confident that nothing could ruin Prussia, was looking forward to the future, undismayed by the unbroken succession of blunders and failures of Prussian statesmen,—nay, enjoying with a prophetic fervor, at the time of the deepest degradation of Prussia at Olmütz, the final and inevitable triumph of that cause which counted among its heroes and martyrs such names as Stein, Gneisenau, Niebuhr, Arndt, and, we may now add, Bunsen. After the reaction of 1849 Bunsen’s political influence ceased altogether, and as Minister in England he had almost always to carry out instructions of which he disapproved. More and more he longed for rest and freedom, for “leisure for reflection on the Divine which subsists in things human, and for writing, if God enables me to do so. I live as one lamed; the pinions that might have furthered my progress are bound,—yet not broken.” Yet he would not give up his place as long as his enemies at Berlin did all they could to oust him. He would not be beaten by them, nor did he altogether despair of better days. His opinion of the Prince of Prussia (the present King) had been raised very high since he had come to know him more intimately, and he expected much in the hour of need from his soldier-like decision and sense of honor. The negotiations about the Schleswig-Holstein question soon roused again all his German sympathies, and he exerted himself to the utmost to defend the just cause of the Schleswig-Holsteiners, which had been so shamefully misrepresented by unscrupulous partisans. The history of these negotiations cannot yet be written, but it will some day surprise the student of history when he finds out in what way public opinion in England was dosed and stupefied on that simple question. He found himself isolated and opposed by nearly all his English friends. One statesman only, but the greatest of English statesmen, saw clearly where the right and where the wrong was, but even he could only dare to be silent. On the 31st of July, 1850, Bunsen writes:— “Palmerston had yielded, when in a scrape, first to Russia, then to France; the prize has been the protocol; the victim, Germany. They shall never have my signature to such a piece of iniquity and folly.”