I tell the anecdote merely
to give an idea of his manner in conversation.

At Goettingen he was one of a remarkable set, comprising Lachmann,
Luecke, Brandis, and some others, thought as much of at the time as
their friends, but who failed to make their way to the front ranks of
the world. Like others of his countrymen, Bunsen began to find "that
the world's destinies were not without their effect on him," and to
feel dissatisfied with the comparatively narrow sphere of even German
learning. The thought grew, and took possession of him, of "bringing
over, into his knowledge and into his fatherland, the solemn and
distant East," and to "draw the East into the study of the entire
course of humanity (particularly of European, and more especially of
Teutonic humanity)," making Germany the "central point of this study."
Vast plans of philological and historical study, involving, as the only
means then possible of carrying them out, schemes of wide travel and
long sojourn in the East, opened on him. Indian and Persian literature,
the instinctive certainty of its connection with the languages and
thought of the West, and the imperfection of means of study in Europe,
drew him, as many more were drawn at the time, to seek the knowledge
which they wanted in foreign and distant lands. With Bunsen, this wide
and combined study of philology, history, and philosophy, which has
formed one of the characteristic pursuits of our time, was from the
first connected with the study of the Bible as its central point. In
1815 came a decisive turning-point in his life--his acquaintance, and
the beginning of his close connection, with Niebuhr, at Berlin; and
from this time he felt himself a Prussian. "That State in Northern
Germany," he writes to Brandis in 1815, "which gladly receives every
German, from wheresoever he may come, and considers every one thus
entering as a citizen born, is _the true Germany_":--

That such a State [he proceeds, in the true Bismarckian spirit]
should prove inconvenient to others of inferior importance, which
persist in continuing their isolated existence, regardless of the
will of Providence and of the general good, is of no consequence
whatever; nor even does it matter that, in its present management,
there are defects and imperfections.... We intend to be in Berlin
in three weeks; and there (in Prussia) am I resolved to fix my
destinies.

After reading Persian for a short ti