenhagen, and entered his new patron's service; but in August the same year he was appointed secretary to the royal library by the prime minister Bernstorff, the duties of which post he combined, at least for a time, with those of the other. Almost at the same time he received the offer of some literary post in France; and again Schimmelmann proposed to him the situation of consul-general at Paris. Both these offers he declined. "How could I bear," he said, "to live so far from all who are dear to me, among a nation to whom in general I have an aversion?" Such was Niebuhr, the variety of openings, not lucrative, perhaps, but involving some responsibility, which presented themselves to a young German of twenty years of age, known for his abilities only in the small circle of one of the least conspicuous of German universities.

In August 1797 Niebuhr went to see his friends in Holstein. On this occasion the regard he had long entertained for Amelia Bohrens, the younger sister of Madame Hensler, determined him to make her the offer of his hand; and the young couple, Niebuhr being at this time twenty-one, and the lady three years older, became solemnly betrothed. He returned to his duties at Copenhagen; but his views now pointed to a professorship at Kiel, which might enable him to marry, and devote his life to literary labours. Before, however, entering deliberately on the career to which he had destined himself, Niebuhr was anxious for the improvement to be derived from foreign travel, and particularly for an opportunity of making himself acquainted with England, a country to which his father was much attached, and in which he had himself felt especial interest from a child. In June 1798 he sailed from Cuxhaven, landed at Yarmouth, and went direct to London, where he resided till October, and then fixed himself for six months at Edinburgh. Here he attended the university for one session, and after travelling through parts of Scotland and England, returned home in November 1799. His letters from this country show with what active interest he studied the character and customs of the English; but it is to be regretted that the acquaintance he formed here was confined to a few families and individuals within a narrow circle; and the habit of hasty generalization, to which he was through life addicted, was never more conspicuous than in the conclusions he drew from his limited experience regarding the whole subject of English life and manners.

In the spring of 1800, Niebuhr having obtained two small appointments from the government at Copenhagen, took up his residence there, and married his betrothed. It is from this time that his thoughts and reading began to be directed particularly towards classical antiquity, gradually centring in the history of ancient Rome. Six years passed in intense study and moderate employment, until, in 1806, his name, not only as a scholar, but as a man of business and knowledge of commerce and finance, rising higher and higher, he received an invitation to transfer himself to the service of the Prussian government. In accepting this offer, after mature deliberation, he acknowledges himself to have been influenced in some degree by pique at an anticipated slight in his official career in Denmark. His temper was undoubtedly irritable, and his extraordinary quickness of apprehension was combined apparently with some restlessness; but the charges sometimes made against him, of ingratitude to his first patrons, and insensibility to the claims of his country, are wholly unreasonable. Schimmelmann and Bernstorff seem to have given their full consent and approval to his proposed migration; and Niebuhr, as we have seen, was himself a German, not a Dane, by origin. At that moment, in the attitude of resistance to France assumed generally by the nations of Eastern Europe, a feeling of common nationality pervaded all the people, at least of Teutonic birth and language. At a later period, indeed, when the independence of the whole of Germany seemed hopelessly lost, Niebuhr could contemplate without hesitation the prospect of seeking a retreat for his literary labours in Russia.

The change of life, however, which he now made was, at its commencement, far from auspicious. He had enrolled himself a citizen of Prussia at a moment when the very existence of the Prussian state was trembling in the balance. He arrived at Berlin, October 5, 1806, only nine days before the fatal battle of Jena, which, with the disas- ters which rapidly followed, obliged him quickly to quit the capital, and seek more and more distant retreats in the train of the flying government. He thus passed through Dantzig and Königsberg; and at last, about the beginning of 1807, found himself at Memel, the northern extremity of the kingdom. He had been placed in the department of finance, for which he was qualified by previous connection with the bank at Copenhagen. The minister who had discovered his merit, and secured his services for Prussia, was Von Stein, who seems to have had the highest confidence in his abilities as a financier. But the overthrow of Prussia in the war with France brought about a complete change of administration. Stein was replaced by Hardenberg; yet, though he lost a personal friend at the head of affairs, Niebuhr's talents seem to have been not less appreciated by the new minister. The financial department of the commissariat was intrusted to him, and he removed to the head-quarters of the government at Tilsit; till, on the utter overthrow of Prussian independence, he desired leave to retire to Copenhagen, and there await the result. He was prevailed upon to remain; and when Napoleon demanded the dismissal of Hardenberg, Niebuhr, in the wreck of the government, was appointed with four others as a provisional commission to carry on affairs till a new administration could be formed. The finances of the country were, of course, in utter confusion; immediate measures were required to provide for paying the interest of the public debt; and some fiscal reforms and arrangements, now set on foot by Niebuhr, were accepted afterwards by Stein, when he succeeded to the head of the government. Niebuhr was now appointed to negotiate a loan at Amsterdam, and thither he repaired with his wife in March 1808. There he remained for a year; but his negotiation was unsuccessful: he paid a visit to Ditmarsh in 1809, and returned to Berlin at the end of the year, where he was once more placed at the head of the department charged with the management of the national debt and the supervision of the banks.

