He entered presently from an inner room, rather a short, well-rounded figure with a face marked by a clear eye and much vivacity. He conversed well in English and was curious about American education and offered, rather ludicrously, I remember, to exchange the publications of the University of Berlin with those of the little fresh-water college in which I was at that time a young teacher. Could the scholar be aiming a sly sarcastic hit at the bareness of our educational outposts in the West? But no, his frank look and voice showed that he was unaware of the real conditions. The talk was not long, there was a hearty expression of regard for Mr. Bancroft who was fully accepted by the German learned world as one of their _Gelehrten_, trained as he had been in youth in their schools, and in that day our best-known historian. I bowed myself out respectfully from the presence of the little man and sincerely hope that the merit of his great history is in no way abated because I took a half-hour of his time. I met Lepsius, the great Egyptian scholar, one afternoon in his garden, a hale, straight man of sixty with abundant grey hair surmounting a fine forehead, with blue eyes full of penetration behind his spectacles. I had little knowledge of the subject he had studied so profoundly and almost laughed outright when his pretty daughter asked me if I had read her father's translation of the _Book of the Dead_. Of von Ranke's themes I thought I knew something and was more at ease with him, as with Mommsen whom I met about the same time. Theodor Mommsen, more than any other, forty years ago, was the leading historian of Germany. He began his career as a student of law, in the antiquities of which he became thoroughly versed. In particular Justinian and the Roman authorities, among whom he stands as chief, were the objects of Mommsen's research. From jurisprudence he passed to the study of general history, and of the most interesting period of Rome he absorbed into his mind all the lore that has survived. This he digested and set forth in a monumental work, which, translated into English, has been, in the English-speaking world of scholars at least, as familiar as household words. At a still later time he was an active striver in the political agitations of his day.