Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 71, No. 439, May, 1852

by Various

CONTENTS.

Gold: its Natural and Civil History,	[517]
Life of Niebuhr,	[542]
Thomas Moore,	[559]
My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life. Part XXI.,	[569]
Our London Commissioner. No. II.,	[596]
The Gold-Finder,	[607]
The Vineyards of Bordeaux,	[617]
The Democratic Confederacy,	[626]

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET;

AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed.

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCXXXIX.       MAY, 1852.       Vol. LXXI.

GOLD: ITS NATURAL AND CIVIL HISTORY.[^[1]][^[2]]

The progress of knowledge naturally leads to the discovery not only of new arts, and of new uses for artificial productions, but of new stores of natural wealth in the bowels of the earth itself, and of new methods of extracting and rendering them useful. This last point is amply illustrated by the history of the progressive discovery and development of our own most valuable mineral treasures—the coal and ironstone deposits—which add so much both to our natural resources and to our national strength.

But, independent of the advance of knowledge, the exploration and colonisation of new countries by a civilised race leads of necessity to the discovery of regions rich in mineral wealth, which were unknown before, and brings new metallic supplies into the markets of the world.

When Spain conquered Mexico first, and afterwards Peru and Chili, Europe became flooded with the precious metals to a degree unknown before in the history of modern nations. When Russia began to explore her provinces on the slopes of the Ural, gold-washings were discovered, which have, by their enormous yield, made up for the deficient supply which commotion and misrule in Central and Southern America had caused in European countries. The possession of California by an observant and curious people, of Anglo-Saxon breed, was almost immediately followed by those wonderful discoveries which have made the world ring, and have attracted adventurers from every region. And, lastly, the turning of keen eyes upon river beds in Australia—still less known and examined than almost any district of America without the Arctic circle—has brought to light those vast stores of gold which appear destined to lay the basis of a new empire in the Australian archipelago.

Nor have such discoveries been confined to the so-called precious metals. The advance of North American civilisation towards the head waters of the Missouri has made known abundant mines of lead, which the cost of transport chiefly prevents as yet from seriously competing with European produce along the Atlantic border. The joint march of Canada and the United States along the shores of Lake Superior, has laid open veins of copper of inexhaustible magnitude—on a scale, we may say, in size and richness commensurate with the other great natural features of the American continent;—while, of coal and ironstone, the Central States of the Union are so full, that imagination itself cannot conceive a time when they shall cease to be sufficient for the wants of the whole civilised world.

Men untrained themselves to observe, and ignorant that it is intellectual knowledge which opens and guides the eye, affect to wonder—often, indeed, do seriously wonder—that gold so plentifully scattered over the surface of a country as it is said to be in California and Australia, or sprinkling with its yellow sheen thick veins of snowy quartz, should, for a time so comparatively long, have escaped observation. “What surprises me,” says Captain Sutter, in whose mill-race the gold was first discovered, “is, that this country should have been visited by so many scientific men, and that not one of them should have ever stumbled upon these treasures; that scores of keen-eyed trappers should have crossed the valley in every direction, and tribes of Indians have dwelt in it for centuries, and yet this gold should never have been discovered. I myself have passed the very spot above a hundred times during the last ten years, but was just as blind as the rest of them, so I must not wonder at the discovery not having been made earlier.”[^[3]]

Such seeming blindness, indeed, is not really a matter of surprise. The ability to observe is an intellectual gift no less than the ability to reason; and, like the latter talent, the former also must be trained. It must be taught where to look, and what to look for; what the signs are of the presence of the thing we wish to find, and where they are likely to be met with.

It is not, in truth, a just reproach to unsuspecting men, that they have not seen what they never imagined the presence of. It would scarcely have been so, had they failed to see in a given place what they were told was likely to be found. Many of our readers are familiar with the existence of black lines in the solar spectrum; many may have seen them, and justly wondered. Some may even recollect, when, years ago, Frauenhofer first announced their existence, how opticians everywhere mounted their most homogeneous prisms, and gazed at the spectrum eager to see them, and how many looked in vain. Of course, the failure was ascribed to the imperfection of their prisms, and not to their own defective skill. One philosopher we remember, then already distinguished, and whom now all delight to honour, of whom it was told that having obtained one of the beautifully perfect prisms of Frauenhofer’s own manufacture, he was still unable to see the lines; but that another who had seen them came to his aid, instructed him how to look, and in an instant he not only clearly saw them, but exclaimed with wonder at his own blindness. Such were our own sensations also when first we saw them. Was it, then, a reproach to Sir Isaac Newton and his successors that these lines escaped them? The same reproach might be made to the predecessors of almost every discoverer in every walk of modern science. Many before him probably had looked from the same spot, with similar advantages for seeing, and had not seen. But they had gazed without any special object or previous instruction, and they had failed to discern what another coming after them, prepared to look for it, and knowing what it was like, and where likely to be, would have at once descried.

Hence the discovery of most of the rich mines in past times was the result of some unlooked-for accident happening generally to naturally-observant but ignorant men. Thus Jacob says of the mines in the Hartz—

“There are various conflicting opinions among the learned in antiquities respecting the discovery of the mineral wealth of the Hartz. The most probable accounts fix it in the tenth century; and the tradition is, that a hunter of the name of Ramm, when engaged in the chase, had fastened his horse to a tree, who, by pawing with his feet, had scraped away the soil, and thereby discovered some minerals; that specimens of them were sent to the Emperor Otho, to whom all minerals, as regalities of the Empire, belonged, and who sent expert miners to examine the district, from Franconia.”—(Jacob, i. p. 254.)

And again of the mines of Saxony—

“The mines of Saxony were first discovered in the tenth century, when the whole district in which they are situated was covered with wood and without inhabitants. Some carriers from Halle, on their way to Bohemia, whither they carried salt, observing metallic substances in the tracks made by the wheels, some of these were taken up and sent to Goslar to be examined, when they were found to consist of lead with a considerable quantity of silver. This led to the establishments for mining, which have continued, with some variations in their products, from the year 1169 to the present day.”—(Jacob, i. p. 252.)

And of the mines of Potosi—

“In the latter end of the year 1545 the mines of the Cerro de Potosi were accidentally discovered. According to the account of Herrera, the discovery was owing to an Indian hunter, Diego Hualca, who, in pulling up a shrub, observed filaments of pure silver about the roots. On examination the mass was found to be enormous, and a very great part of the population was thereby drawn to the spot and employed in extracting the metal. A city soon sprang up, though in a district of unusual sterility. The mountain was perforated on all sides, and the produce, in a few of the first years, exceeded whatever has been recorded of the richest mines in the world.”—(Jacob, ii. p. 57.)

And so with the discovery of the rich washings of California. As early as the time of Queen Anne, Captain Sheldrake, in command of an English privateer on the coast, discovered that the black sands of the rivers—such as the washers now find at the bottom of their rockers—yielded gold largely, and pronounced the whole country to be rich in gold. But it remained in the hands of the Indians and the Jesuit fathers till 1820, when California was made a territory of the Mexican commonwealth, and a small party of adventurers came in. Captain Sheldrake and his published opinions had then been long forgotten,[^[4]] and an accident made known again the golden sands in 1848, after the territory had been ceded to, and was already attracting adventurers from, the United States.

“The discoverer was Mr Marshall, who, in September 1847, had contracted with Captain Sutter to build a saw-mill near some pine woods on the American Fork, now a well-known feeder of the Sacramento river. In the spring of 1848 the saw-mill was nearly ready, the dam and race being constructed; but, when the water was set on to the wheel, the tail-race was found too narrow to let the water through quick enough. Mr Marshall, to save work, let the water right into the race with a strong stream, so as to sweep the race wider and deeper. This it did, and a great bank of gravel and mud was driven to the foot of the race. One day, Mr Marshall, on walking down the race to this bank, saw some glittering bits on the upper edge, and, having gathered a few, examined them and conjectured their value. He went down to Sutter’s Fort and told the captain, and they agreed to keep it a secret until a certain grist mill of the captain’s was finished. The news got about, however; a cunning Yankee carpenter having followed them in their visit to the mill-race, and found out the gold scales.

