rick William IV. He was
likewise Prussian Ambassador at Rome, when Bunsen was there as a young
scholar, full of schemes, and planning his own journey to the East.
Niebuhr became the friend and patron of Bunsen, and Bunsen became his
successor in the Prussian embassy at Rome. It is well known that the
Jerusalem bishopric was a long-cherished plan of the King of Prussia,
Niebuhr's pupil, and that the bill for the establishment of a Protestant
bishopric at Jerusalem was carried chiefly through the personal influence
of Bunsen, the friend of Niebuhr. Thus we see how all things are working
together for good or for evil, though we little know of the grains of dust
that are carried along from all quarters of the globe, to tell like
infinitesimal weights in the scales that decide hereafter the judgment of
individuals and the fate of nations.

If Holstein, and more particularly Dithmarschen, of which Meldorf had in
former days been the capital, may claim some share in Niebuhr the
historian,--if he himself, as the readers of his history are well aware, is
fond of explaining the social and political institutions of Rome by
references to what he had seen or heard of the little republic of
Dithmarschen,--it is certainly a curious coincidence that the only worthy
successor of Niebuhr, in the field of Roman history, Theodore Mommsen, is
likewise a native of Schleswig. His History of Rome, though it did not
produce so complete a revolution as the work of Niebuhr, stands higher as
a work of art. It contains the results of Niebuhr's critical researches,
sifted and carried on by a most careful and thoughtful disciple. It is, in
many respects, a most remarkable work, particularly in Germany. The fact
that it is readable, and has become a popular book, has excited the wrath
of many critics, who evidently consider it beneath the dignity of a
learned professor that he should digest his knowledge, and give to the
world, not all and everything he has accumulated in his note-books, but
only what he considers really important and worth knowing. The fact,
again, that he does not load his pages with references and learned notes
has been treated like a _crimen loesae majestatis;_ and yet, with all the
clamor and clatter that has been raised, few authors have had so little to
alter or rectify in their later editions as Mommsen. To have produced two
such scholars, historians, and statesmen as Niebuhr and Mommsen, would be
an honor to any kingdom in Ger