-he could agree with all of
them to a certain point, but could never bring himself to go the whole
length with any one of them. Bunsen writes from Berlin: "My stay will
certainly not be a long one; the King's heart is like that of a brother
toward me, but our ways diverge. The die is cast, and he reads in my
countenance that I deplore the throw. He too fulfills his fate, and we
with him."

When, at last, in 1847, a Constitution was granted by the King, it was too
late. Sir Robert Peel seems to have been hopeful, and in a letter of
twenty-two pages to Bunsen he expressed an opinion that the Prussian
government might still be able to maintain the Constitution if only
sincere in desiring its due development, and prepared in mind for that
development. To the King, however, and to the party at court, the
Constitution, if not actually hateful, was a mere plaything, and the idea
of surrendering one particle of his independence never entered the King's
mind. Besides, 1848 was at the door, and Bunsen certainly saw the coming
storm from a distance, though he could not succeed in opening the eyes of
those who stood at the helm in Prussia. Shortly before the hurricane broke
loose, Bunsen had once more determined to throw up his official position,
and retire to Bonn. But with 1848 all these hopes and plans were scattered
to the winds. Bunsen's life became more restless than ever, and his body
was gradually giving way under the constant tension of his mind. "I feel,"
he writes in 1848 to Archdeacon Hare, "that I have entered into a new
period of life. I have given up all private concerns, all studies and
researches of my own, and live entirely for the present political
emergencies of my country, to stand or to fall by and with it."

With his love for England he deeply felt the want of sympathy on the part
of England for Prussia in her struggle to unite and regenerate the whole
of Germany. "It is quite entertaining," he writes, with a touch of irony
very unusual in his letters, "to see the stiff unbelief of the English in
the future of Germany. Lord John is merely uninformed. Peel has somewhat
staggered the mind of the excellent Prince by his unbelief; yet he has a
statesmanlike good-will towards the _Germanic_ nations, and even for the
_German_ nation. Aberdeen is the greatest sinner. He believes in God and
the Emperor Nicholas!" The Schleswig-Holstein question embittered his
feelings still more; and in absence of all determined conv