In 1810 Niebuhr found his administrative views so much at variance with those of Hardenberg, who had once more replaced Stein, that he demanded his dismissal, and requested at the same time an appointment as professor at the new university then about to be opened at Berlin. In his conduct in this matter it seems impossible to acquit him of waywardness, and of weakly giving way to his habitual restlessness of disposition. Hardenberg was sincerely anxious to retain his services, willing to discuss and consider his views, and to come to an understanding with him; and Stein himself, the rival of Hardenberg, and Niebuhr's patron and personal friend, judged his conduct indefensible. In a private letter to Humboldt, Stein thus expresses himself: "Niebuhr declares his dissentient opinion. M. von Hardenberg invites him to discuss the matter with him, and to send another plan: to this he vouchsafes no reply; but instead hands in a lengthy chain of arguments against Hardenberg's plan to the king, without bringing forward any other project; and now he wants to appear as a martyr to the truth. All this is nothing but a refined egotism," &c. Niebuhr, it would seem, was beginning to pine again for the literary occupation to which he was always recurring in the midst of his official duties. After stating to Madame Hensler, in very general and vague terms, his grounds of dissatisfaction with the government measures, he adds: "Besides this, I must confess, that my sorrow for the sacrifice of my inward life to this miserable finance often wakes up with renewed force." He allows himself to ramble on in a very unworthy strain of reflection. "A consciousness how dearly any perfection in this art must be purchased by a man who is fit for something better, is Niebuhr, probably the true reason why so few honest men have ever made themselves masters of it. . . . For a long time past I have been almost unable to refresh myself by study. . . . This estrangement from my true life has now lasted nearly three years and a half." It was evidently high time, to speak in the mildest language, that the man of letters should return to the occupations from which he had been so long dissevered; and we may rejoice, as he did himself, when the king acceded to Hardenberg's recommendation, and gave him the post of historiographer. The minister, however, continued to consult him occasionally on financial matters; and Niebuhr, released from the responsibilities of office, was not unwilling to tender his counsel.

We may ascribe to the natural vanity of a young man, raised to important public offices by the disastrous circumstances of his country,—for the flower of the youth of Prussia was drained off into the army,—the overweening opinion Niebuhr seems to have entertained of his administrative abilities. But none of his admirers—and no man has received more indiscriminate admiration—have ever pointed to any special service he rendered to Prussia in the various situations he filled in the government; and there seems much reason to apprehend that, in relieving himself from his official duties, he yielded to an impracticable temper, ill suited to the conduct of public affairs. However this may be,—and his friends, it should be mentioned, averred that eventually even Stein acknowledged the correctness of his views on the question between him and his superior,—there can be no doubt that the change now made in his career was fortunate for his fame, for his comfort, and for the interests of literature. From this time Niebuhr experienced but little interruption in his devotion to letters, to classical antiquity, and specially to the history of Rome. When the Prussian government was in want of able civil administrators to direct or recruit the finances, it was obliged to seek out a clever youth from a neighbouring country, almost fresh from academic distinctions; but when it had to create a new university in its capital city, and furnish it with a body of professors fitted by their reputation and abilities to place it at once on a level with the oldest and most renowned seats of learning in Germany, it could command the services of a whole corps of men, each of them among the most illustrious in his own department of knowledge. Niebuhr, whose reputation was destined to eclipse them all, was less famous in 1811 in the republic of letters than Schleiermacher, Savigny, Heindorf, Buttmann, and others perhaps of the Berlin professors, among whom he was now to be admitted. In the prostration of Prussia at this period, while Stein at least, and a few others perhaps, were secretly preparing the country to re-assert her independence at the favourable moment, the men of letters seem to have made up their minds to forget their political degradation in their earnest devotion to intellectual speculation. The university of Berlin gave great impulse to thought among the educated men of the country; the professors above enumerated exercised, with many others, great influence on the intellect of the age, and impressed a character for boldness, freedom, and originality upon the literature of Northern Germany. In his capacity of historiographer, Niebuhr devoted himself specially from the first to the history of ancient Rome. In 1811–12 he delivered courses of lectures upon this favourite subject; and these, with the promptness and ardour of his impatient temperament, he worked up without delay into two volumes of a history, which he published before the close of the second of these years. The appearance of the original edition was unfortunately timed. The stirring political events

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1 Steins' Leben, ii. 507, quoted in Niebuhr's Life and Letters, i. 234. Niebuhr of 1813 cast it wholly into the shade. Even the author, in the ardour of his patriotism, was contented to forget it while he himself carried a musket on the exercising ground, and undertook at the same time the conduct of a political journal. With the return of peace and leisure for literature, the history was not found to command all the approbation or attention its author might have expected. Though at a later period, as has been already intimated, he changed his views on many essential points, he was far from acquiescing at the time in the objections urged against them, and continued loudly to proclaim the blindness and stupidity of all who refused to accede to them. It was fortunate, perhaps, that a long interval was now given him for reflection. He had scarcely resumed the quiet tenor of his lectures and studies, after the return of peace, when it was painfully interrupted by the increasing weakness, and finally by the death, of his amiable wife, whose health, always precarious, seems to have suffered much from the hardships of the migratory winter of 1806. Her parting injunctions to him were to continue his history "for her sake;" she had perceived, perhaps, that his task had become already irksome to him, and he wanted encouragement to pursue it. But her loss for the time completely broke his spirits, and he accepted, as a relief, the timely and considerate offer of the Prussian embassy at Rome,—a post which ordinarily was little more than honorary, but which, in the contemplated event of a concordat being arranged with the Pope, would require both tact and ability.

Before setting out on this long and distant banishment, at which his sensitive nature was considerably dismayed, Niebuhr was fortunate in securing himself a second wife in the person of Margaret Hebreum, the niece of Amelia, a woman of excellent sense, though probably with less appreciation of his intellectual character than the first, and who, confident of the influence she should gradually win over his affections, was content to stand avowedly second for a time in his imagination.

