f life's prizes, because your love has already
shown the right effect and strength, in that you have acquired courage for
finishing at _this present time_ your difficult and great work on the
Vedas. The work will also give you further refreshment for the future,
whilst the editing of the Veda still hangs on your hands.

Therefore let us all wish you joy most heartily (my wife has received the
joyful news in Wildbad), and accept our united thanks beforehand for your
kind intention of visiting us shortly with your young wife. By that time
we shall all be again united here. Your remarkable mother will alone be
wanting. Beg your bride beforehand to feel friendly towards me and towards
us all. You know how highly I esteem her two aunts, though without
personal acquaintance with them, and how dear to me is the cultivated,
noble, Christian circle in which the whole family moves. I have as yet
carried out my favorite plan with a good hope of success; six months in
Charlottenberg on the true spiritually historical interpretation of the
Old Testament, in the first volumes of the second division of the work
(the so-called documents); six months of the winter on the "Life of
Jesus," and what in my view immediately joins on to that. The first volume
of the Bible documents is printed, _the Pentateuch_. You will see that I
have handled Abraham and Moses as freely here as I did Zoroaster and
Buddha in my last work; the explanation of the books and the history from
Joram to Zedekiah is as good as finished.

We shall keep peace; Napoleon and Palmerston understand each other, and
Palmerston is the _only_ statesman in England and Europe who conceives
rightly the Italian question. Russia follows him. I still hope by the
autumn to be able to bless the God of free Italy beside Dante's and
Machiavelli's graves. With us (Prussia) matters move fairly forwards; here
they have been fools, and begin to feel ashamed of themselves. So a speedy
and happy meeting.

Your heartily affectionate friend,

BUNSEN.

FOOTNOTES

1 This article formed the preface to a collection of extracts
published in 1858, under the title of _German Classics_. The
extracts are arranged chronologically, and extend from the fourth to
the nineteenth century. They are given in the original Gothic, Old
High-German, and Middle High-German with translations, while in the
more modern portions the difficult words only are explained i