tudy, as well as of actual exploration. In
1773, being then just forty years of age, he married the orphan
daughter of Dr Blumenberg, a Thuringian physician, and lived at
Copenhagen, with the rank of captain of engineers, till the year 1778.
He then removed to Meldorf, a town in the province of Ditmarsch,
Holstein, where he settled for life as collector of the revenues of
the district.

Barthold George Niebuhr was born in Copenhagen on the 27th of August
1776; but with the little old town of Meldorf--once the capital of an
ancient commonwealth--his earliest associations were connected. A kind
of rude equality still reigned in the manners of the rustic
population, which was not likely to be disturbed by the influx of the
world into a bleak and gloomy district remote from the great roads.
Here young Niebuhr grew up a studious and solitary boy; instructed by
his father in French, the rudiments of Latin, and above all, in
geography and history, which the old traveller taught him to
illustrate by maps and plans, and by digging regular fortifications in
the garden. The sheriff of Meldorf, and editor of the _Deutsches
Museum_, a man of both fancy and learning, assisted in this early
education; and the boy--who had never been a child--employed himself,
even at seven years of age, in writing down the instructions he
received. In future years, he regretted his having thus 'lost the life
of a child.' 'I found matter for my childish fancy only in books,
engravings, or conversation. I drew into its sphere all I read, and I
read without reason and without aim; but the real world was closed to
me, and I could not conceive or imagine anything which had not been
first conceived or imagined by another.'

From this _second-hand world_ he removed at the age of thirteen, when
he was sent to the school at Meldorf, where the principal, Dr Jaeger,
gave him as much attention as he could spare for a pupil, who, though
much the youngest, was the most advanced in the class. Afterwards,
finding it was impossible to do for him what this strange child
required, Dr Jaeger advised his removal, and gave him a private lesson
of an hour every day instead. This was continued with only a few
months' interruption and unsuccessful trial of a school at Hamburg,
till Barthold was eighteen, when he was sent to the university of
Kiel.

His interest in politics dated from a very early period. At the age of
eleven, he studied the newspapers, English ones especi