In July 1816 the newly-married couple quitted Germany. They were accompanied by Brandis, who has since attained a distinguished name in literature, as secretary to the legation. They passed through Wurzburg and Munich, where Niebuhr did not omit to examine the MSS. in the libraries; Innsbruck, where he inquired with intense interest into the circumstances of the recent patriotic struggle of the Tyrolese; and Verona, where he made his discovery of the Institutes of Gaius. This discovery was notified by Niebuhr in a letter to Savigny from Venice, but he at first supposed the fragment to be a portion of Ulpian. He copied on the spot a single leaf, and sent it by way of specimen to his friend at Berlin, where measures were promptly taken for the recovery and publication of the lost treasure. After visiting Venice, Bologna, and Florence, he reached Rome on the 7th October 1816. At the period of his arrival there he seems to have been depressed in spirits and suffering in health; he saw Italy also for the first time under the pressure of famine; and, among other personal inconveniences, the vessel in which his books were sent to Leghorn was wrecked at Calais, and he remained for several months uncertain of their fate. He complained of the character of the people; he was dissatisfied with, perhaps disappointed at, the meagre remains of antiquity which were alone apparent—at least on a first view—upon the site of the greatest of ancient cities, as well as in the country around; and he was harassed by the difficulty of studying at a place where he could only read in the public libraries on certain days, and for some limited hours. Under these circumstances, peculiarly untoward to a man of his temperament, he seems to have been long unable to work upon the History to which he had hoped to devote himself with more zeal than ever; and though he was never idle, and constantly making some discoveries among the MSS. of the Vatican, he did not for some time recover the even tenor of his literary habits. Gradually, however, the vexations of his position wore off; he was able to look with more indulgence on the character of the people; he found more to admire and attract him in the scenes around him; the respect in which he was personally held enabled him to relieve himself from the frivolities of the society among which his position might have thrown him; he regarded with genial sympathy the enthusiasm of a clique of young German artists, especially the painter Cornelius, who, in their turn, revered him as a patron and director; and, finally, the birth of a son, in April 1817, came opportunely to brace all his energies, and fill him with pleasant and hopeful views of life. To the child he gave the Roman name of Marcus; and began from the first month of its existence to lay out its plans for its future education and career. He continued all this time in constant correspondence with his literary friends at Berlin, especially with Savigny and Nicolaus; but his letters to Madame Hensler still present, as before, the fullest picture of his life, his thoughts, and his interests. He occupied himself with his usual assiduity, but in desultory studies, tending, however, for the most part, in the direction of Roman history, the reading of the Latin scholiasts, the publication of various fragments he discovered of Livy and Cicero, and the investigation of the history of the successors of Alexander, as a preparation for the period when the Romans first came in contact with the Greeks and Orientals. During the greater part of his residence in Rome he occupied lodgings in an old palace built on a lofty story of the ancient theatre of Marcellus, which lies between the Capitoline and the Tiber.

The negotiations with the papal government, to carry on which Niebuhr was ostensibly sent to Rome, were not brought to an issue till 1821, when he had been at his post more than four years. The favourable termination of the affair followed quickly upon a visit paid to Rome by Hardenberg in person, and the minister's friends claimed for him the merit of settling it. The friends of Niebuhr, on the other hand, maintained that all the preliminaries had been arranged by him, and that the successful issue itself, though Niebuhr himself allowed all the credit of it to fall to his superior, was owing to his zeal and tact. There can be no doubt that Niebuhr had made himself personally respected both by Pius VII. and his minister Cardinal Consalvi; but it appears that he had to wait nearly four years for his instructions from the court of Berlin, and in the negotiations themselves he could have borne little part. At all events it would seem, from the serious quarrels which ensued fifteen years later between the popish Archbishop of Cologne and the Prussian government, that the concordat, whether it were the work of Hardenberg or of Niebuhr, failed to make a practical settlement of the questions it dealt with.

Brandis, the secretary of legation, had removed from Rome before this time. He was succeeded by Bunsen, who became one of the most devoted of Niebuhr's friends and admirers. In 1821 Niebuhr was engaged in sketching the plan of the great work on Roman topography which Bunsen, Platner, and other coadjutors, have since given to the world,—a work ill arranged and unequal in the execution of its parts, but deserving, on the whole, to be considered one of the most important and valuable of modern additions to our knowledge of Roman antiquity. Some of the chapters, particularly that which gives a general history of the site of the city,—the most vivid and interesting of the whole,—were contributed to the work by Niebuhr.

In 1822 Niebuhr had been six years absent from home. The chief object of his mission had been effected, and notwithstanding the increasing estimation in which he was held, and his consequently increased means of usefulness, evinced on some public occasions, he became anxious to Niebuhr returned to Germany. His family now consisted of one son and three daughters, and he was dismayed at the idea of bringing up children amidst a society for which generally he had so little respect. Having obtained, in the first instance, temporary leave of absence, he allowed himself, apparently for the first time,—such was the insecurity of the country even round Frascati and Tivoli,—to leave the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, and paid a visit to Naples in the spring of 1823. Returning from thence at the end of five weeks, he took his farewell of Rome, and commenced his journey northward in May. At St Gall he passed some weeks, to recruit his health and to examine the MSS. in the library there,—a labour which was repaid by the discovery of the poem of Merobandus, which he prepared for publication during his stay. From St Gall he went to Heidelberg, and then on a visit to Brandis at Bonn, where he proposed to take up his residence until it should be finally decided whether or not he should return to his post at Rome.

