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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, Niebubr 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 eon "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
