"There are many things to be done," I retorted, with some bitterness, "that people have never heard of. Obey my orders, or

I turned away from him as I spoke, and placed my hand on the handle of one of my revolvers. I know not if he guessed my intention, for, as it was almost dark, he could not well see the movement; but I feel pretty sure that he did, as he went to the sternpost of the vessel, and, after busying himself there for a few minutes, pulled one of the ropes, and up went the Buccaneer's ensign. This convinced me of the value of promptitude; for, in all probability, if I had not acted as I did, a desperate mutiny might have been the consequence. Thanks, however, to my resolution, it was nipped in the bud.

I strode a pace or two across the deck to vindicate my position, and then, unwilling that he should suppose I harboured any enmity or vindictive feeling in my bosom, I said,

"As the wind is rather fresh this evening, and blows under my snowy camese,' I'll trouble you, Capstan, to tell the boy Jack to bring me my 'shaggy capote.""

"Your what, Cap'n?" inquired he, in a subdued tone.

"I forgot," said I; "you are not acquainted with Childe Harold.' Let him get me my monkey-jacket."

"Ay, ay, sir. Now I knows what you means, I'll fetch it myself." "Do so, and while you are about it, hand up a bottle of brandy and my cigar-case. We must do something to keep the cold out while we remain on deck."

On hearing these orders, my first lieutenant exhibited an alacrity that was truly gratifying-the more so, as it satisfied me that my firmness of manner had not been thrown away upon him. In a few minutes he reappeared on deck with the things I had asked for.

"Where shall we stow ourselves away?" said I, strong, nautical language having now become familiar to me. "Shall we bouse ourselves up on one of the lee cat-heads, or lower our jibs abaft the binnacle ?"

say

"Whichsomdever you pleases, Cap'n," answered my first lieutenant, who appeared delighted to hear me "carry on" in his own dialect, exploding, as it were, like a marine torpedo, when least expected-" whichsomdever you pleases; but if I may make so free, I should here's as nice a place as any, under cover from the wind, and all open afore us." "By the coamings of the hatchway, I suppose?" This I threw out suggestively, not being quite certain what was the name of the place he indicated, though, of course, it must have had a name, as everything has on board ship, and it never answers to appear ignorant on any point when you have to do with professional men.

Capstan made no reply to this remark, which clearly showed that I had hit the right nail on the head, and by the coamings of the hatchway we sat down. A demijohn of cold water and a couple of tumblers were placed beside the brandy-bottle by the boy Jack, who then received permission from me to "turn in." I gathered my monkey-jacket round my stalwart form, lit my cigar, extended my limbs along the deck, and, caressing the hilt of my scymetar with one hand, in an attitude which Capstan closely imitated, prepared for a night at sea.

NIEBUHR THE HISTORIAN.*

BARTHOLD GEORGE NIEBUHR is chiefly known in this country as the author of a work which, though it tends to inculcate a great degree of scepticism with regard to many hitherto received facts, throws more light on the genuine annals of Rome than any of his predecessors, and has by his admirers been generally considered as the most original work that this age has produced. But Niebuhr, son of the celebrated Danish traveller of the same name, was also a man of science, a philosopher, and a politician. He was a rare combination of the man of business, the scholar, and the man of genius. If he had no other claim to celebrity, he would have deserved to be mentioned among the general linguists whose attainments have from time to time astonished the world. Niebuhr was also essentially a man of the world. Born in Denmark, he received the rudiments of education at Kiel and in Hanover, was perfected in Edinburgh, entered the service of the Prussian government, lived as a diplomatist in Holland and in Italy, lectured on the Rhine, and his name belongs to all nations. Everywhere at the same time, his habits were those of a retired student, and his manners those of an unassuming domestic man. Luckily, also, Niebuhr lived at a time when German literary men wrote their histories in their private letters. While the public man was known and appreciated and admired, his early aspirations and youthful foibles, the accidents of his career, his household affections and virtues, the private griefs and the secret struggles which fell to his share amidst a few hollow friendships and many avowed enmities-these and the closing scene of a conspicuous and glorious career, were still wanting in our memories and on our shelves. The two volumes now before us, founded on "Lebensnachrichten über Barthold Georg Niebuhr," edited by Madame Hensler, fully supply this deficiency. From early youth Niebuhr was a constant and attractive letter-writer-to Madame Hensler he was at once learned, graceful, elegant, and confidential. The relations of this lady to Niebuhr were indeed very curious, and as they have been justly designated, very German. During his residence as a student at Kiel, this lady became a young and beautiful widow. Niebuhr himself was an extremely shy and nervous boy-though a man already in ripeness of character and in grasp of intellect; and in reference to his first interview with Dora Hensler, he wrote to his father: "I felt to a painful degree my timidity and bashfulness before ladies; however much I improve in other society, I am sure I must get worse and worse every day in their eyes." Dora's father-in-law, Dr. Hensler, was a profoundly learned man; but he was even then astonished at the bashful boy's extraordinary knowledge of the ancient world, and at his faculty of historical divination. In his family circle Niebuhr was soon at home.. The ladies were very kind to him, and he made the young Madame Hensler an offer of his hand. She- —a pietest in religion-had made a vow at her husband's grave never to marry

The Life and Letters of Barthold George Niebuhr, with Essays of his Character and Influence. By the Chevalier Bunsen, and Professors Brandis and Loebell. 2 vols. Chapman and Hall.