At Rome, Niebuhr resumed his history in earnest. Some new light had dawned upon him, and cleared up difficulties that had long, perhaps unacknowledged to himself, thwarted his efforts to make any substantial advance. But while still engaged on his third volume he recurred to the correction, and eventually to the re-casting of the two former, and these occupations were again interrupted by a visit to Berlin. Here he obtained a final release from his duties as ambassador, and was gratified with a pension. He was expected, however, to remain for a time in the capital, and give his aid to a financial commission. In the course of 1824, however, he was allowed to return to Bonn, and to devote himself to studies, directed henceforth, rather than interrupted, by the congenial duty of delivering lectures in the university on ancient history. His first course (1824) was on the history of Greece after the battle of Chaeronea; this was followed by others on Roman antiquities, in the winter of 1825, repeated in 1827; on ancient history generally, 1826; ancient ethnography and geography in the winter of 1827; the history of Rome under the empire, in 1828 and 1829; and a second course on earlier Roman history, in the summer of 1830.

The appreciation of Niebuhr's services to literature seems to have grown rapidly at this period, and this evidently inspired him with more genuine confidence in himself than, notwithstanding a sanguine, indeed we must say a boastful, habit of talking, he had hitherto really felt. In October 1825 he began to work again regularly on his History, and he commenced a thorough revision of the first volumes, without a pang of regret for the past or misgiving for the future, with the full assurance that the book was about "to gain immensely in value," and "its principles to be fixed immovably for all ages." "I do not hesitate to say," he writes in April 1827, "that the discovery of no ancient historian could have taught the world so much as my work; and that all that may hereafter come to light from ancient and uncorrupted sources will only tend to confirm or develop the principles I have advanced." When the two volumes appeared in their new form, they were at once received with acclamations by the learned, and Niebuhr undoubtedly had the happiness of feeling that he had given a new impulse to historical study, and created, in fact, an era in literature. Among the compliments he received, none seems to have been more gratifying to him than the zeal and ability with which his work was translated by Messrs Hare and Thirlwall, and the favour with which, under their auspices, it was regarded at the university of Cambridge.

Besides working at his History (which he carried on through a third volume), and the daily occupation of the lecture-room, Niebuhr found time to undertake the superintendence of a great work, no less than the publication of the Corpus Scriptorum Byzantinorum, to which he himself contributed an edition of Agathias. His name attracted a number of able assistants, and he received abundance of Niebuhr important subsidies from foreign countries, as well as from Germany, in the shape of collections, emendations, &c. Of this work he speaks with his usual ardour: "Is it not a great thing that a publisher and a philologist should be able to accomplish in six years from hence at the furthest, a work that was but partially carried out in sixty years, under the auspices and with the munificent aid of Louis XIV.?" But his labours now were as regular and methodical as they were incessant. His residence at Bonn continued with hardly a day's interruption, excepting one journey to Holstein; his mode of life was simple, his hours of study and relaxation systematically allotted, and though always actively alive to the politics of the day, and a regular frequenter of the public news-room, he did not suffer his attention to be diverted to other literary occupations than those above mentioned. He no longer indulged in visions of great works to be carried on simultaneously with his History, nor even to succeed it. He began even to limit his views with regard to the great work of his life, and prescribed the triumph of Octavins as the termination of its career. Yet he was more cheerful at this than at any other period of his life, and seems to have hoped to attain his seventy years, like the generality of people, as he says, about him. He had visions also of a future visit to Rome, "twelve years hence." But all these visions or anticipations were suddenly cut off. In the winter of 1830 he had the misfortune to suffer the loss of his house and some of his books and MSS. by fire. He returned to his work with more elasticity of spirit than might have been expected at his age; nevertheless he was considerably shaken by the anxiety and mortification it occasioned him. The French revolution of July 1830 was a still severer blow. He had long regarded the progress of republican principles with a morbid horror, and his mind was now filled with the worst forebodings. He became more assiduous than ever in his study of public events, and in his visits to the news-room. At last, on the evening of Christmas-day 1830, he caught a chill in walking home from the casino, where he had been more than usually excited and heated in perusing the account of the trial of Charles X.'s ministers. He took to his bed, but inflammation of the lungs set in, and in the course of a week his illness reached a fatal termination. He died on the 2d January 1831; and his wife, who had sickened at his bedside, died also on the 11th. They were buried in the same grave, over which the present King of Prussia, formerly his pupil at Berlin, erected a neat and appropriate monument. Upon it a Roman Caius is represented as taking his Caius by the hand, and the lineaments of the two figures portray, with a certain air of Roman formality and sternness, the features of Barthold George Niebuhr and Margaret Hensler. In the summer of 1831 this monument was not yet in existence; but the eyes of the writer of this notice were attracted to a simpler memorial of the great historian at Bonn, in the brass plate on which his name was inscribed still affixed to the door of the house which was his no longer.