Forthwith the news spread. The first workmen were lucky, and in a few weeks some gold was sent to San Francisco, and speedily the town was emptied of people. In three months there were four thousand men at the diggings—Indians having been hired, eighty soldiers deserted from the American posts, and runaways getting up from the ships in the harbour. Such ships as got away carried news to Europe and the United States; and, by the beginning of 1849, both sides of the Atlantic were in agitation.”—(Wyld, pp. 34, 35.)

But when no accident has intervened to force the discovery upon the unsuspecting or unobservant, it has sometimes happened that great riches, unseen by others, have been discovered by persons who knew what to look for, what were the signs of the presence of the thing sought, and who had gone to particular places for the purpose of exploration. Such was the case in Australia.

The preliminary history of the Australian discovery is peculiar. From what he had seen of the Ural, and had learned of the composition of the chief meridian mountain ridge of Australia, Sir Roderick Murchison publicly announced, in 1845, his belief that Australia was a country in which gold was likely to be found—recommended that it should be sought for, and even memorialised the home government on the subject.[^[5]] But although this opinion and recommendation were inserted and commented upon in the colonial newspapers—although the Rev. W. B. Clarke published letters predicting, for reasons given, the discovery of gold deposits in California and Australia—although

“Sir Francis Forbes of Sydney subsequently published and circulated in New South Wales a paper, in which he affirmed in the strongest manner, on scientific data, the existence of gold formations in New Holland—although a colonial geologist had been sent out some years before and was settled at Sydney—and lastly, although one part of the prediction was soon so wonderfully fulfilled by the Californian discoveries—yet oven the discoveries in California did not arouse the New Hollanders to adequate researches, though reports were spread of wonderful discoveries in Victoria and South Australia, which were speedily discredited. It was reserved for a gentleman of New South Wales, Mr Edward Hammond Hargraves, to make the definite discoveries. He appears to have acted independently of all previous views on the subject; but having acquired experience in California, and being struck with the resemblance between the Californian formations and those of New Holland, he determined on a systematic search for gold, which he brought to a successful issue on the 12th of February of this year 1850, by the discovery of gold diggings in the Bathurst and Wellington districts, and which he prosecuted until he had ascertained the existence of gold sands in no less than twelve places.”—(Wyld, p. 30.)

When this was made known by Mr Hargraves in a formal report to the authorities at Sydney, in April 1850, they then (!) despatched the provincial geologist to examine the localities, and confirm the discoveries of Mr Hargraves! But the public did not wait for such confirmation. On the 1st of May the discoveries became known in Sydney. In thousands the people forsook the city, the villages, cattle stations, and farms, in the interior, for the neighbourhood of Bathurst, where the gold had been found. Summerhill Creek alone soon numbered its four thousand diggers, who thence speedily spread themselves along the other head waters of the Darling and Murrumbidgee—rivers flowing westward from the inland slope of the mountain ridge, (Blue Mountains and Liverpool range,) which runs nearly parallel to the south-eastern coast of Australia, and at the distance from it of about one hundred miles. Near Bathurst the summit of the ridge attains, in Mount Canobolus, a height of 4461 feet. In numerous places among the feeders of these streams, which themselves unite lower down to form the main channel of the Murray, gold was speedily found. It was successfully extracted also from the upper course of the Hunter River, and from the channel of Cox’s River—both descending from the eastern slope of the same ridge, within the province of New South Wales. In the province of Victoria, the feeders of the Glenelg and other rivers, which descend from the southern prolongation of the same chain—the Australian Pyrenees—have yielded large quantities of gold; and recently, Geelong and Melbourne have become the scene of an excitement scarcely inferior to that which has longer prevailed in the country round Bathurst. South Australia also, where the main river, Murray, passes through it to the sea at Adelaide, has been reported to contain the precious metal. So suddenly does the first spark of real fire spread into a great flame of discovery—so clearly can all eyes see, when taught how to look, what to look for, and in what circumstances.

But in New South Wales, and in the province of Victoria, the excitement, and the zeal and success in digging, have up to the latest advices been the greatest. In the beginning of June 1850, the Governor-General had already bestowed a grant of £500 upon Mr Hargraves, and an appointment of £350 a-year, as acknowledgments of his services—acknowledgments he well deserved, but which might have been saved honourably to the colony, and creditably to science, had the recommendation made five years before by geologists at home, and by scientific colonists, been attended to. In the same month the Sir Thomas Arbuthnot sailed from Sydney for England with £4000 worth of gold already among her cargo. The success of the explorers continues unchecked up to the latest arrivals from Australia. “When I left, on the 10th of August 1851,” says the captain of one of her Majesty’s ships of war, in a letter now before us, “there was then weekly coming into Sydney £13,000 of gold. One lump has been found one hundred and six pounds in weight.” He adds, and we believe many are of this opinion, “that it appears to be one immense gold field, and that California is already thrown into the shade.” The news of five months’ later date only give additional strength to all previous announcements, anticipations, and predictions.

Now, in reflecting on these remarkable and generally unexpected discoveries, an enlightened curiosity suggests such questions as these:—What are the conditions geographical, physical, or geological, on which the occurrence of gold deposits depends? Why has the ability to predict, as in the Australian case, remained so long unexercised, or been so lately acquired? What are the absolute extent, and probable productive durability, of the gold regions newly brought to light? What their extent and richness compared with those known at former periods, or with those which influence the market for precious metals now? What the influence they are likely to exercise on the social and financial relations of European countries? What the effect they will have on the growth and commerce of the States which border the Pacific, or which are washed by the Indian and Australian seas? In the present article we propose to answer a few of these questions.

And, first, as to the Geography of the question. There are no limits either in latitude or longitude, as used to be supposed, within which gold deposits are confined—none within which they are necessarily most abundant. In old times, the opinion was entertained that the precious metals favoured most the hot and equatorial regions of the earth. But the mines of Siberia, as far north as 69° of latitude, and the deposits of California, supposed to extend into Oregon, and even into Russian America, alone show the absurdity of this opinion.

Nor does the physical character of a country determine in any degree whether or not it shall be productive of gold. It may, like California, border the sea, or be far inland, like the Ural slopes, or the Steppes of the Kirghis; it may be flat, and of little elevation, or it may abound in streams, in lakes, and in mountains;—none of these conditions are necessarily connected with washings or veins of gold. It is true that mountain chains are usually seen at no great distance from localities rich in golden sands, and that metalliferous veins often cut through the mountains themselves. But these circumstances are independent of the mountains as mere physical features. It is not because there are mountains in a country that it is rich in gold, else gold mines would be far more frequent; and mountainous regions, like our own northern counties, would abound in mineral wealth. It is the nature of the rocks of which a country consists—its geological and chemical characters, in other words, which determine the presence or absence of the most coveted of metals. Humboldt, indeed, supposed, from his observations, that, to be productive of gold, the chain of mountains which skirt the country must have a meridional direction. But further research has shown that this is by no means a necessary condition, although hitherto, perhaps, more gold has been met with in the neighbourhood of chains which have a prevailing north or south direction than of any other. We may safely say, therefore, that there are no known physical laws or conditions, by the application or presence of which the existence of gold can with any degree of probability be predicted.

Let us study for a little, then, the geology of a region of gold.

First, Every general reader now-a-days is aware that the crust of our globe consists of a series of beds of rock, laid one over the other, like the leaves of a book; and that of these the lowest layers, like the courses of stone in the wall of a building, are the oldest, or were the first laid down. These rocky beds are divided into three groups, of which the lowest, or oldest, is called the primary; the next in order, the secondary; and the uppermost, or newest, the tertiary.

Second, That in certain parts of the world this outer crust of rocks is broken through by living volcanoes, which, with intermissions more or less frequent, belch forth flames and smoke, with occasional torrents of burning lava. That where, or when, the cause of such eruptions is not sufficiently powerful to produce living volcanoes, earthquakes are occasioned; cracks or fissures, more or less wide, are produced in the solid rocks; smoking fumeroles appear; and vapour-exhaling surfaces show that fires, though languid and dormant for the time, still exist beneath. That besides the rocks of lava they have poured out, these volcanic agencies change the surface of a country more widely still by the alterations they gradually effect upon the previously existing slaty, calcareous, or sandstone rocks; converting limestone into marble, and baking sandstone into more or less homogeneous quartz, and common slates or hardened clays into mica slates, gneiss, and granite-like rocks. That such volcanic agencies, producing similar phenomena, have existed in every geological epoch; and though the evidences of these are most extensive and distinct, perhaps, among the rocks of the oldest or primary period, that they are numerous and manifest also among those of the secondary and tertiary periods.

