will hardly allude to it, beyond a short answer to your inquiries, or speak of it with any feeling. In this way, it must be allowed, people may easily be independent of each other. I believe firmly that the Scots love their children--that Playfair is a good father; and yet the former only speak of them because they have them with them in the evenings, and the boys make their presence known: the latter behaves exactly as if his boy were not in the room. So far from inviting me to speak of my relations, so far from Mr Scott making any inquiries as to my father's position--though he is, nevertheless, as much attached to him as possible--they have met every attempt on my part to talk to them on these subjects with a silence which admits of no other explanation, than that it is not in good taste to say much about these things. They have never once asked after my mother and sister.' We have copied the above, because there is no trace in any part of Niebuhr's writings, former or latter, of narrow national judgments; and he repeatedly bears testimony to the fatherly kindness with which he was welcomed, especially in the two houses mentioned in the above extract. It is simply the sense of a difference, and a difference we should be inclined to regret as well as he, between the German and the English or Scotch habit. We shall never forget the earnest, _pained_ manner in which a young German in England once said, when adverting to the case of some very irreproachable English youths, who yet were never heard to express a feeling, scarcely to utter a kind thing: 'Your young countrymen seem to me positively _ashamed_ of being good.' The diligence of Niebuhr, though often impeded by illness, was immense. Languages, philosophy, history, natural science, all took their turn. His number of languages was not short of twenty at this time, and in some he was profoundly versed--in most, very respectably. But the most remarkable thing through life was his memory, and its wonderful combination of retentiveness and readiness. This, rather than the imaginative power, it was that made his descriptions so graphic. Seeing and retaining everything, he painted as if all history was before him. When he spoke of a striking event, the coast, the mountain-line, or the plain, all the accompaniments rose up and were grouped before him. You felt carried away with him, as if he had lived there, and was taking you up by the way.