The reputation of Niebuhr as a philologer and historian had reached, as we have seen, a distinguished eminence at the time of his decease, and it still continued to rise. He was admitted, both in Germany and in this country, as a standard authority on the points of classical antiquity to which he had devoted himself, and the revolution he had aimed at effecting in the principles of Roman history were accepted, almost without dispute, as accomplished and ratified. According to the testimony of his admirer the Chevalier Bunsen, he was even more fully appreciated in England than in his own country; and the fact of 7000 copies of the English translation of his History (vols. i. and ii.) having been purchased within eight or ten years from the publication, is adduced in proof of our superior discernment. But Niebuhr even in Germany, as Niebuhr himself remarked, with reference to the sale of his Byzantine Corpus, a class of wealthy collectors had arisen, the number of which furnished no measure of the number of readers; and any man acquainted with English scholarship knows well that, notwithstanding a certain amount of superficial reading or handling of Niebuhr's volumes, there were but few among us who really made a study of them, or rendered themselves competent to express a reasonable judgment upon them. Still, the great principles of his work, his reputed discoveries, and more particularly the spirit in which they were conducted, sank deeply into the academic mind of England; and his genius, especially after it received the enthusiastic adoration of Arnold, was admitted as almost beyond cavil, or even qualification. In Germany the results of his investigations were more strictly questioned from an early period, and more severely criticised. The time was coming when a great re-action was to set in with regard to Niebuhr's estimation in this country also. There can be little doubt that the publication of his Lectures, and still more of his correspondence (Lebensnachrichten, &c., abridged and translated into English, 1832) has tended very sensibly to diminish it. The Lectures, it must be allowed, have been published at a great disadvantage, having been only taken down from his oral delivery in the lecture-room, and bearing evident marks, not only of the occasional haste and incorrectness of all lectures delivered nine times, as these were, without even the assistance of notes, but of inexperienced and unskilful abridgments, and often of actual misconception. Of these Lectures three series have been given to the world by Dr Leonhard Schmitz, himself a hearer of them: they embrace a course on Ancient History generally, which must be pronounced extremely meagre and colourless; and another on Ancient Ethnology and Geography, about one-half of which is devoted specially to Italy and Rome, undoubtedly far more interesting, though abounding, to what must be called a morbid extent, in crude theories and groundless assertions. A third course, that on Roman History, extending as far as the reign of Constantine, gives a connected view of the spirit in which Niebuhr would have treated the later portions of the work before him; it cannot be said, however, that it evinces any of the novelty or originality which so strongly characterize his discussions on the earlier period, nor is it drawn out sufficiently in detail to enable us to judge of his powers of narration and description. On the whole, it must be said that these Lectures have been received with great disappointment by the English reader, and have given a shock to the feeling of unbounded devotion with which the author was previously regarded.

The publication of the Lebensnachrichten is perhaps still more to be regretted than that of the lectures. The correspondence of Niebuhr exhibits, no doubt, in glowing colours, his earnestness of character, his strict integrity, his generous sympathy with everything noble, and detestation of all meanness and injustice. Yet all this was patent to a reader of ordinary insight on the face of his published History, and required no further illustration from his life and letters; while the evidence we receive from it of his amiableness as a son, a husband, a parent, and a friend, is in some measure balanced by certain indications of peevishness, changeableness, and other infirmities of temper, which are calculated to provoke and mortify those who were most disposed to admire him. But it is with Niebuhr's literary character that we are most concerned. The correspondence, and various essays and fragments of essays on literary and political subjects, contained in the Kleine Schriften betray infirmities of judgment which are quite surprising. His views, for instance, on the dates of Petronius and Quintus Curtius, are now generally regarded as founded on very inadequate bases. His theory that the municipal institutions of Italian towns in the middle ages were derived, not from the northern conquerors, but from the Romans, has been rejected by modern inquirers. He was especially proud of his acquaintance with the institutions and politics of England; yet he was wont to illustrate the claims of the Italian allies on the Roman republic by comparing them with the demand of the Irish Catholics for the so-called emancipation, forgetting that from 1793 the Catholics had acquired the franchise, the point for which the Italians contended, and that their later cry was for admission to Parliament, to which the claims of the Italians presented no analogy whatever. His want of practical good sense is shown characteristically in the notion he elsewhere promulgates, that it would have been best for the world that Spain should have retained her American colonies, opening the trade with them to foreign nations through Cadiz as an emporium, evidently with a retrospect to the days of ancient or medieval commerce. All these views, and many others equally frivolous, are advanced with a dogmatism which is painful in a man of real genius, as in any other it would be ridiculous. Further, we have clearly seen how much he prided himself on his insight into the principles of finance: yet we have observed how, on the first occasion when an opportunity really offered for bringing this insight to a practical test, he broke down completely, and, in fact, fled from his post. Gibbon gives three reasons for the decline of the Roman empire: a distinguished English writer of the present day has rejected them all, and laid it wholly on the restriction of the currency and the want of bank-notes. This is a question which it requires not book-learning but actual knowledge of affairs to solve; and of all others it is the question which we had a right to look to Niebuhr, with his official training, to elucidate. Yet, strange to say, there is not a single passage in his History, his Lectures, his Essays, or his Correspondence, which shows that he had ever considered the financial and monetary system of the Romans at all.

Grave complaints have been made against Niebuhr by the Liberals of modern days, for his alleged desertion of the cause of freedom. A fair consideration of his various writings fully rebuts this ill-natured accusation. That there are indications in the course of his life of some vacillation and indistinctness in his views, is no more than may be said with equal truth of almost all thoughtful men,—men of speculation rather than of action,—whose lot has been cast in periods of change and amidst the trial of political principles. Niebuhr's political creed is ably and satisfactorily drawn up in a communication from the Chevalier Bunsen to the translator of his Correspondence; though we must here again remark the unpractical character which appears on the face of his scheme for developing the parliamentary system of Prussia. Deeply impressed as he was with the holowness of the election system in modern European constitutions, on a mixed but uniform basis of property and numbers, he would have filled his deliberative assemblies by appointment from town-councils and corporations,—a notion which he probably derived from the conventions of the Roman provinces under the empire.