Third, That rocks of every age and kind, when exposed to the action of the air, the vicissitudes of the seasons, the beating of the rains, the force of flowing water, the dash of the inconstant sea, and other natural agencies, crumble down, wear away, or are torn asunder into fragments of every size. These either remain where they are formed, or are carried by winds and moving waters to distances, sometimes very great, but which are dependent on the force of the wind or water which impel them, and on the size or density of the fragments themselves. Thus are our shores daily worn away by the action of the sea, and the fragments distributed along its bottom by the tides and currents; and thus, from the far northern mountains of America, does the Missouri bring down detached fragments thousands of miles into the Gulf of Mexico, whence the Gulf Stream carries them even to the icy Spitzbergen.

Fourth, That over all the solid rocks, almost everywhere is spread a covering of this loose, and, for the most part, drifted matter, consisting of sands, gravels, and clays. These overspread not only valleys and plains, but hill-sides and slopes, and sometimes even mountain-tops, to a greater or less depth. There are comparatively few spots where these loose materials do not cover and conceal the native rocks; but in some localities, and especially in wide plains and deep river valleys, they are sometimes met with in accumulations of enormous depth. In our own island, a depth of two hundred feet of such superficial sands, gravels, and clays, is by no means unusual. They are often sorted into beds alternately coarse and fine, evidently by the action of moving water; and while the great bulk of the fragments of which our English gravels consist can generally be traced to native rocks at no great distance from the spots on which they rest, yet among them are to be found fragments also, which must have been brought from Norway, and other places, many hundred miles distant.

On the surface of these drifted masses we generally live, and from the soils they form we extract by tillage the means of life.

Fifth, That these, occasionally thick, beds of drifted matter—drift we shall for brevity call it—are in some places cut through by existing rivers, the beds of which run between high banks of clay, sand, or gravel, which the action of the stream has gradually worn and washed away. This is seen in many of our own river valleys; and it is especially visible along the great rivers of North America. The effect of this wearing action is to remove, mix up, and redistribute, towards the river’s mouth, the materials which have been scooped out by the cutting water, and thus to produce, on a small scale, along the river’s bed, what had long before been done in the large, when the entire bed of drift through which the river flows was itself spread over the plain or valley by more mighty waters.

These things being understood, a very wide geological examination of gold-bearing localities has shown—

First, That gold rarely occurs in available quantity in any of the stratified rocks, except in those which belong to the primary or oldest group, and in these only when or where they have been, more or less, disturbed or altered by ancient volcanic or volcanic-like action; by the intrusion, for example into cracks and hollows, of veins and masses of serpentine, granite, syenite, and other igneous rocks, in a melted or semi-fluid state.

Second, That among these primary stratified rocks a subdivision, to which the name of Silurian was given by Sir Roderick Murchison, has hitherto, as a whole, proved by far the richest in this kind of mineral wealth; though the slate-rocks below, and the sandstones and limestones above, in favourable circumstances, maybe equally gold-bearing.

Third, That the drifted sands and gravels, in which gold-washing is profitable, occur only in the proximity, more or less near, of such ancient and altered (so called metamorphic) rocks. They are, in fact, the fragments of such rocks broken up, pounded, and borne to their present sites by natural causes, operating long ages ago, but similar in kind to those which now degrade and carry away to lower levels the crumbling particles still torn off from our hardest mountains by the ceaseless tooth of time.

Numerous as have been the deposits of gold found in various ages and countries, they all confirm the general geological conclusions above stated. The main and most abundant sources of gold which were known to the ancients, occurred among the sands of rivers, and amid the gravels and shingles which formed their banks. Such were the gold-washings in the beds of the Phasis, the Pactolus, the Po, the Douro, the Tagus, and the mountain streams which descended from the alpine heights of Greece, of Italy, of America, of Asia Minor, and of many other countries. These rivers all descend from, or, early on their way, pass through or among, ancient rocks, generally old and altered Silurian strata, such as those we have spoken of, in which the gold originally existed, and from which the existing rivers, since they assumed their present channels, have in some few cases, and to a small amount, separated and brought it down. And if in any region, as in Nubia, Hungary, Bohemia, and Macedonia,[^[6]] the ancient or mediæval nations followed up their search to the sources of the rich rivers, and were successful in finding and extracting gold from the native rocks, later explorations, wherever made, have shown that these mines were situated among old and disturbed deposits of the primary and Silurian age.

The more modern discoveries in America, Siberia, and elsewhere, prove the same. So that, among geologists, it is at present received as an established fact, that the primary, the so called azoic and palæozoic rocks, are the only great repositories of native gold.

There are no known laws, either physical or chemical, by which the almost exclusive presence of gold in these ancient rocks can be accounted for or explained. A conjecture has been hazarded, however, to which we shall for a moment advert.

From the fissures and openings which abound in volcanic neighbourhoods, gases and vapours are now seen continually to arise. Whatever is capable of being volatilised—driven off in vapour, that is—by the existing heat, rises from beneath till it reaches the open air, or some comparatively cool spot below the surface, where it condenses and remains. Such was the case also in what we may call the primary days of geology.

Gold is one of the few metals which occur, for the most part, in the native or metallic and malleable state. But in this state it is not volatile, and could not have been driven up in vapour by ancient subterranean heat. But, as in the case of many other metals, the prevailing belief is, that it has been so volatilised—not in the metallic state, however, but in some form of chemical combination in which it is capable of being volatilised. No such combinations are yet known, though their existence is not inconsistent with—may in fact be inferred from—our actual knowledge.

It is further supposed that, at the period when the primary rocks were disturbed by intrusions of granites, porphyries, serpentines, greenstones, &c., which we have spoken of as volcanic-like phenomena, the elementary bodies, which, by their union with the gold, are capable of rendering it volatile, happened to exist more abundantly than at the period of any of those other disturbances by which the secondary and tertiary rocks were affected; and that this is the reason why signs of gold-bearing exhalations, and consequently gold-bearing veins, are rare in the rocks of the newer epochs.

According to this view of the introduction of gold into the fissures and veins of the earliest rocks, its presence is due to what we may call the fortuitous and concurrent presence in the under crust of other elementary substances along with the gold, which by uniting with it could make it volatile, rather than to the action or influence of any widely-operating chemical or physical law. The explanation itself, however, it will be remembered, is merely conjectural, and, we may add, neither satisfactory nor free from grave objections.

But from the geological facts we have above stated, several very interesting consequences follow, such as—

First, That wherever the rocks we have mentioned occur, and altered as we have described, the existence and discovery of gold are rendered probable. Physical conditions may not be equally propitious everywhere. Broad valleys and favourable river channels may not always coexist with primary rocks traversed by old volcanic disturbances; or the ancient sands and shingles with which the particles of abraded gold were originally mixed may, by equally ancient currents, have been scoured out of existing valleys, and swept far away. But these are matters of only secondary consideration, to be ascertained by that personal exploration which a previous knowledge of the geological structure will justify and encourage.

Whenever the geology of a new country becomes known, therefore, it becomes possible to predict the presence or absence of native gold, in available quantities, with such a degree of probability as to make public research a national, if not an individual duty. This led Sir Roderick Murchison to foretell the discovery of gold in Australia, as we have already explained; and similar knowledge places similar predictions within the power of other geologists.

We happen to have before us, at this present moment, a geological map of Nova Scotia. Two such maps have been published, one by Messrs Alger and Jackson, of Boston, and another by Dr Gesner, late colonial geologist for the province of New Brunswick. In these maps the north-western part of the province is skirted by a fringe of old primary rocks, partly metamorphic, and sometimes fossiliferous, and resting on a back ground of igneous rocks, which cover, according to Gesner, the largest portion of this end of the province. Were we inclined to try our hand at a geological prediction, we should counsel our friends in the vale of Annapolis to look out for yellow particles along the course of the Annapolis river, and especially at the mouths and up the beds of the cross streams that descend into the valley from the southern highlands.

