His going to the university was an important incident in his life. His particular vocation, indeed, seems to have been clear enough from even an earlier period; for though he was a learned linguist, history especially, and philology, were the pursuits to which his heart was given. The letters he wrote from Kiel to his parents are amiable, full of affectionate outpourings about the new men and women to whom he was introduced, about his studies, and about his theories. He profits by the kindness of the physician, Dr Hensler, whose house and friendly advice were always accessible; but he declines evening-parties; and contemplates the mountain of knowledge, up whose steep sides he has yet to climb, with profound awe and some anxiety. 'My head swims when I survey what I have yet to learn--philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, natural history. Then, too, I must perfect myself in history, German, and French; study Roman law, and the political constitutions of Europe, as far as I can, &c.; and all this must be done within five years at most.... I _must_ know all these things; but how I shall learn them, Heaven knows! That I shall require them as a learned man, or in any position I may occupy, I am fully convinced.' In Dr Hensler's house he saw frequently Mme Hensler, the widow of the doctor's son. She was six years older than Niebuhr; but to him, unused to female society, and admitted at once into domestic familiarity with a sensible and engaging woman, this disparity was nothing--perhaps, indeed, it added to the charm. From other sources, we learn that he at first became attached to Mme Hensler herself; but being discouraged as a lover, allowed her to introduce him to her younger sister, Amelia Behrens, a beautiful and intellectual woman; and although the attachment he then formed was not sudden or violent, it became very profound. After his engagement with this lady in 1797, and before his marriage, he visited England; and in Scotland--chiefly in Edinburgh--he spent nearly a year. The account given in his letters of his sojourn in our capital, would interest and amuse many of its present inhabitants. The Edinburgh of 1797 was more different perhaps from its present self in outward things, than in mental characteristics. His remarks on the want of a more open manifestation of feeling and affection among his friends there are striking. 'It is quite a national trait,' he says, 'not to dwell on what concerns us personally, upon what fills our heart; and it is as unnatural to them to hear me speak of the topics upon which I am feeling strongly, as it would be to do the same themselves.... I am far from attributing it to coldness in these good people. It is altogether national, and it is the same with every one I have known here, whatever their rank, calling, learning, or sex. It has quite surprised me, for example, that if you meet a person in whose family some one has been ill, he