“I wish you could form an idea of what I felt. I saw for the first time _man_, the member of a true Germanic State, in his highest, his proper place, defending the highest interests of humanity with the wonderful power of speech-wrestling, but with the arm of the spirit, boldly grasping at or tenaciously holding fast power, in the presence of his fellow-citizens, submitting to the public conscience the judgment of his cause and of his own uprightness. I saw before me the empire of the world governed, and the rest of the world controlled and judged, by this assembly. I had the feeling that, had I been born in England, I would rather be dead than not sit among and speak among them. I thought of my own country, and was thankful that I _could_ thank God for being a German and being myself. But I felt, also, that we are all children on this field in comparison with the English; how much they, with their discipline of mind, body, and heart, can effect even with but moderate genius, and even with talent alone! I drank in every word from the lips of the speakers, even those I disliked.” More than a year was thus spent in England in the very fullness of life. “My stay in England in 1838-39,” he writes at a later time, the 22d of September, 1841, “was the poetry of my existence as a man; this is the prose of it. There was a dew upon those fifteen months, which the sun has dried up, and which nothing can restore.” Yet even then Bunsen could not have been free from anxieties for the future. He had a large family growing up, and he was now again, at the age of forty-seven, without any definite prospects in life. In spite, however, of the intrigues of his enemies, the personal feelings of the King and the Crown Prince prevailed at last; and he was appointed in July, 1839, as Prussian Minister in Switzerland, his secret and confidential instructions being “to do nothing.” These instructions were carefully observed by Bunsen, as far as politics were concerned. He passed two years of rest at the Hubel, near Berne, with his family, devoted to his books, receiving visits from his friends, and watching from a distance the coming events in Prussia.