Nature, indeed, has given the Nova Scotians in this Annapolis valley a miniature of the more famed valley of the Sacramento. Their north and south mountains represent respectively the coast range and the Sierra Nevada of the Sacramento Basin. The tributaries in both valleys descend chiefly from the hills on the left of the main rivers. The Sacramento and the Annapolis rivers both terminate in a lake or basin, and each finally escapes through a narrow chasm in the coast ridge by which its terminating basin communicates with the open sea. The Gut of Digby is, in the small, what the opening into the harbour of San Francisco now called the “Golden Gate” and the “Narrows” is in the large; and if the Sacramento has its plains of drifted sand and gravel, barren and unpropitious to the husbandman, the Annapolis river, besides its other poor lands, on which only the sweet fern luxuriates, has its celebrated Aylesford sand plain, or devil’s goose pasture—a broad flat “given up to the geese, who are so wretched that the foxes won’t eat them, they hurt their teeth so bad.” Then the south mountains, as we have said, consist of old primary rocks, such as may carry gold—disturbed, traversed by dykes, and changed or metamorphosed, as gold-bearing rocks usually are. Whether quartz veins abound in them we cannot tell; but the idle boys of Clare, Digby, Clements, Annapolis, Aylesford, and Horton, may as well keep their eyes about them, and the woodmen, as they hew and float down the pine logs for the supply of the Boston market. A few days spent with a “long Californian Tom,” in rocking the Aylesford and other sands and gravel-drifts of their beautiful valley, may not prove labour in vain. What if the rich alluvials of Horton and Cornwallis should hide beneath more glittering riches, and more suddenly enriching, than the famed crops of which they so justly boast? Geological considerations also suggest that the streams which descend from the northern slopes of the Cobequid Mountains should not be overlooked. It may well be that the name given to Cap d’Or by the early French settlers two hundred years ago, may have had its origin in the real, and not in the imaginary presence of glittering gold.

But to return from this digression. Second, The same facts which thus enable us to predict or to suggest inquiry, serve also to test the truth or falsehood of ancient traditions regarding the former fruitfulness in gold of countries which now possess only the fading memory of such natural but bygone wealth. Our geological maps direct us to European countries, in which all the necessary geological conditions coexist, and in which, were the world still young, a geologist would stake a fair reputation on the hazard of discovering gold. But the art of extracting gold from auriferous sands is simple, and easily practised. It is followed as successfully by the black barbarians of Africa as by the whitest savages of California. The longer a country has been inhabited, therefore, by a people among whom gold is valued, the less abundant the region is likely to be in profitable washings of gold. The more will it approach to the condition of Bohemia, where gold prevailed to a great extent, and was very productive in the middle ages, though it has been long worked out, and the very localities of its mines forgotten.[^[7]]

Were it to become, for example, a matter of doubtful tradition, which the historian was inclined to pass by, that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth three hundred men were employed near Elvan’s Foot—not far, we believe, from Wanlockhead in Scotland—at a place called the Gold Scour, in washing for the precious metal, who in a few summers collected as much as was valued at £100,000; or that in 1796, ten thousand pounds’ worth of gold was collected in the alluvial soil of a small district in Wicklow—the geologist would come to his aid and assure him that the natural history of the neighbourhood rendered the occurrence of gold probable, and the traditions, therefore, worthy of reliance.

Third, They explain, also, why it is that, where streams flowing from one slope of a chain or ridge of mountains are found to yield rich returns to the gold-seekers, those which descend from the opposite slope often prove wholly unproductive. In the Ural, rich mines occur almost solely on the eastern, or Siberian slope of the great chain. On the western, or European slope, a few inconsiderable mines only are worked. So, as yet, in the Sierra Nevada in California, the chief treasures occur in the feeders of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, which descend from its western side. The eastern slope, which falls towards the broad arid valley of the Mormons, is as yet unfamed, and may probably never prove rich in gold. These circumstances are accounted for by the fact that, in the Ural, the older rocks, of which we have spoken as being especially gold-bearing, form the eastern slope of the ridge only, the western flank of the range being covered for the most part by rocks of a more modern epoch. The same may be the case also with the Sierra Nevada where it is still unexplored; and the Utah Lake, though remote, by its saltness lends probability to this conjecture.

Fourth, and lastly, they make clear the distinction between the “dry and wet diggins” we read of in our Californian news—why in so many countries the beds of rivers have been deserted by the gold-finders, and why the river banks, and even distant dry and elevated spots, have proved more productive than the channel itself.[^[8]]

Let us attempt to realise for a moment the condition of a country like California, at the period, not geologically remote, when the gold-bearing drift was spread over its magnificent valley. The whole region was covered by the sea to an unknown depth. The snowy ridge, (Nevada,) and probably the coast ridge, also formed lines of rocky islands or peaks, which withstood the fury of the waves, and, if they were covered with ice, the wearing and degrading action also of the moving glaciers. The spoils of the crumbling rocks sank into the waters, and were distributed by tides and currents along the bottom of the valley. The narrow opening through the coast chain, by which the bay of San Francisco now communicates with the Northern Pacific, would, at the period we speak of, prevent the debris of the Nevada rocks from being washed out into the main basin of the Pacific, and this would enable the metallic, as well as the other spoils of these rocks, to accumulate in the bottom, and along the slopes of what is now the valley of California.

By a great physical change the country was lifted out of the sea, either at once or by successive stages, and it presented then the appearance of a valley long and wide, covered almost everywhere by a deep clothing of sands, gravels, and shingles, with which were intermingled—not without some degree of method, but at various depths, and in various proportions—the lumps and grains of metallic gold which had formerly existed in the rocks, of which the sands and shingles had formed a part.

And now the tiny streams, which had formerly terminated their short courses in the sea itself, flowed down the mountain slopes, united their waters in the bottom, and formed large rivers. These gradually cut their way into the superficial sands, washed them as the modern gold-washer does in his cradle, and collected, in certain parts of their beds, the heavier particles of gold which they happened to meet with in their descent. Hence the golden sands of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, and of so many of the rivers celebrated in ancient story. But the beds of these rivers could never be the receptacle of all the gold of such a district. They derived nearly all their wealth from the sands and clays or gravels they had scooped out in forming their channels; and as these channels occupy only a small fraction of the surface of the bottoms and slopes of most river valleys, they could, or were likely to contain, only an equally small fraction of the mineral wealth of their several regions. The more ancient waters had distributed the gold throughout the whole drift of the country. The river, like a “long Tom,” had cradled a small part of it, and proved its richness. The rest of the drift, if rocked by art, would prove equally, it might be even more, productive.

It is in this old virgin drift, usually untouched by the river, that the so-called dry diggings are situated. The reader will readily understand that, while no estimate can be formed of the quantity of gold which an entire valley like that of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, or which wide sandy plains like those of Australia, may ultimately yield, yet it will require great sagacity to discover, it may even be that only accident and long lapse of time will reveal, in what spots and at what depths the gold is most abundantly accumulated, and where it will best pay the cost of extraction.

We do not now advert to any of the other points connected with the history of gold on which our geological facts throw light. These illustrations are sufficient to show how rich in practical inferences and suggestions geological and chemical science is, in this as in many other special branches of mineral inquiry.

Nor need we say much in answer to our question,—“Why the ability to predict, as in the Australian case,” or generally to draw such conclusions and offer such suggestions and explanations, has remained so long unanswered, or been so lately acquired? Geology and chemistry are both young sciences, almost unknown till within a few years, rapidly advancing, and every day applying themselves more widely and directly to those subjects which effect the material prosperity and individual comforts of mankind. Knowledge which was not possessed before our day, could obviously neither be applied at all by ancient nations, nor earlier by the moderns.

To the consideration of the absolute extent and probable productive durability of the gold regions newly brought to light—of their extent and richness compared with those known in former times—and of their probable effects on the social and financial relations of mankind, we shall now turn our attention.

