e university of Jena granted him
the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy. During 1813 he travelled with
Astor in South Germany, and then turned to the study of the religion, laws,
language and literature of the Teutonic [v.04 p.0800] races. He had read
Hebrew when a boy, and now worked at Arabic at Munich, Persian at Leiden,
and Norse at Copenhagen. At the close of 1815 he went to Berlin, to lay
before Niebuhr the plan of research which he had mapped out. Niebuhr was so
impressed with Bunsen's ability that, two years later, when he became
Prussian envoy to the papal court, he made the young scholar his secretary.
The intervening years Bunsen spent in assiduous labour among the libraries
and collections of Paris and Florence. In July 1817 he married Frances
Waddington, eldest daughter and co-heiress of B. Waddington of Llanover,
Monmouthshire.

As secretary to Niebuhr, Bunsen was brought into contact with the Vatican
movement for the establishment of the papal church in the Prussian
dominions, to provide for the largely increased Catholic population. He was
among the first to realize the importance of this new vitality on the part
of the Vatican, and he made it his duty to provide against its possible
dangers by urging upon the Prussian court the wisdom of fair and impartial
treatment of its Catholic subjects. In this object he was at first
successful, and both from the Vatican and from Frederick William III., who
put him in charge of the legation on Niebuhr's resignation, he received
unqualified approbation. Owing partly to the wise statesmanship of Count
Spiegel, archbishop of Cologne, an arrangement was made by which the thorny
question of "mixed" marriages (_i.e._ between Catholic and Protestant)
would have been happily solved; but the archbishop died in 1835, the
arrangement was never ratified, and the Prussian king was foolish enough to
appoint as Spiegel's successor the narrow-minded partisan Baron Droste. The
pope gladly accepted the appointment, and in two years the forward policy
of the Jesuits had brought about the strife which Bunsen and Spiegel had
tried to prevent. Bunsen rashly recommended that Droste should be seized,
but the _coup_ was so clumsily attempted, that the incriminating documents
were, it is said, destroyed in advance. The government, in this _impasse_,
took the safest course, refused to support Bunsen, and accepted his
resignation in April 1838.

After leaving Rome, where he had become in