Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 3: Essays on Literature, Biography, and AntiquitiesMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 3: Essays on Literature, Biography, and Antiquities
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Comparative linguistics; Folklore; Literature -- History and criticism; Mythology; Religions
At Berlin, Bunsen was then in disgrace. He had not actually been dismissed
the service, but he was prohibited from going to Berlin to justify
himself, and he was ordered to proceed to England on leave of absence. To
England, therefore, Bunsen now directed his steps with his wife and
children, and there, at least, he was certain of a warm welcome, both from
his wife’s relations and from his own very numerous friends. When we read
through the letters of that period, we hardly miss the name of a single
man illustrious at that time in England. As if to make up for the
injustice done to him in Italy, and for the ingratitude of his country,
people of all classes and of the most opposite views vied in doing him
honor. Rest he certainly found none, while travelling about from one town
to another, and staying at friends’ houses, attending meetings, making
speeches, writing articles, and, as usual, amassing new information
wherever he could find it. He worked at Egyptian with Lepsius; at Welsh
while staying with Lady Hall; at Ethnology with Dr. Prichard. He had to
draw up two state papers,—one on the Papal aggression, the other on the
law of divorce. He plunged, of course, at once into all the ecclesiastical
and theological questions that were then agitating people’s minds in
England, and devoted his few really quiet hours to the preparation of his
own “Life of Christ.” With Lord Ashley he attended Bible meetings, with
Mrs. Fry he explored the prisons, with Philip Pusey he attended
agricultural assemblies, and he spent night after night as an admiring
listener in the House of Commons. He was presented to the Queen and the
Duke of Wellington, was made a D.C.L. at Oxford, discussed the future with
J. H. Newman, the past with Buckland, Sedgwick, and Whewell. Lord
Palmerston and Lord John Russell invited him to political conferences;
Maurice and Keble listened to his fervent addresses; Dr. Arnold consulted
the friend of Niebuhr on his own “History of Rome,” and tried to convert
him to more liberal opinions with regard to Church reform. Dr. Holland,
Mrs. Austin, Ruskin, Carlyle, Macaulay, Gaisford, Dr. Hawkins, and many
more, all greeted him, all tried to do him honor, and many of them became
attached to him for life. The architectural monuments of England, its
castles, parks, and ruins, passed quickly through his field of vision
during that short stay. But he soon calls out: “I care not now for all the
ruins of England; it is her life that I like.”
Most touching is his admiration, his real love of Gladstone. Thirty years
have since passed, and the world at large has found out by this time what
England possesses in him. But it was not so in 1838, and few men at that
early time could have read Gladstone’s heart and mind so truly as Bunsen.
Here are a few of his remarks:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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