There is yet another subject on which it is still more painful to speak: The character of Niebuhr's mind is remarkably exemplified by his manner of dealing with religious subjects. His feelings on this point were from the first deep and strong. They survived the rejection which, after the many in-

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3 The third volume of the English "Life and Correspondence" contains a selection from the Kleine Schriften or "Lesser Writings," as well as from the Nachgelassene or "Posthumous." stances of precipitate judgment on his part already alleged, we may call hasty as well as ill-considered, of the greater part of the positive belief of the Christian world. It was on the birth of his son that the sense of the indeterminate-ness of his own creed,—of the charm between his feelings and his opinions,—became suddenly intolerable to him; and he determined, and with his curious simplicity of character bluntly declared his determination, that the child "should believe in the letter of the Old and New Testaments." . . .

"I shall nurture in him," he adds, "from his infancy a firm faith in all I have lost or feel uncertain about." After such an avowal, it is impossible not to feel great distrust in Niebuhr's speculations on other subjects, and apprehension lest, in perfect good faith and sincerity, he should fatally mislead us for the satisfaction of a theory or a sentiment.

Let us now turn, in conclusion, to the History, the great work by which our author will continue hereafter to be known, and by which it were much to be wished that he could be known only. Niebuhr, it must be clearly understood, comes before us much less as a destroyer of the early Roman history than as a restorer. Among enlightened students of antiquity the incredibility of the narratives of Livy and Dionysius was already admitted, though the main features of these accounts still retain their hold upon them, from the apparent impossibility of constructing a substantial edifice from the fragments of truth, and a natural reluctance to let the ground lie unoccupied. It was not then the destructive, but the reconstructive part of Niebuhr's History which gave it its peculiar character, and kindled so warmly the imagination of his most intelligent readers. Arnold, above all men, was grateful to his master for restoring to him the possibility of a belief in the Origines of Roman history. But a sterner, perhaps a colder criticism, has dispelled these last shadowy visions. Among other writers,—for Niebuhr's theories have been a fruitful field of controversy, particularly in his own country, ever since their publication,—Schwegler in Germany, and Sir G. Cornwall Lewis among ourselves, have shown, it should seem, the actual baselessness of some of the chief of his reputed discoveries.

The most important of these discoveries, or theories, as we must be content to call them, is undoubtedly that which was received with unhesitating conviction, and rendered so popular, in this country at least, by Mr (now Lord) Macaulay and Dr Arnold, as to have been for many years accepted by all our scholars and students as an ascertained fact; namely, the presumed derivation of the early history of Rome from ancient national ballads. Schwegler, a very competent and trustworthy authority on the present state of the controversy, declares that in Germany this theory has been now generally abandoned. Sir G. Cornwall Lewis has recently analysed and discussed it in a masterly manner; and it may be presumed that it will henceforth retain little favour with those among us who have read the Essay on the Credibility of the Early Roman History. The positive evidence on which it pretends to rest is shown to be utterly inconclusive. The passages cited from Cato, Varro, Ennius, Cicero, Horace, and Valerius Maximus, are all absolutely irrelevant. The assumption, that fragments of these supposed ballads may be traced in the narrative of Livy, is wholly gratuitous; the assertion that some of his prose is actually verse, and may be read into Saturnian metre is only an amusing fancy; the attempt to produce any analogous instance of history preserved in national poetry is entirely futile. Such is the conclusion to which, whatever his own early prepossessions may have been, a candid inquirer must be brought by a fair examination of the subject, as it is now presented to him.

But interesting and seductive as this theory proved to the first students of Niebuhr's History, it was still less attractive perhaps than his interpretation of the relations of the patricians and plebeians, as representing respectively a dominant and a subject race, coalescing gradually into a single political body. This idea, which Niebuhr has developed with peculiar force, and illustrated by minute and multifarious learning, was not wholly new; nor did he stand alone in his own generation in marking the importance of regarding such national relations. The theory that most historic polities have sprung from the subjection of race to race, and that their career is generally to be explained only by constant reference to this circumstance, has been prolific of very serious consequences in modern times. It is not too much to say, that the revolutionary movements which pervaded so large a portion of western Europe in 1848 were directed in no slight degree by pedantic notions of the influence of race and nationality. Niebuhr in Germany, and Thierry in France, gave birth simultaneously to a school of history in which this theory played a conspicuous part. The French writer acknowledged that he derived the first germ of the idea which he developed in his brilliant romance of the Conquest of England, from a few pages in an early chapter of Scott's novel of Ivanhoe. There can be little doubt that Niebuhr was right at bottom in conceiving that the institutions of ancient Rome were really moulded, in a great measure, by the mutual relations of different races, with different habits, feelings, and languages, and also with a different political status, yet combining in one polity; but it cannot be allowed that he was always successful in tracing these differences, nor, indeed, that it is now possible to disentangle the hopeless intricacies of the Roman constitution. Thus, for instance, the distinction he alleged, that populus properly means the patricians, as opposed to plebs, the plebeians; and his bold assertion that Livy was incorrect in using populus for the nation in general,—a theory which was once eagerly embraced as the key to much of the early history,—must now be regarded with distrust. His explanation of the real object of the Agrarian laws, which is founded also on his fundamental distinction between the patricians and plebeians,—the burghers, as he delights to call them with reference to certain mediæval analogies, and the commons,—has been also severely contested; but this view, so clear, so interesting, and so apparently satisfactory, may be considered as tolerably well established at the present day.