As she could not marry

again, and she was disposed to keep her vow. Niebuhr herself, he asked her to choose a wife for him; and, after some thought, she selected her own sister Amelia. In his union with this lady Niebuhr was happy for some years. He succeeded in the world, served the state in various high offices, acquired the friendship of the first men in Germany, and through the delivery of his lectures on Roman history at Berlin, raised himself to a high place in the intellectual hierarchy of Europe. His wife died, and he again solicited Dora Hensler to accept his hand. But she adhered to her vow; and again failing in his suit, he again requested her to provide a substitute. It would seem that the vow only stood between her and himself, for she still retained him in the family. This time she selected her cousin Gretchen, and-strange as all this seems to us-he married her. Dora's refusals do not, therefore, appear to have caused any, even momentary suspension of the friendship between Niebuhr and herself. His letters to her-ever kind, serene, affectionate-present an unbroken series. The moment he parted from her, he began to write to her regularly. In the most trying situations of his life during the fierce bombardment of Copenhagen-amid the terrors of the flight to Riga before the victorious French-in the sickness of his first months in Italy-amid the excitement of his opening lecture sessions in Berlin-his letters never failed. He wrote a long epistle to her only a few days before he died.

Niebuhr's precocity was something extraordinary. He learnt to write Greek characters in his sixth year, and composed small essays, and made abstracts of Shakspeare's plays before he was nine. He learnt French and English before he was out of his teens, and, on his father's assertion, he knew twenty languages before he had reached his thirtieth. year. Born in 1776, his early years fell into a time of great and, indeed, of morbid excitement. As a mere child, he was inoculated with the literary and political mania of the age. Any new work of the great writers of the time was hailed as an important event, the bearings of which lay beyond the reach of human knowledge. Young Niebuhr was taught to thrill with excitement at the sight of a new book from Goethe, Klapstock, or Lessing. It was but natural that this time, when his feelings were strongest and freshest, should, at a later period, appear to him as the culminating point of German literature, and that, consequently, that literature seemed to him, in after years, to droop and to decay.

A curious psychological phenomenon presented itself in young Niebuhr. From passing his infancy on the level, marshy plain of Meldorf, he was long insensible to impressions of natural beauty. Thus, writing from Edinburgh in 1798, he says, that nature has denied him the taste for, picturesque scenery, but given him instead a perception of the sublime. In later years, however, he was keenly sensible to the charms of a beautiful landscape.

At Kiel, young Niebuhr's favourite study was history. He adopted at that early period of his life elementary ideas, which, in this country, would be scouted as more than sceptical, and would, as in Mr. Lawrence's case, entail persecution. Thus he writes, on the 7th of June, 1794: “I believe further, that the origin of the human race is not connected with any given place, but is to be sought everywhere over the face of the

earth; and that it is an idea more worthy of the power and wisdom of the Creator, to assume that he gave to each zone and each climate its proper inhabitants, to whom that zone and climate would be the most suitable, than to assume that the human species has degenerated in such innumerable instances."

He also argued that great national races never sprang from the growth of a single family into a nation, but always from the association of several families of human beings, raised above their fellow-animals by the nature of their wants, and the gradual invention of a language; each of which families, probably, had originally formed a language peculiar to itself:

Here (he adds) is one of the most important elements of history, still remaining to be examined, that which is, in truth, the very basis upon which all history must be reared, and the first principle from which it must proceed. This of all subjects should be thoroughly investigated in the first place; and then (to which philosophy is necessary) a universal history ought to be written, which should exhibit all nations from the same point of view. This point of view Reinhold beautifully defines as the relation between reason and sensation. When this universal history is completed, the separate history of each country should follow. This is the way in which I would teach history, if I had Hegewisch's learning and position.

