Niebuhr, as observed, was gone from Bonn. Arndt was removed from his "chair" for saying too freely in 1820 what Princes had openly proclaimed in 1813. Dahlmann was, in truth, still one of "the Seven of Göttingen," inasmuch as Ernest Augustus had not yet made his Hanoverians to regret that they were governed by the Salic law. But there was Welcker, the great historian of art, and the brilliant elocutionist, from whom the Prince must have learnt much of that close knowledge and warm appreciation of art which afterwards made him so efficient a furtherer of culture in this kingdom. There were Loebell and Perthes, von Alten, Bethmann-Hollweg, Walter, Brandis, Nitzsch, Deiters, Bleek, Breidenstein, Nöggerath, Argelander, Schlegel, Fichte, Plücker, Böcking, and many more--not a few of whom I can perfectly remember from my own days. The two Princes, and more particularly Prince Albert, knew how to turn the opportunities at their command to admirable account, not merely by attending the public lectures with exemplary regularity, but, in addition, by seeking out learning, so to speak, _en déshabillé_, and drawing from it in the easy way of conversation and chat probably more information than it dispensed on more formal occasions. Prince Albert was on excellent terms with the most able of these men--Schlegel, Perthes, Bethmann-Hollweg, Walter and some more--and was frequently to be seen walking with one or other of them in the Poppelsdorfer Allee, or else on the Venusberg, or along the Rhine, keeping up an animated conversation. And often would he ask some one or two to his house, or else drop in--sometimes on his own invitation--to that peculiarly German repast of evening "tea," further to prosecute his cross-questioning. "Tea," of course, does not in this application mean anything like our own "five o'clock," nor yet quite so substantial a meal as our middle-class "high tea," but a light evening repast, such as is usual (viz., after a good mid-day dinner) among the cultivated classes in Germany, when _en famille_, from the Imperial Court downward. Taxing the stomach but little, such a meal leaves the head all the more free for intellectual occupation, and is, in truth, dependent for its best relish on the Attic salt supplied by the company. (The "tea" itself is, unfortunately, as a rule, indifferent in quality.) At Bonn these "teas" became little feasts of reason, and used to be, I am told, one of the Prince's particular delights. He was in the habit of discussing questions of learning and politics and statesmanship very freely with his own chosen little set, Prince Löwenstein and others. But he knew the difference between this and putting Professors (who in Bonn were then not merely men of the lamp) into the witness-box and pleasurably pumping them dry over their own tea-table. Nobody relished this treatment more than the Professors themselves, who in after-time often spoke of the enjoyable