In the preceding part we have explained the circumstances in which gold occurs—the geological conditions which appear to be necessary to its occurrence—and where, therefore, we may expect to find it. But no conditions chemical or geological at present known are able to indicate—a priori, and apart from personal examination and trial—in what quantity the precious metal is likely to occur, either in the living rocks of a gold-bearing district, or in the sands and gravels by which it may be covered. Yet, next to the fact of the existence of gold in a country, the quantity in which it is likely to occur, and the length of time during which a profitable yield may be obtained, are the questions which most interest, not only individuals on the spot, but all other countries to which the produce of its mines is usually sent, or from which adventurers are likely to proceed.

We have already remarked, that, in nearly all the gold regions which have been celebrated in past times, their mineral riches have been for the most part extracted from the drifted sands and gravels which overspread the surface. We have also drawn attention to the small amount of skill and intelligence which this extraction requires, and to the brief time in which such washings may be exhausted even by ignorant people. Most of our modern gold mines are situated in similar drifts. We may instance, from among the less generally known, those of Africa, from which are drawn the supplies that come to us yearly from the gold coast.

“Of all the African mines those of Bambouk are supposed to be the richest. They are about thirty miles south of the Senegal river; and the inhabitants are chiefly occupied in gold-washing during the eight months of dry weather. About two miles from Natakou is a small round-topped hill, about 300 feet high, the whole of which is an alluvial formation of sand and pulverised emery, with grains of iron ore and gold, in lumps, grains, and scales. This hill is worked throughout; and it is said the richest lumps are found deepest. There are 1200 pits or workings, some 40 feet deep—but mere holes unplanked. This basin includes at least 500 square miles. Forty miles north, at the foot of the Tabwara mountains, are the mines of Semayla, in a hill. This is of quartz slate; and the gold is got by pounding the rock in large mortars. In the river Semayla are alluvial deposits, containing emery impregnated with gold. The earth is washed by the women in calabashes. The mine of Nambia is in another part of the Tabwara mountains, in a hillock worked in pits. The whole gold district of Bambouk is supposed to extend over 10,000 square miles.

“Close to the Ashantee country is that of the Bunkatoos, who have rich gold workings, in pits at Bukanti and Kentosoe.”—(Wyld, p. 44.)

From this description we see that all the mines in the Senegal country are gold-washings, with the exception of those of Semayla, to which we shall hereafter allude. No skill is required to work them; and should European constitutions ever permit European nations to obtain an ascendancy in this part of Africa, such mines may be effectually exhausted before an opportunity is afforded for the application of European skill. And so in California and Australia, should the gold repositories be all of the same easily explored character, the metal may be suddenly worked out by the hordes of all classes who have been rushing in; and thus the influence of the mines may die away after a few brief years of extraordinary excitement.

When California first became famous, the popular inquiry everywhere was simply, what amount of immediate profit is likely to be realised by an industrious adventurer? What individual temptation, in other words, is there for me or my connections to join the crowd of eager emigrants?

Passing over the inflated and suspicious recitals which found their way into American and European journals, such statements as the following, from trustworthy sources, could not fail to have a most stimulating effect—

“To give you an instance, however, of the amount of metal in the soil—which I had from a miner on the spot, three Englishmen bought a claim, 30 feet by 100 feet, for fourteen hundred dollars. It had been twice before bought and sold for considerable sums, each party who sold it supposing it to be nearly exhausted. In three weeks the Englishmen paid their fourteen hundred dollars, and cleared thirteen dollars a-day besides for their trouble. This claim, which is not an unusually rich one, though it has perhaps been more successfully worked, has produced in eighteen months over twenty thousand dollars, or five thousand pounds’ worth of gold.”[^[9]]

Mr Coke is here describing the riches of a spot on the immediate banks of the river, where circumstances had caused a larger proportion than usual of that gold to be collected, or thrown together—which the river, in cutting out its gravelly channel, had separated or rocked out, as we have described in the previous part of this article. This rich spot, therefore, is by no means a fair sample of the country, though, from Mr Coke’s matter-of-fact language, many might be led to think so. Few spots so small in size could reasonably be expected to yield so rich a store of gold, though its accumulation in this spot certainly does imply that the quantity of gold diffused through the drift of the country may in reality be very great. It may be so, however, and yet not pay for the labour required to extract it.

That many rich prizes have been obtained by fortunate and steady men in these diggings, there can be no doubt; and yet, if we ask what benefit the emigrant diggers, as a whole, have obtained, the information we possess shows it to be far from encouraging. On this subject we find, in one of the books before us, the following information:—[^[10]]

“The inaccessibility of the placers, the diseases, the hardships, and the very moderate remuneration resulting to the great mass of the miners, were quite forgotten or omitted—in the communications and reports of a few only excepted.

“A few have made, and will hereafter make, fortunes there, and very many of those who remain long enough will accumulate something; but the great mass, all of whom expected to acquire large amounts of gold in a short time, must be comparatively disappointed. I visited California to dig gold, but chose to abandon that purpose rather than expose life and health in the mines; and as numbers were already seeking employment in San Francisco without success, and I had neither the means nor the inclination to speculate, I resolved to return to my family, and resume my business at home.”—(P. 207.)

Thousands, we believe, have followed Mr Johnson’s example; and thousands more would have lived longer and happier, had they been courageous enough, like him, to return home unsuccessful.

“The estimate in a former chapter of three or four dollars per day per man, as the average yield during my late visit to the gold regions, has been most extensively and generally confirmed since that period. Innumerable letters, and persons lately returned from the diggings, (including successful miners,) now fix the average at from three to four dollars per day for each digger during the season.”—(P. 243.)

“Thus far the number of successful men may have been one in every hundred. In this estimate those only should be considered successful who have realized and safely invested their fortunes. The thousands who thus far have made their fortunes, but are still immersed in speculations, do not belong as yet to the foregoing number.”—(P. 245.)

This is applying the just principle, “Nemo ante obitum beatus,” which is too generally forgotten when the first sudden shower of riches falls upon ourselves or our neighbours.

“Individual efforts, as a general rule, must prove abortive. So far as my knowledge enables me to judge, they already have. I do not know of a single instance of great success at the mines on the part of a single member of the passengers or ship’s company with whom I came round Cape Horn: of the former there were a hundred, and of the latter twenty. Many have returned home, who can tell the truth.”—(P. 249.)

This last extract does not contain Mr Johnson’s own experience, but that of a physician settled at San Francisco, from whose communication he quotes; and the same writer adds many distressing particulars, which we pass by, of the fearful misery to which those free men, of their own free will, from the thirst of gold, have cheerfully exposed themselves.

“Quid non mortalia pectora cogis

Auri sacra fames?”

The latest news from Australia contains a repetition of the Californian experience. A recent Australian and New Zealand Gazette speaks thus of the gold-hunters—

“In all parts of the colony, labour is quitting its legitimate employment for the lottery of gold-hunting; and, as a natural consequence, industrial produce is suffering. Abundant as is the metal, misery among its devotees is quite as abundant. The haggard look of the unsuccessful, returning disheartened in search of ordinary labour, is fully equalled by the squalor of the successful, who, the more they get, appear to labour the harder, amidst filth and deprivation of every kind, till their wasted frames vie with those of their less lucky neighbours. With all its results, gold-finding is both a body and soul debasing occupation; and even amongst so small a body of men, the vices and degradation of California are being enacted, in spite of all wholesome check imposed by the authorities.”

