When Bunsen left the Eternal City a politically disappointed man, he was able, nevertheless, to look back upon a term of years filled with everything that could adorn life—intense domestic contentment, intimacy with distinguished men of every nation who had sojourned in Rome during his twenty-one years' residence there, success in establishing institutions which, like the Archæological Institute, the German Hospital, and the Protestant chapel, have outlived his stay, experience in public affairs, and a deepening of his religious convictions. Religion had become the centre of his most tender emotions, of his intellectual activity, of his practical aspirations. To restore to the Bible that place in the households of his country which it had possessed in the first generations after the Reformation, to revive the knowledge and the love of the German reformers' hymns, to give his people such a Book of Common Prayer, resting upon the liturgies of all Christian ages, as would help congregations in “presenting themselves a living sacrifice,” to rekindle the fervour of other days for works of self-devotion and charity, to work out a Christian philosophy of history,—such were the purposes to which he devoted his happiest and best hours in each succeeding year. Whilst he was at Rome a book of ancient hymns and a liturgy were printed.
Bunsen always looked back in later years upon his Roman time as men are apt to remember their college days. Right joyous had been his intercourse with artists such as Thorwaldsen, Rauch, Wolff, Cornelius, Schnorr, Overbeck, Schinkel, Felix Mendelssohn. He had become one of the best-informed men among art-collections, and was so attracted by the charms of Roman topography as to surrender to the temptation of contributing volumes to the German Description of Rome.
Few strangers have ever lived on terms of greater intimacy with Italians, or possessed a more entire command of their language than Bunsen. He was a believer in their national revival and political future at a time when Italy was “a geographical expression” only and when her art treasures and her blue sky were her only acknowledged qualities. Among Americans Mr Ticknor; among Russians Italinsky, Joukovsky, and Al. Tourgenieff; among Frenchmen the Duc de Blacas, Comte de St Aulaire, Chateaubriand, Champollion, Ampère, and others became his friends. But his most cherished intercourse was with English visitors and residents,[1] to which he owed an acquaintance with British life such as has rarely been possessed by any foreigner who never had set foot in this country.
Towards England, then, did he turn his face in 1838 to enjoy the leisure occasioned by his removal from the Capitol, and in England, except when he held a brief diplomatic appointment as Prussian ambassador to Switzerland from 1839 to 1841, the remainder of his official life was spent.
Between the Crown Prince of Prussia and Bunsen a very close intimacy had sprung up ever since they met at Berlin in 1828. They were attracted to each other by similarity of literary tastes, of poetic temperament, and of religious aspiration. In their enthusiasm for each other, the prince as well as the public servant fondly hoped, year after year, that diversity of character and of self-grown conviction, however marked, would tend rather to compensate defects than to disturb harmonious action. Their correspondence lately published (in part) by Ranke, the historian, shows the truthfulness and the durability of this remarkable friendship, and helps to explain why its results were not commensurate to the moral worth and intellectual capacity of the men who were united by it.
- ↑ One of these, and a very valued correspondent of Bunsen, was Lord Clifford, well known as a devout Roman Catholic. He had made the struggle between Berlin and the Vatican the subject of earnest study, and was enabled by his high social position to obtain from documents a more dispassionate view of it than, perhaps, any contemporary witness of the events. His testimony, therefore, expressed in a letter to Bunsen of 31st March 1838, may claim a place in this sketch. Lord Clifford writes,—“Your public career here has been of benefit to the peace of Europe.”