It will appear, from these remarks, that even in his History, on which the fame of our author pre-eminently rests, he is convicted by modern inquirers of error in some of his fundamental positions. His work can never again be accepted, with the faith and admiration of Arnold, as the basis of a history of Rome. The notion of reconstructing Roman history, of shelling off the husk of the ancient narrative, and bringing to light a new body of facts, of which Livy and Dionysius were wholly ignorant, will probably be discarded from henceforth; while some writers will always be found to cling pertinaciously to the legends of antiquity, others will plunge more and more deeply into scepticism; and we may expect perhaps rather to see the accounts of the later republic and the empire pulled to pieces, than those of the kings and the decemvirate restored.

It is not without pain that the students of Niebuhr—those who have been mainly led by him to look beneath the surface of history, and examine the principles of human affairs—can consent to abandon so large a part of his conclusions, and modify so far their veneration for their master. But Niebuhr must follow the fate of the great inventors before him. Bossuet was the first to snatch at the clue of a Divine Providence through the history of man; and he created a school of historians which will continue always to have its disciples, however much the specific views and conclusions of their founder may be modified or rejected. Niebuhr. Voltaire and Montesquieu sought the springs of history in the manners and institutions of society; and they, too, have generated a school of philosophic inquiry which has long survived the reputed discoveries of its originators. Niebuhr himself indeed may be regarded as a pupil of this school, though in the depth of his investigations, the sagacity of his combinations, and the boldness of his inferences, he stands far before it, and deserves himself the reputation of an originator and a founder. It is due to him to lay before the reader, in a few words taken from the introduction to his Lectures on Ancient Ethnography, &c., the view he deliberately took of the province of the historian:

"All history resolves itself into a knowledge of the circumstances in the midst of which events occur, and of the events themselves. In an abstract point of view, the two are conveniently kept apart, although, concretely, they can never appear separated. A history which does not enter into the development of circumstances at all, and altogether presupposes them to be barren, is scarcely conceivable, unless indeed it were written for contemporaries alone. Nevertheless, the one side or the other predominates according to the predilection of the individual historian. Livy gives scarcely anything but the narration of events; earlier historians are fond of occupying themselves with the description of circumstances; and the more ancient the historian the more striking is the peculiarity. Thucydides, the greatest of all historians, whenever he has an opportunity, as in his description of nations, dwells upon the representation of circumstances. In the earliest times, therefore, ethnography and chorography were always the principal objects of attention; while, subsequently, this tendency decreased more and more, and the narration of events alone was attended to. The two, however, ought not to be separated; for, without a knowledge of the circumstances in the midst of which events take place, the study of history is altogether useless. The mere knowledge of a country, however, is not sufficient. The peculiarities of its inhabitants, products, and the like, must be well known to the student; and without this, "history has no life," &c. Animated with this view of what was required in a true expounder of the events and facts of past times, Niebuhr tried to surround himself, as it were, with glowing pictures of the whole life of the people of whom he wrote. His immense erudition, his extraordinary memory, and his vivid imagination, all played into one another; and he believed himself, as he has somewhere said, capable of reproducing before his mind's eye the minutest details of Roman manners and usages. If he dignified with the name of "divination" the habit in which he freely indulged of guessing where it was impossible to ascertain, great allowance must undoubtedly be made for one whose mind had fed from his youth upwards upon the remains of Roman antiquity, and whose fancy had never ceased for a moment to remark, arrange, and combine their scattered fragments, till they assumed at will every shape it suggested. It is his power of imagination which stamps Niebuhr as a man of the highest genius, and will secure immortality to his name and works. Even the errors of such a man will retain a halo of glory in the eyes of posterity; his methods and principles will continue to command respect and imitation; he will be ranked in a triumvirate of philology with Scaliger and Bentley, to whom he bears no common resemblance in his rapid intuitions and bold combinations—in his sanguine temper and unabashed self-confidence—in his aims, his achievements, and his failures.

The following is a list of Niebuhr's works—1. Published or prepared for publication by himself.—History of Rome, 1st edition, 2 vols., 1812; 2d edition of vol. I., 1827; 3d edition of vol. I., 1828; 2d edition of vol. II., 1830; 1st edition of vol. III., 1832; edition of Agathias, 1828, and Merobaudes, 2d edition, 1836, for the Corpus Hist. Byzant.; Kleine Schriften, 1828. 2. Published since his death, in English and German.—Lectures in Roman History, by Dr. Schmidt, 2 vols.; second edition of the same, with additions, In 3 vols.; Lectures on Ancient Ethnography and Geography, 2 vols.; Lectures in Ancient History, 3 vols. 3. To these may be added the Lebenachrichten, a biography of Niebuhr connecting the remains of his correspondence, 3 vols., 1838, with a supplemental volume containing the Circular-Briefe—a series of letters intended for circulation among his family, written during his residence in Holland in 1808-1809; together with a collection of literary and political tracts from his contributions to periodicals. The first edition of the History, 2 vols., was translated into English by Mr. Walter; the revised History, vols. I. and II., by Messrs. Hare and Thirlwall; the 3d vol. by Drs. Smith and Schmidt. An abridged translation of the Lebenachrichten has been given by Miss Winkworth, in 3 vols.

(c. m.—e.)