It is indeed a melancholy reflection that, wherever such mines of the precious metals have occurred, there misery of the most extreme kind has speedily been witnessed. The cruelties of the Spanish conquerors towards the Indian nations of Mexico and Peru, are familiar to all. They are now brought back fresh upon our memories by the new fortunes and prospects of the western shores of America. Yet of such cruelties the Spaniards were not the inventors. They only imitated in the New, what thousands of years before the same thirst for gold had led other conquerers to do in the Old World. Diodorus, after mentioning that, in the confines of Egypt and the neighbouring countries, there are parts full of gold mines, from which, by the labour of a vast multitude of people, much gold is dug, adds—

“The kings of Egypt condemn to these mines, not only notorious criminals, captives in war, persons falsely accused, and those with whom the king is offended, but also all their kindred and relations. These are sent to this work, either as a punishment, or that the profit and gain of the king may be increased by their labours. There are thus infinite numbers thrust into these mines, all bound in fetters, kept at work night and day, and so strictly guarded that there is no possibility of their effecting an escape. They are guarded by mercenary soldiers of various barbarous nations, whose language is foreign to them and to each other; so that there are no means either of forming conspiracies, or of corrupting those who are set to watch them. They are kept to incessant work by the overseer, who, besides, lashes them severely. Not the least care is taken of the bodies of these poor creatures; they have not a rag to cover their nakedness; and whosoever sees them must compassionate their melancholy and deplorable condition; for though they may be sick, or maimed, or lame, no rest, nor any intermission of labour, is allowed them. Neither the weakness of old age, nor the infirmity of females, excuses any from that work to which all are driven by blows and cudgels, till at length, borne down by the intolerable weight of their misery, many fall dead in the midst of their insufferable labours. Thus these miserable creatures, being destitute of all hope, expect their future days to be worse than the present, and long for death as more desirable than life.”[^[11]]

How truly might we apply to gold the words of Horace—

“Te semper anteit sæva necessitas,

Clavos trabaleis et cuneos manu,

Gestans ahena, nec severus

Uncus abest, liquidumque plumbum.”

There was both irony and wisdom in the counsel given by the Mormon leaders to their followers after their settlement on the Salt Lake. “The true use of gold is for paving streets, covering houses, making culinary dishes; and when the saints shall have preached the gospel, raised grain, and built up cities enough, the Lord will open up the way for a supply of gold to the perfect satisfaction of his people.” This kept the mass of their followers from moving to the diggings of Western California. They remained around the lake “to be healthy and happy, to raise grain and build cities.”[^[12]]

But the occurrence of individual disappointment, or misery in procuring it, will not prevent the gold itself from afterwards exercising its natural influence upon society when it has been brought into the markets of the world. When the riches of California began to arrive, therefore, graver minds, whose thoughts were turned to the future as much as to the present, inquired, first, how much gold are these new diggings sending into the markets?—and, second, how long is this yield likely to last?

1st, To the first of these questions—owing to the numerous channels along which the gold of California finds its way into commerce—it seems impossible to obtain more than an approximate answer. Mr Theodore Johnson (p. 246) estimates the produce for

1848, at 8 million dollars.

1849, from 22 to 37 million dollars.

Or in the latter year, from four to seven millions sterling. It would, of course, be more in 1850, as it is assumed to be by Mr Wyld, from whose pamphlet (p. 22) we copy the following table of the estimated total yield of gold and silver by all the known mines of the world, in the five years named in the first column:—

	Gold.	Silver.	Total.
1800			£10,250,000
1840	£5,000,000	£6,750,000	11,750,000
1848	7,000,000	6,750,000	13,750,000
1850	17,500,000	7,500,000	25,000,000
1851	22,500,000	7,500,000	30,000,000

Supposing the Russian mines, from which upwards of four millions’ worth of the gold of 1848 was derived, to have remained equally productive in 1850 and 1851, this estimate assigns a yield of £10,000,000 worth of gold to California in 1850, and £15,000,000 to California and Australia together in 1851.

The New York Herald (October 31st, 1851) estimates the produce of the Californian mines alone, for the years 1850 and 1851, at

1850, 68,587,000	dollars, or	£13,717,000
1851, 75,000,000	„	£15,000,000

These large returns may be exaggerations, but they profess to be based on the custom-house books, and may be quite as near the truth as the lower sums of Mr Wyld. But supposing either statement to contain only a tolerable guess at the truth, it may well induce us anxiously to inquire, in the second place, how long is such a supply to continue?

2d, Two different branches of scientific inquiry must be followed up in order to arrive at anything like a satisfactory answer to this second question. We must investigate both the probable durability of the surface diggings, and the probable occurrence of gold in the native rocks.

Now, the duration of profitable gold-washing in a region depends, first, on the extent of country over which the gold is spread, and the universality of its diffusion. Second, on the minimum proportion of gold in the sands which will pay for washing; and this, again, on the price of labour.

The valley of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, in California, is 500 miles long, by an average of 50 miles broad; comprehending an area, therefore, of 25,000 square miles.

We do not know as yet over how much of this the gold is distributed; nor whether, after the richest and most accessible spots have been hunted out, and apparently exhausted, the surface of the country generally will admit of being washed over with a profit. We cannot draw a conclusion in reference to this point from any of the statements yet published as to the productiveness of particular spots. But, at the same time, we ought to bear in mind that deserted spots may often be returned to several times, and may yield, to more careful treatment, and more skilful methods in after years, returns of gold not less considerable than those which were obtained by the first adventurers. Besides, if we are to believe Mr Theodore Johnson,

“There is no reason to doubt that the whole range of mountains extending from the cascades in Oregon to the Cordilleras in South America, contain greater or less deposits of the precious metals; and it is well known that Sonora, the northern state of Mexico, is equally rich in gold as the adjoining country of Alta California. The Mexicans have hitherto proved too feeble to resist the warlike Apaches in that region, consequently its treasure remains comparatively undisturbed.”—(P. 231.)

Passing by Mr Johnson’s opinion about the Oregon mountains, what he says of Sénora has probably a foundation in truth, and justifies us in expecting from that region a supply of gold which may make up for any falling off in the produce of the diggings of California for many years to come.

The question as to the minimum proportion of gold in the sands of California, or in those of Australia—the state of society, the workmen and the tools, in both countries being much the same—which can be extracted with a profit, or the minimum daily yield which will make it worth extracting, has scarcely as yet become a practical one.

As a matter of curiosity, however, connected with this subject, it is interesting to know what is the experience of other gold regions in these particulars.

In Bohemia, on the lower part of the river Iser, there were formerly gold-washings. “The sand does not now yield more than one grain of gold in a hundredweight; and it is supposed that so much is not regularly to be obtained. There are at present no people searching for gold, and there have been none for several centuries.”[^[13]] This, therefore, may be considered less than the minimum proportion which will enable washers to live even in that cheap country. In the famed gold country of Minas Geraes, in Brazil, where gangs of slaves are employed in washing, the net annual amount of gold extracted seems to be little more than £4 a-head; and in Columbia, where provisions are dearer, “a mine, which employs sixty slaves, and produces 20 lb. of gold of 18 carats annually, is considered a good estate.”[^[14]]

These also approach so near to the unprofitable point, that gold-washing, where possible, has long been gradually giving way, in that country, to the cultivation of sugar and other agricultural productions.

In regard to Siberia, Rose, in his account of his visit to the mines of the Ural and the Altai, gives the results of numerous determinations of the proportion of gold in the sands which are considered worth washing at the various places he visited. Thus on the Altai, at Katharinenburg, near Beresowsk, and at Neiwinskoi, near Neujansk, and at Wiluyskoi, near Nischni Tagilsk, the proportions of gold in 100 poods[^[15]] of sand, were respectively—

Katharinenburg,	1.1 to 2.5, or an average of 1.3 solotniks.
Neiwinskoi,	½ solotnik.
Wiluyskoi,	1½ solotnik.

These are respectively 72, 26, and 80 troy grains to the ton of sand; and although the proportion of 26 grains to the ton is little more than is found unworth the extraction from the sands of the Iser, and implies that nearly 19 tons of sand must be washed to obtain one troy ounce of gold, yet it is found that this washing can in Siberia be carried on with a profit.

