“Having, at first, believed myself quite safe (the more so as I cannot think of marrying without impairing my whole scheme of mental development, and, least of all, could I think of pretending to a girl of fortune), I thought there was no danger.” A little later he writes to Mrs. Waddington to explain to her the reason for his discontinuing his visits. But the mother—and, to judge from her letters, a high-minded mother she must have been—accepted Bunsen on trust; he was allowed to return to the house, and on the 1st of July, 1817, the young German student, then twenty-five years of age, was married at Rome to Miss Waddington. What a truly important event this was for Bunsen, even those who had not the privilege of knowing the partner of his life may learn from the work before us. Though little is said in these memoirs of his wife, the mother of his children, the partner of his joys and sorrows, it is easy to see how Bunsen’s whole mode of life became possible only by the unceasing devotion of an ardent soul and a clear head consecrated to one object,—to love and to cherish, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part,—aye, and even after death! With such a wife, the soul of Bunsen could soar on its wings, the small cares of life were removed, an independence was secured, and, though the Indian plans had to be surrendered, the highest ambition of Bunsen’s life, a professorship in a German university, seemed now easy of attainment. We should have liked a few more pages describing the joyous life of the young couple in the heyday of their life; we could have wished that he had not declined the wish of his mother-in-law, to have his bust made by Thorwaldsen, at a time when he must have been a model of manly beauty. But if we know less than we could wish of what Bunsen then was in the eyes of the world, we are allowed an insight into that heavenly life which underlay all the outward happiness of that time, and which shows him to us as but one eye could then have seen him. A few weeks after his marriage he writes in his journal:—