“Marcus already knows no inconsiderable number of Latin words, and he understands grammar so well that I can now set him to learn parts of the conjunctions without their teasing him like dead matter: he derives many of the forms from his own feeling. I am reading with him selected chapters from Hygin’s _Mythologicum_—a book which perhaps it is not easy to use for this purpose, and which yet is more suited to it than any other, from the absence of formal periods, and the interest of the narrative. For German, I write fragments of the Greek mythology for him. I began with the history of the Argonauts; I have now got to the history of Hercules. I give everything in a very free and picturesque style, so that it is as exciting as poetry to him: and, in fact, he reads it with such delight that we are often interrupted by his cries of joy. The child is quite devoted to me; but this educating costs me a great deal of time. However, I have had my share of life, and I shall consider it as a reward for my labours if this young life be as fully and richly developed as lies within my power. “Unexpected thoughts often escape him. Two days ago he was sitting beside me and began, ‘Father, the ancients believed in the old gods; but they must have believed also in the true God. The old gods were just like men.’” All this time we have said nothing of the political embassy of Niebuhr. He was appointed ambassador to Rome to negotiate a concordat with the Pope. But it appears that several years elapsed before he received his instructions from his own court. We hardly know, therefore, whether to say that the negotiations were prolonged, or that their commencement had been delayed. Niebuhr always speaks in high terms of the Pope, (Pius VII.,) as a man every way estimable. Between them a very friendly feeling seems to have subsisted. There does not appear, therefore, to have been any peculiar or vexatious delay on the part of the Holy See. After Niebuhr had been in Rome more than four years, Count Hardenberg, the Prussian minister, who had been attending the conference at Laybach, made his appearance on the scene. To him, as we gather from the very brief account before us, was attributed with some unfairness the merit of concluding the negotiations. However this might be, the terms of this concordat were at length agreed upon, and Niebuhr had no longer any peculiar mission to detain him at Rome. Shortly afterwards he petitioned for leave of absence, and returned to Germany. He never went back again to Rome, but happily resumed the professor’s chair—this time, however, in the University of Bonn; or rather he delivered lectures at Bonn, for it does not appear that he was an appointed professor.