In the gold-washings of the Eastern slopes of the Ural, near Miask, the average of fourteen mines in 1829 was about 1⅛ solotniks to the 100 poods, or 60 grains to the ton of sand. The productive layers varied in thickness, from 2 to 10 feet, and were covered by an equally variable thickness of sand and gravel, which was too poor in gold to pay for washing.[^[16]]

We have no data, as yet, from which to judge of the richness of the Californian and Australian sands, compared with those of Siberia. And, if we had, no safe conclusion could be drawn from them as to the prolonged productiveness of the mines, in consequence of another interesting circumstance, which the prosecution of the Uralian mines has brought to light. It is in every country the case that the richest sands are first washed out, and thus a gradual falling off in every locality takes place, till spot by spot the whole country is deserted by the washers. We give an example of this falling off in four of the Ural mines in five successive years. The yield of gold is in solotniks from the 100 poods of sand—

	I.	II.	III.	IV.
1825,	2.28 sol.	1.56 sol.	5.64 sol.
1826,	1.43 „	0.83 „	2.46 „	7.28 sol.
1827,	0.64 „	0.77 „	1.43 „	5.0 „
1828,	0.58 „	0.29 „	1.92 „	3.52 „

As all the Ural diggings exhibit this kind of falling off, it has been anticipated, from time to time, that the general and total yield of gold by the Siberian mines would speedily diminish. But so far have these expectations been disappointed, that the produce has constantly increased from 1829 until now. On an average of the last five years, the quantity of gold yielded by the Russian, and chiefly by the Siberian mines, is now greater than that obtained from the South American gold mines in their richest days.[^[17]]

While, therefore, it is certain that the new American and Australian diggings will individually, or on each spot, become poorer year by year, yet, as in Siberia, the extension of the search, and the employment of improved methods, may not only keep up the yield for a long period of years, but may augment the yearly supply even beyond what it has yet been.

But while so much uncertainty attends the consideration of the extent, richness, and durability of mines situated in the gold-bearing sands and gravels, something more precise and definite can be arrived at in regard to the gold-bearing rocks. In nearly all the gold countries of past times, the chief extraction of the precious metal, as we have said, has been from the drifted sands. It is so also now in Siberia, and it was naturally expected that the same would be the case in California. And as other countries had for a time yielded largely, and then become exhausted, so it was predicted of this new region, and it was too hastily asserted that the increasing thousands of diggers who were employed upon its sands must render pre-eminently shortlived its gold-bearing capability. This opinion was based upon the two considerations—first, that there is no source of reproduction for these golden sands, inasmuch as it is only in very rare cases that existing rivers have brought down from native rocks the metallic particles which give their value to the sands and gravels through which they flow—and second, that no available quantity of gold was likely to be found in any living rocks.

But in respect of the living rocks, two circumstances have been found to coexist in California, which have not been observed in any region of gold-washings hitherto explored, and which are likely to have much effect on the special question we are now considering. These two circumstances are the occurrence of numerous and, it is said, extensive deposits of the precious metals in the solid quartz veins among the spurs of the Sierra Nevada, and of apparently inexhaustible beds of the ores of quicksilver.

The discovery of gold in the native rock was by no means a novelty. The ancient Egyptians possessed mines in the Sahara and other neighbouring mountains. “This soil,” says Diodorus, “is naturally black; but in the body of the earth there are many veins shining with white marble, (quartz?) and glittering with all sorts of bright metals, out of which those appointed to be overseers cause the gold to be dug by the labourers—a vast multitude of people.”[^[18]]

At Altenberg also, in Bohemia, in the middle ages, the mixed metals (gold and silver) were found in beds of gneiss;[^[19]] and, at present, in the Ural and Altai, a small portion of the gold obtained is extracted from quartz veins, which penetrate the granite and other rocks; but these and other cases, ancient and modern, though not forgotten, were not considered of consequence enough to justify the expectation of finding gold-bearing rocks of any consequence in California. It is to another circumstance that we owe the so early discovery of such rocks in this new country, and, as in so many other instances, to a class of men ignorant of what history relates in regard to other regions.

As early as 1824, the inner country of North Carolina was discovered to be productive of gold. The amount extracted in that year was only 6000 dollars, but it had reached in 1829 to 128,000 dollars. The washings were extended both east and west, and finally it was made out that a gold region girdles the northern part of Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. This region is situated towards the foot of the mountains, and where the igneous rocks begin to disturb and penetrate the primary stratified deposits. As the sands became poorer in this region, the ardent miners had followed up their stream-washings to the parent rock, and in veins of rusty quartz had discovered grains and scales of native gold. To obtain these, like the Africans at Semayla, they blasted, crushed, and washed the rock.

Now, among the first who, fired by fresher hopes, pushed to the new treasure-house in California, came the experienced gold-seekers from the Carolinian borders. Following the gold trail into the gulches and ravines of the Snowy ridge, some of them were able to fix their trained eyes on quartz veins such as they had seen at home, and, scattered through the solid rock, to detect sparkling grains of gold which might long have escaped less practised observers. And through the same men, skilled in the fashion and use of the machinery found best and simplest for crushing and separating the gold, the necessary apparatus was speedily obtained and set to work to prove the richness of the new deposits. This richness may be judged of by the following statements:—

“Some of the chief quartz workings are in Nevada and Mariposa Counties, but the best known are on the rancho or large estate bought by Colonel Fremont from Alvarado, the Mexican governor. They are those of Mariposa, Agua Fria, Nouveau Monde, West Mariposa, and Ave Maria—the first leased by an American company, the third by a French, and the others by English companies. Some of the quartz has been assayed for £7000 in the ton of rock. A Mariposa specimen was in the Great Exhibition.

“The Agua Fria mine was surveyed and examined by Captain W. A. Jackson, the well-known engineer of Virginia, U.S., in October 1850, for which purpose openings were made by a cross-cut of sufficient depth to test the size of the vein and the richness of the ore. The vein appears to be of a nearly uniform thickness—of from three and a half to four and a half feet—and its direction a few points to the north of east; the inclination of the vein being 45°. Of the ore, some specimens were transmitted to the United States Mint in January 1851; and the report of the assays then made, showed that 277 lb. of ore produced 173 oz. of gold—value 3222 dollars, or upwards of £650 sterling; being at the rate of £5256 a ton.

“The contents of the vein running through the property, which is about 600 feet in length, and crops out on a hill rising about 150 to 200 feet above the level of the Agua Fria Creek, is estimated at about 18,000 tons of ore to the water level only; and how far it may descend below that, is not at present known.

“The West Mariposa mine, under Colonel Fremont’s lease, has a vein of quartz which runs the whole length of the allotment, averages six feet in thickness, and has been opened in several places. The assay of Messrs Johnson and Mathey states that a poor specimen of 11 oz. 9 dwt. 18 grains, produced of gold 2 dwt. 17 grains, which would give £1347 per ton; and a rich specimen, weighing 17 oz. 12 dwt. gave 3 oz. 15 dwt. 9 grains, being at the rate of £24,482 per ton.”—(Wyld, pp. 36–39.)

The nature and durability of the influence which the discovery and working of these rich veins is likely to have, depends upon their requiring capital, and upon their being in the hands of a limited number of adventurers. In consequence of this they cannot be suddenly exhausted, but may continue to yield a constant supply for an indefinite number of years.

In connection with the durability of this supply from the quartz veins—besides the unsettled question as to the actual number and extent of such veins which further exploration will make out—there is the additional question as to how deep these veins will prove rich in gold. Our readers are probably aware that what are called veins are walls, more or less upright, which rise up from an unknown depth through the beds of rock which we have described as overlying each other like the leaves of a book. This wall generally consists of a different material from that of which the rocks themselves consist, and, where a cliff occurs, penetrated by such veins, can readily be distinguished by its colour from the rocks through which it passes. Now, when these veins contain metallic minerals, it has been long observed that, in descending from the surface, the mineral value of the vein undergoes important alterations. Some are rich immediately under the surface of the ground; others do not become so till a considerable depth is reached; while in others, again, the kind of mineral changes altogether as we descend. In Hungary the richest minerals are met with at a depth of eighty or a hundred fathoms. In Transylvania, veins of gold, in descending, become degraded into veins of lead. In Cornwall, some of the copper veins increase in richness the greater the depth to which the mine is carried; while others, which have yielded copper near the surface, have gradually become rich in tin as the depth increased.[^[20]]

Now, in regard to the auriferous quartz veins, it is the result of past experience that they are often rich in the upper part, but become poorer as the explorations are deepened, and soon cease to pay the expense of working. In this respect it is just possible that the Californian veins may not agree with those of the Ural and of other regions, though this is a point which the lapse of years only can settle. Two things, however, are in favour of the greater yield of the Californian veins than those of other countries in past times—that they will be explored by a people who abound in capital, in engineering skill, and in energy, and that it is now ascertained that veins may be profitably rich in gold, though the particles are too small to be discerned by the naked eye. Thus, while all the explorations will be made with skill and economy, many veins will be mined into, which in other countries have been passed over with neglect; and the extraction of gold from all—but especially from the poorer sands and veins—will be aided by the second circumstance to which we have adverted as peculiar to California, the possession of vast stores of quicksilver.

