arming his neighbour, how incomprehensible must be any
tool designed expressly for that purpose! If the intent of these
articles be penetrated, they will doubtless be ranged in museums as
curious monuments of passions long extinct, just as we see the
instruments of torture used by the Inquisition and other ancient
judicatories hung up in antiquarian collections of our own day.

Well, well, my dear brethren--you have read thus far without, I hope,
being too much distressed by the idea of the physical contingencies to
which it is shewn we are liable. Probably you have, each of you, too
many matters of sore concern pressing closely upon you, to be much
incommoded by possibilities of so infinitesimal a character. It
cannot, nevertheless, be amiss, that you should know these amongst
other things that may any day leap from the laps of the Parcae, were it
only to expand your souls a little with things superior to the eternal
commonplaces of life. It is, after all, a great thing to be a part of
so great a system as that revealed to us in the external frame of
things, and to feel in what a mighty hand our destiny lies. Even in
the danger of what is here styled a Possible Event, there is a
grandeur--both as to the event itself, and the Power under whose
permission it will, if at all, take place, and our filial relations to
that Power, which never leaves us without hope--which, to a high and
purified mind, must be felt as more than reconciling.

BARTHOLD GEORGE NIEBUHR.

We have been reading with profound interest the life and letters of
one of the great men of Germany, Barthold Niebuhr, published very
recently in an English garb.[1] The original work we have not seen,
but we understand it is about one-third larger than the present
selection, made in a great measure under the auspices of the Chevalier
Bunsen, the friend of Niebuhr, and his immediate successor in the
Prussian embassy to Rome. The interest of the book is, indeed,
principally derived from the private letters of Niebuhr, the greater
part of which were addressed to his early friend, Mme Hensler, whose
younger sister was his first wife, and her niece his second. Most
unfortunately, the valuable series of his letters to his father was
destroyed by fire a short time before his own death; but the account
given of him by Mme Hensler is quite sufficient to connect all that
remains; and from this, and one or two other sources open to us, we
shall try to fill up our