O 1859.(98)

After hesitating for a long time, and after consulting both those who had
a right to be consulted, and those whose independent judgment I could
trust, I have at last decided on publishing the following letters of Baron
Bunsen, as an appendix to my article on the Memoirs of his Life. They
will, I believe, show to the world one side of his character which in the
Memoirs could appear but incidentally,--his ardent love of the higher
studies from which his official duties were constantly tearing him away,
and his kindness, his sympathy, his condescension in his intercourse with
younger scholars who were pursuing different branches of that work to
which he himself would gladly have dedicated the whole energy of his mind.
Bunsen was by nature a scholar, though not exactly what in England is
meant by a German scholar. Scholarship with him was always a means, never
in itself an object; and the study of the languages, the laws, the
philosophies and religions of antiquity, was in his eyes but a necessary
preparation before approaching the problem of all problems, Is there a
Providence in the world, or is there not? "To trace the firm path of God
through the stream of ages," this was the dream of his youth, and the toil
of his old age; and during all his life, whether he was studying the laws
of Rome or the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt, the hymns of the Veda
or the Psalms of the Old Testament, he was always collecting materials for
that great temple which in his mind towered high above all other temples,
the temple of God in history. He was an architect, but he wanted builders;
his plans were settled, but there was no time to carry them out. He
therefore naturally looked out for younger men who were to take some share
of his work. He encouraged them, he helped them, he left them no rest till
the work which he wanted was done; and he thus exercised the most salutary
influence on a number of young scholars, both in Rome, in London, and in
Heidelberg.

When I first came to know Bunsen, he was fifty-six, I twenty-four years of
age; he was Prussian ambassador, I was nobody. But from the very beginning
of our intercourse, he was to me like a friend and fellow-student; and
when standing by his side at the desk in his library, I never saw the
ambassador, but only the hard-working scholar, ready to guide, willing to
follow, but always pressing forward to a definite goal. He would patiently
listen to every objection, and