Whatever foundation there might be for history thus taught it is scarcely for us to say. Certain it is, it would have no possible reference to Biblical history. Niebuhr had, at this early period of life, a peculiar inclination to the English, whom he studied both for his literary and historical improvement :

. . I spent an evening with Behrens lately, and we laid a wager. He asserts that within a year more than one revolution will break out, and I assert the contrary. On the other hand, I have offered to lay a wager with him, that in four years a monarchical government will be re-established in France. I find myself constantly confirmed in this opinion as I read the English history, which I do a good deal in my leisure moments. If I had time, I should like to get more facts together; and as it is, I have found in the very rare notices which are inserted in the notes to Algernon Sidney's "Discourses," and seem to be quite unknown in Germany, very striking and extraordinary parallels. Unfortunately I have no time for employments of this kind at present! And yet history grows dearer and dearer to me, so much so that my ardour in reading history interferes with my zeal for philosophy, while no philosophy can blunt my inclination to history. . . . Salchow came in just as I was writing about him. We took up our usual occupation. I am dictating to him a short outline of the history of the French war. I am astonished at my own memory, for I still remember with great distinctness the merest trifles that have occurred from 1792 onwards.

He made quite a hero of the imagination of Algernon Sidney. "This," he said, writing from Kiel, December 6th, 1794, "day is the anniversary of Algernon Sidney's death, one hundred and eleven years ago, and hence it is in my eyes a consecrated day, especially as I have just been studying his noble life again. May God preserve me from a death like his; yet, even with such a death, the virtue and holiness of his life would not be dearly purchased. And now he is forgotten almost throughout the world; and perhaps there are not fifty persons in all Germany who have taken the pains to inform themselves accurately about his life and fortunes. Many may know his name, many know

him from his brilliant talents, but they formed the least part of his true greatness."

In January, 1796, Niebuhr left Kiel for Copenhagen, in the capacity of private secretary to Count Schimmelman, the Danish minister of finance. From this he was promoted to the post of supernumerary secretary at the Royal Library, with permission to travel abroad after a time. He visited first his parents, and thence returned to Kiel, where he cemented his attachment with Amelia Behrens, the daughter of his preceptor, Dr. Hensler. A letter to his friend Moltke is highly characteristic of the classical and philosophical yearnings that, in Niebuhr, even pervaded the passion of love:

Dora and I send you and your wife this messenger, because we cannot bear to wait several days before writing to you, especially as our letter would be a long time on the road; so you will receive this before another, that Dora wrote to you two days ago, which announced as close at hand what has now really taken place. I am in far too great an agitation to say much. Each of you take one of our letters; Dora's will tell you the most. Yesterday evening, at Dora's house, Amelia decided in my favour. Her heart had already decided. Love can distinguish between truth and pretence. She assumed no girlish affectation when Dora gave words to feelings that had before scarcely expressed themselves, and joined our hands. This pure simplicity, this Roman decision, in a gentle heart, made my happiness perfect, and made it possible. A long time of trial, full of doubt and uncertainty-servitude to win a love, that cannot be sustained by gallantry and pretty flatteries, but must take root in the heart -would either have frightened me away, or harassed me to death; and yet one scarcely sees anything else, except where the suitability of the connexion is calculated, and everything negotiated by the papa and mamma on each side. I long considered this servitude as the only means of becoming intimately acquainted with a girl, for the gulf which custom and our folly have placed between young men and women seemed to me impassable. And so it would have been to me, had not Dora's heart and Dora's wisdom allowed me to follow my nature completely. I know that I have earnestly endeavoured not to deceive Milly. In our conversations when we met, I spoke to her from my inmost heart, and took pains to discover to her what, if concealed, might have deceived her, and made her very unhappy hereafter; for I thought myself bound not to deny what still clings to me from former evil times as a stain to be washed out; but I hope to God that happiness, and the power of love, this new unknown force, and above all, the contemplation of the proud joy in her angelic heart, and an openness that will rather gain than lose through absence, will purify me before we can be united,-for absence is before us. The letter Dora wrote to you the day before yesterday will have told you all about it. It is inevitable, and you will not misunderstand me when I tell you that I do not now view it with dread. O who could feel themselves separated, when in spirit and in love they are so inseparable! I embrace every effort, every toil, every sacrifice, for all will render me worthier of my Milly. It is true we have a long future before us, but who knows how it may be shortened? And if I, who have not your equability, cannot promise Milly your evenness of temper, your constant warmth, I can promise her inviolable truth, and ever-growing, exclusive love. And woe to him who does not repose with full confidence upon the truth of a pure-hearted maiden! I shall assuredly know neither suspicion nor jealousy. And she who equally possesses both our hearts, our Dora, who can now live wholly for us, and is through us brought back to the world, will unite us by the rarest bond. Thank you, dearest of friends, as much as it is possible to thank, for the kind solicitude that you shared with Dora. My heart was sealed up, and my courage gone. Many a pretty face, and here and there a bright creature, had given me a passing pleasure, but only once had the