he felt too independent. He had means to live upon. His retiring pension
could not be withheld. He could now, moreover, give his individual
powers to authorship, without feeling hampered by the thought that he
had a Government to please. He has persevered in this course,
notwithstanding the express wish of the philosophical faculty for his
return to active duty in the university.

He had been occupied with a history of the British empire in India. To
this he gave increased attention, and published it some years ago; but
the Indian rebellion breaking out soon after its publication, he was led
to sketch its history as an appendix. His investigations in the East
brought him in contact with the peculiar history of the Japanese empire,
and he threw off by the way a brief history of Japan, devoting a chapter
to the results of the American expedition thither.

It was while prosecuting his inquiries into the history of Eastern Asia,
that he met with such evidences of the commercial enterprise of the
United States, and obtained such views of the future of our country, as
to conceive the thought of writing its history for the German people,
commencing with the war of 1812, the point at which he considered our
wonderful growth and expansion to have begun; and long before finishing
his history of British India, he was collecting material for this work.
He found, however, that he could not begin at the point he had chosen
without striking upon roots and rudely severing them, which had struck
deeply into the soil of all the earlier periods of our existence. His
plan was therefore enlarged.

The breaking out of the rebellion was a sad blow to him--it could not
have been more so to an American. It was likely not only to spoil _our_
country, but _his_ history of it. It either cut off or dimmed or
confused that prospect of growth and expansion which had been stretched
out interminably before him. He read the daily London _Times_--he had
for years taken the New York _Herald_, and his reliance upon this sheet
had been rather too implicit. Years before the breaking out of the
rebellion, I had suggested this, and introduced to him the New York
_Times_ and _Evening Post_, one of which he has taken ever since, not,
however, without occasional intervals of sighing for his old companion
the _Herald_, much as his ancestors, after having left Egypt, sighed
for its leeks and onions. Although he coupled the _Herald_ and London
_Times_--_par nobi