Niebuhr had, whilst at the university, formed an acquaintance which led afterwards to a matrimonial engagement. Amelia Behrens, younger sister of Madame Hensler, who was the daughter-in-law of the Professor Hensler previously mentioned, seems from the first to have thoroughly appreciated the high character and great attainments of the young student. She herself must have been a woman of very superior mind; she had great sweetness of temper, and was in every way calculated for the wife of the ardent, generous, hasty, but affectionate Niebuhr. The first mention that is made of Miss Behrens is not very auspicious. In a letter to his father, he has been lamenting his painful timidity and bashfulness before ladies, and thus continues,—“However much I may improve in other society, I am sure I must get worse and worse every day in their eyes; and so, out of downright shyness, I scarcely dare speak to a lady; and as I know, once for all, that I must be insupportable to them, their presence becomes disagreeable to me. Yesterday, however, I screwed up my courage, and began to talk to Miss Behrens and young Mrs Hensler. Now, in gratitude and candour, I must confess that they were sociable enough towards me to have set me at my ease, if my shyness were not so deeply rooted. But it is of no use. I avoid them, and would rather be guilty of impoliteness, by avoiding them, than by speaking to them, which I should now feel to be the greatest impoliteness of all.” Circumstances, however, after he had left the university of Kiel, brought him into social and unreserved communication with the family of the Behrens; and this lady whom he avoided, dreading her precisely because she _did_ interest his youthful imagination, became his betrothed. Here the biography takes a very eccentric course. Niebuhr not only comes to England on foreign travel, which is precisely what we should expect of such a person, but he settles himself down at Edinburgh as a student. _The life seems to go back._ After having entered on official duties, engaged himself to be married, and thus pledged himself to the real business of life, we see this erudite youth, with his tale of twenty languages nearly complete, entering the classes at Edinburgh, and writing about them as if he were recommencing his university career. If this work of Madame Hensler were one of old date, and we felt authorised to exercise upon it that conjectural criticism so fashionable in our times, we should boldly say that the authoress, deceived by the similarity of name, had intercalated into her series some letters of _another Niebuhr_; we should dispute the identity of the Niebuhr who writes from the university of Edinburgh, with him who passed through the university of Kiel, and was afterwards, for a short time, secretary to Count Schimmelman. Such conjectural emendations being, however, altogether inadmissible, we must accept the facts and the letters as they are here given us.