is own
country. His letters, however, tell a different tale. His voluminous
correspondence with the King of Prussia, though not yet published, will
one day bear witness to Bunsen's devotion to his country, and his
enthusiastic attachment to the house of Hohenzollern. From year to year he
was urging on the King and his advisers the wisdom of liberal concessions,
and the absolute necessity of action. He was working at plans for
constitutional reforms; he went to Berlin to rouse the King, to shame his
ministers, to insist in season and out of season on the duty of acting
before it was too late. His faith in the King is most touching. When he
goes to Berlin in 1844, he sees everywhere how unpopular the King is, how
even his best intentions are misunderstood and misrepresented. Yet he goes
on working and hoping, and he sacrifices his own popularity rather than
oppose openly the suicidal policy that might have ruined Prussia, if
Prussia could have been ruined. Thus he writes in August, 1845:--

"To act as a statesman at the helm, in the Fatherland, I consider
not to be in the least my calling: what I believe to be my calling
is to be mounted high before the mast, to observe what land, what
breakers, what signs of coming storm there may be, and then to
announce them to the wise and practical steersman. It is the same
to me whether my own nation shall know in my life-time or after my
death how faithfully I have taken to heart its weal and woe, be it
in Church or State, and borne it on my heart as my nearest
interest, as long as life lasted. I give up the point of making
myself understood in the present generation. Here (in London) I
consider myself to be upon the right spot. I seek to preserve
peace and unity, and to remove dissatisfaction, wherever it is
possible."

Nothing, however, was done. Year after year was thrown away, like a
Sibylline leaf, and the penalty for the opportunities that had been lost
became heavier and heavier. The King, particularly when he was under the
influences of Bunsen's good genius, was ready for any sacrifice. "The
commotion," he exclaimed, in 1845, "can only be met and overcome by
freedom, absolute freedom." But when Bunsen wanted measures, not words,
the King himself seemed powerless. Surrounded as he was by men of the most
opposite characters and interests, and quite capable of gauging them
all,--for his intellect was of no common stamp,-