Niebuhr, Carsten, a celebrated traveller, and the father of the great Niebuhr, was the son of a farmer, and was born in the duchy of Launenburg in 1733. His parents died when he was very young, and left him in the condition of a poor peasant boy. Yet at the age of twenty-one he had raised himself to the position of land-surveyor of his native district, and was busily engaged in studying geometry. The vigorous start which he had thus made in life soon carried him on to higher preferments. While he was deeply immersed in 1758 in the study of mathematics at the university of Göttingen, the Count Bernstorff, the minister of Frederick V. of Denmark, began to carry out a project which had been suggested by Michaelis of sending a staff of scientific men to explore the countries of the East. The place of mathematician was offered to Niebuhr. He accepted the office, but his modesty would not permit him to accept the title of professor, which was intended to add dignity to the office. It was in January 1761 that Niebuhr, in company with Von Haven the orientalist, Cramer the physician, Forskål the naturalist, and Baurenfeind the painter, set sail from Copenhagen. After exploring the gigantic architectural remains of Lower Egypt, the expedition sailed down the Red Sea, touching at various places on the coast of Arabia, and finally landed and established their head-quarters at Mocha. The rest of the journey was saddened by a series of fatal disasters. All the explorers, with the exception of the judicious Niebuhr, had been persisting in living on European diet, and were now sick unto death. Accordingly, when the expedition set sail for Bombay in 1763, Von Haven and Forskål were left behind in foreign graves; Baurenfeind was buried at sea; and Cramer died at the end of the voyage, leaving Niebuhr to betake himself homeward alone. He lost no time in reembarking; and after passing through Persia, Syria, and Asia Minor, and marking these countries with an attentive eye, he arrived at Copenhagen in November 1767. It now became his chief business to lay the results of his travels before the world. He therefore published a Description of Arabia, in 4to, Copenhagen, 1772; and Travels in Arabia and the Circumjacent Countries, in 2 vols., 4to, Copenhagen, 1774-78. These works were remarkable for their new and correct information, expressed in a plain unaffected style; and they soon brought the author into general recognition. The government at Meldorf in Holstein, made him their land-surveyor in 1778; many learned men throughout Europe began to seek his acquaintance; and the Danish government conferred upon him the cross of Dancbrog, and the title of councillor of state, and continued to cherish him till the close of his life. He died in April 1815.

Carsten Niebuhr wrote for a German periodical accounts of The Interior of Africa, and The Political and Military State of the Turkish Empire, and several other papers. His principal works have been translated from the German into French and Dutch. A Life of him by his eminent son was published at Kiel in 8vo, 1817.

Niemcewicz, Julian Ursin, a famous Polish poet and patriot, was born in 1757 at Skoki in Lithuania. His youth was spent in learning the profession of a soldier; and at the age of twenty he entered the Lithuanian army. Niemen, his own corps he found Kosciuszko, and imbued from that noble spirit those patriotic sentiments which gave a direction to the whole of his subsequent career. As early as 1788 his energies and talents had begun to be consecrated to the cause of national freedom. In that same year, as one of the deputies for Livonia, he became one of the great patriotic orators of the Polish diet; in 1791, in conjunction with Weyssenhoff, he started the *National and Foreign Gazette*, to be a vehicle for spreading his opinions; and all the while he was fostering the spirit of nationality among the populace by the poems he published and the dramas he produced on the stage. Nor did his activity slacken at the approach of commotion and peril. In the insurrection that followed the second partition of Poland, he was a most efficient confederate of Kosciuszko, both in the council and in the field. But in October 1794 the disastrous battle of Maciejowice was fought; the cause of the patriots received its death-blow; and among the captives who were carried away and immured in the fortress of St Petersburg, was the zealous Niemcewicz. A check was now put for a time upon his national ardour. For two years he lay in his damp cell, relieving the tedium of his confinement by reading the English poets of the eighteenth century, and by translating Pope's *Rape of the Lock*. On his liberation, there was no resource for him but to repair, with his compatriot Kosciuszko, to the United States of America. There he formed new acquaintances, married a lady of New York, and became domesticated. Yet the welfare of his fatherland still lay next his heart; and the intelligence, in 1806, that Napoleon had espoused the cause of Polish liberty, hurried him back to Europe. He was soon appointed, under the newly-instituted grand-duchy of Warsaw, secretary of the senate, member of the supreme council of public education, and inspector of schools; and in these capacities he began a new career of patriotism. His activity did not flag when the Russians had regained their supremacy over Poland. Though reinstalled by the Emperor Alexander in the high office of perpetual secretary of the senate, he did not hesitate to keep alive, both with tongue and pen, the nationality of the people. In 1816 he revived the memory of the ancient glory of his country by the publication of his *Historical Ballads*; in 1817 he pronounced a funeral oration over Kosciuszko; and in 1822 he began to celebrate the great national heroes in his *Collection of Memoirs on Ancient Poland*. All his efforts were evidently aiming at another revolution. Accordingly, the insurrection that broke out in November 1830 numbered the veteran Niemcewicz among its promoters. He was destined, however, to see the favourite projects of his life thwarted once more. The remaining strength of his old age was spent in advancing the cause of his beloved Poland in foreign lands. He died at Montmorency, near Paris, in May 1841.

Besides the works already mentioned, Niemcewicz wrote several tragedies and comedies, novels, historical sketches, and translations from the English poets of the eighteenth century. A complete collection of his poetical works appeared in 12 vols., Leipzig, 1838-40. An autobiographical fragment, written in French, and entitled, *Captivity in St Petersburg* in 1794-96, was published in 1843 by the Polish Historical Committee at Paris, and was shortly afterwards translated into English by Laski. (*English Cyclopaedia of Biography.*)