Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 | Page 4

active, passionate humanity, the purposes of which will form most curious matter of speculation for the more angelic species then at last come upon the earth. Nothing in writing or print will have survived to convey an idea of the state of our knowledge, or of the attainments of our great writers; but it is possible that a few inscriptions may be disinterred, and that through these some glimpses may be obtained of our history, though of a most detached and confused nature. Probably, the most puzzling thing of all will be our warlike implements and munitions; for to one who never thought of harming his neighbour, how incomprehensible must be any tool designed expressly for that purpose! If the intent of these articles be penetrated, they will doubtless be ranged in museums as curious monuments of passions long extinct, just as we see the instruments of torture used by the Inquisition and other ancient judicatories hung up in antiquarian collections of our own day.
Well, well, my dear brethren--you have read thus far without, I hope, being too much distressed by the idea of the physical contingencies to which it is shewn we are liable. Probably you have, each of you, too many matters of sore concern pressing closely upon you, to be much incommoded by possibilities of so infinitesimal a character. It cannot, nevertheless, be amiss, that you should know these amongst other things that may any day leap from the laps of the Parc?, were it only to expand your souls a little with things superior to the eternal commonplaces of life. It is, after all, a great thing to be a part of so great a system as that revealed to us in the external frame of things, and to feel in what a mighty hand our destiny lies. Even in the danger of what is here styled a Possible Event, there is a grandeur--both as to the event itself, and the Power under whose permission it will, if at all, take place, and our filial relations to that Power, which never leaves us without hope--which, to a high and purified mind, must be felt as more than reconciling.

BARTHOLD GEORGE NIEBUHR.
We have been reading with profound interest the life and letters of one of the great men of Germany, Barthold Niebuhr, published very recently in an English garb.[1] The original work we have not seen, but we understand it is about one-third larger than the present selection, made in a great measure under the auspices of the Chevalier Bunsen, the friend of Niebuhr, and his immediate successor in the Prussian embassy to Rome. The interest of the book is, indeed, principally derived from the private letters of Niebuhr, the greater part of which were addressed to his early friend, Mme Hensler, whose younger sister was his first wife, and her niece his second. Most unfortunately, the valuable series of his letters to his father was destroyed by fire a short time before his own death; but the account given of him by Mme Hensler is quite sufficient to connect all that remains; and from this, and one or two other sources open to us, we shall try to fill up our present narrative.
Niebuhr is one of those men whose advent forms an era in the history of human knowledge. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that he was the first to infuse even into Roman story that element of doubt which has changed the whole fabric of historical science. If Niebuhr was a mere sceptic, he would be only the humble follower of Bayle, Lesurgnes de Pouilly, and other writers of the last century; but his merit lies in reconstruction--in the jealous care with which he distinguishes between the true monuments of history and the mass of traditional rubbish in which they lay entombed. In his Roman history, however, although by that alone he is known in England, we find only a portion of the intellectual man: he was learned in the learning of all times, modern as well as ancient; and yet he was so completely immersed, not merely as an observer, but as a participator, in the business of the world and the great events of his own time, that even literature seems to have been little more than a study indulged in during the pauses of active life. The history of a mind so vast is by no means, we are aware, adapted for pages like ours; and yet it seems important--indeed indispensable--that in a popular journal, flowing on with the spirit of the age, we should trace some authentic records of the character and career of the man.
Carsten Niebuhr, the father of the historian, had not the advantages of early education. He was no more than a free peasant, living on the