Of Professor Von Raumer it is almost unnecessary for us to speak—yet a few words may not be amiss. He is a man of unquestionable and lofty integrity—the most highly esteemed living historian—second to none, living or dead, in all the high essentials of the historiographer—profoundly versed in moral and political science—and withal, a lover, and a connoisseur of art, and fully aware of its vast importance in actuating mankind, individually, and nationally. He is a member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, and _Councillor_ of the Court Theatre in which he labors to keep up the moral influence of that establishment as a school of art. He has constantly opposed absolutism in every form—especially the absolutism of exclusive political creeds. “If,” says the Conversations Lexicon, “the much talked of _juste milieu_ consists in endless tacking between two opposite principles, Raumer belongs rather to one of the extremes than to that. But if the expression is taken to denote that free and neutral ground on which a man, resting upon the basis of justice, and untrammelled by party views, combats for truth proved by experience, careless whether his blows fall to the right or the left—then Raumer unquestionably belongs to the _juste milieu_.” He has written the _History of the Hohenstaufen and their Time_—a history richer than the richest romance—a work _On the Prussian Municipal System_—a work _On the Historical Development of the Notions of Law and Government_—_Letters from Paris in 1830_, a series of papers printed precisely as they were written to his family, and evincing a spirit of foresight nearly amounting to prophecy—so accurately were his predictions fulfilled—_Letters from Paris in Illustration of the History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_—a _History of Europe from the End of the Fifteenth Century_, in six volumes, of which one is yet to be published—a _History of the Downfall of Poland_—in which although employed and paid by his {508} government he did not hesitate to accuse that government of injustice—_Six Dialogues on War and Commerce_—_The British System of Taxation_—_The Orations of Æschines and Demosthenes for the Crown_—_CCI Emendationes ad Tabulas Genealogicas Arabum et Turcarum_—_Manual of Remarkable Passages from the Latin Historians of the Middle Ages_—_Journey to Venice_—_Lectures on Ancient History_—and some other works of which we have no account. The present _Letters_ are printed just as the author wrote them from day to day. We are even assured that some mistakes have been suffered to stand with a view of showing how first impressions were gradually modified.