th Brandis, he lived and worked hard at Danish, and
then attacked the study of the ancient Icelandic language and literature
with a fervor and with a purpose that shrank from no difficulty. He writes
(p. 79):--

"The object of my research requires the acquisition of the whole
treasures of language, in order to complete my favorite linguistic
theories, and to inquire into the poetry and religious conceptions
of German-Scandinavian heathenism, and their historical connection
with the East."

When his work in Denmark was finished, and when he had collected
materials, some of which, as his copy taken of the "Voeluspa," a poem of
the Edda, were not published till forty years later, he started with
Brandis for Berlin. "Prussia," he writes on the 10th of October, 1815, "is
_the true_ Germany." Thither he felt drawn, as well as Brandis, and
thither he invited his friends, though, it must be confessed, without
suggesting to them any settled plan of how to earn their daily bread. He
writes as if he was even then at the head of affairs in Berlin, though he
was only the friend of a friend of Niebuhr's, Niebuhr himself being by no
means all powerful in Prussia, even in 1815. This hopefulness was a trait
in Bunsen's character that remained through life. A plan was no sooner
suggested to him and approved by him than he took it for granted that all
obstacles must vanish, and many a time did all obstacles vanish, before
the joyous confidence of that magician, a fact that should be remembered
by those who used to blame him as sanguine and visionary. One of his
friends, Luecke, writes to Ernst Schulze, the poet, whom Bunsen had invited
to Denmark, and afterwards to Berlin:--

"In the inclosed richly filled letter you will recognize Bunsen's
power and splendor of mind, and you will also not fail to perceive
his thoughtlessness in making projects. He and Brandis are a pair
of most amiable speculators, full of affection; but one must meet
them with the _ne quid nimis_."

However, Bunsen in his flight was not to be scared by any warning or
checked by calculating the chances of success or failure. With Brandis he
went to Berlin, spent the glorious winter from 1815 to 1816 in the society
of men like Niebuhr and Schleiermacher, and became more and more
determined in his own plan of life, which was to study Oriental languages
in Paris, London, or Calcutta, and then to settle at Berlin as Professo