“The most important, if not the most valuable, of the mineral products of this wonderful country, is its quicksilver. The localities of several mines of this metal are already known, but the richest yet discovered is the one called Forbes’s mines, about sixty miles from San Francisco, near San José. Originally discovered and denounced, according to the Mexican laws then in force, it fell under the commercial management of Forbes of Tepic, who also has some interest in it. The original owner of the property on which it is situated, endeavoured to set aside the validity of the denouncement; but whether on tenable grounds or otherwise, I know not. At this mine, by the employment of a small number of labourers, and two common iron kettles for smelting, they have already sold quicksilver to the amount of 200,000 dollars, and have now some two hundred tons of ore awaiting the smelting process. The cinnabar is said to yield from sixty to eighty per cent of pure metal, and there is no doubt that its average product reaches fifty per cent. The effect of these immensely rich deposits of quicksilver, upon the wealth and commerce of the world, can scarcely be too highly estimated, provided they are kept from the clutches of the great monopolists. Not only will its present usefulness in the arts be indefinitely extended and increased by new discoveries of science, but the extensive mines of gold and silver in Mexico, Chili, and Peru, hitherto unproductive, will now be made available by its application.”—(Johnson’s Sights in the Gold Region, p. 201.)

By mere washing with water, it is impossible to extract the finer particles and scales of gold either from the natural sand or from the pounded rock. But an admixture and agitation with quicksilver licks up and dissolves every shining speck, and carries it, with the fluid metal, to the bottom of the vessel. The amalgam, as it is called, of gold and quicksilver thus obtained, when distilled in a close vessel, yields up its quicksilver again with little loss, and leaves the pure gold behind. For the perfect extraction of the gold, therefore, from its ores, quicksilver is absolutely necessary, and it can be performed most cheaply where the latter metal is cheapest and most abundant. Hence the mineral conditions of California seem specially fitted to make it an exception to all gold countries heretofore investigated, or of which we have any detailed accounts. They promise it the ability to supply a large export of gold, probably long after the remunerative freshness of the diggings, properly so called, whether wet or dry, shall have been worn off.

But both the actual yearly produce of gold, and the probable permanence of the supply, have been greatly increased by the still more recent discoveries in Australia. A wider field has been opened up here for speculation and adventure than North-Western America in its best days ever presented. We have already adverted to the circumstances which preceded and attended the discovery of gold in this country, and new research seems daily to add to the number of districts over which the precious metal is spread. It is impossible, however, even to guess over how much of this vast country the gold field may extend, and of richness enough to make washing possible and profitable. The basin of the river Murray, in the feeders of which gold has been found in very many places, has a mean length from north to south of 1400 miles, and a breadth of 400—comprising an area of from 500,000 to 600,000 square miles. This is four times the area of California, and five times that of the British Islands; but whether the gold is generally diffused over this wide area, or whether it is confined to particular and limited localities, there has not as yet been time to ascertain.

It is chiefly in the head waters or feeders of the greater streams which flow through this vast basin that the metal has hitherto been met with; but the peculiar physical character of the creeks, and of the climate in these regions, suggests the probability that the search will be profitably extended downwards along the entire course of the larger rivers. Every reader of Australian tours and travels is aware of the deep and sudden floods to which the great rivers of the country are subject, and of the disastrous inundations to which the banks of the river Murray are liable. The lesser creeks or feeders of this river, in which the washings are now prosecuted, are liable to similar visitations. The Summerhill creek, for example, at its junction with the Lewis river, is described as fifty or sixty yards wide, and the “water as sometimes rising suddenly twenty feet.” Now, supposing the gold drift to have been originally confined to the districts through which the upper waters of these rivers flow, the effect of such floods, repeated year by year, must have been to wash out from their banks and bottoms, and to diffuse along the lower parts of their channels, or of the valleys they flooded, the lighter portions, at least, of metallic riches in which the upper country abounded. The larger particles or lumps may have remained higher up: but all that the force of a deep stream in its sudden flood could carry down, may be expected among the sands and gravels, and in the wider river beds, and occasionally flooded tracts of the lower country. In other words, there is reason to believe that from its head waters on the western slopes of the Australian Alps, to its mouth at Adelaide, the Murray will be found to some degree productive in gold, and more or less remunerative to future diggers.

But there is in reality no reason to believe that the gold of the great Australian basin was ever confined—at least since the region became covered with drift—to the immediate neighbourhood of the mountains, or to the valleys through which its mountain streams pursue their way. We have already fully explained that it is not to the action of existing rivers on the native gold-bearing rocks of the mountain, that the presence of the precious metal in their sands is generally due, but to that of numerous degrading causes, operating simultaneously and at a more ancient period, when the whole valley was covered deep with water. By these, the debris of the mountains here, as in California, must have been spread more or less uniformly over the entire western plain. This vast area, therefore, comprehending so many thousand square miles, may, through all its drifted sands and gravels, be impregnated with metallic particles. Dry diggings, consequently, may be hereafter opened at great distances from the banks of existing streams. Time alone, in fact, can tell over how much of this extensive region it will pay the adventurer to dig and wash the wide-spread depths of drift.

Then there is the province of Victoria, south of the Australian Alps, in which gold is described as most plentiful. The streams which descend from the southern slope of these mountains are numerous, in consequence of the peculiarly large quantity of rain which falls on this part of Australia,[^[21]] and over a breadth of 200 miles they are represented as all rich in gold. And besides, the country east of the meridian chain, between Bathurst and the sea, and all the still unknown portion of the Australian continent, have yet to add their stores to those of Victoria and of the basin of the Murray. And though we do not know to what extent quartz veins prevail in the mountains of New South Wales, we have authentic statements as to their existence not very remote from Bathurst, and as to their being rich in gold. Here also, therefore, as in California, there may be a permanent source of gold supply, which may continue to yield, after the washings have ceased to be greatly remunerative—which may even augment in productiveness as that of the sands declines. On the whole, then, although it is impossible to form any estimate of the actual amount of gold which year by year the great new mining fields are destined to supply to the markets of the world, yet we think two deductions may be assumed as perfectly certain from the facts we have stated—first, that the average annual supply for the next ten years is likely to be greater than it ever was since the commencement of authentic history—and second, that the supply, though the washings fall off, will be kept up for an indefinite period, by the exploration of the gold-bearing quartz veins in Australia and America.

In the table we have copied from Mr Wyld, the produce of gold for 1851 is estimated—guessed is a better word—at £22,500,000. Advices from Melbourne to the 22d of December state that the receipts of gold in that place in a single day had amounted to 16,333 ounces—that the total produce of the Ballarat and Mount Alexander diggings, from their discovery on the 29th September to the 17th of December, two months and a half, had been 243,414 ounces, valued at £730,242—that from twenty thousand to thirty thousand persons were employed at the diggings—and that the auriferous grounds, already known, which can be profitably worked, cannot be dug for years to come “by any number of people that can by possibility reach them.” Those from Sydney calculate the export from that place to have been at the rate of three millions sterling a-year; while the report of the Government Commissioners, “On the extent and capability of the mines in New South Wales,” gives it as their unanimous opinion, that they offer a “highly remunerative employment to at least a hundred thousand persons—four times the number now employed.” With these data, there appears no exaggeration in the estimate now made in the colony, that the yearly export of gold will not be less than seven or eight millions sterling. With this more accurate knowledge of the capabilities of Australia than was possessed when Mr Wyld’s estimate was made, and with the hopes and rumours that exist as to other new sources of supply, are we wrong in guessing that the total produce of gold alone, for the present and some succeeding years, cannot be less than £25,000,000 to £30,000,000 sterling? What was the largest yield of the most fruitful mines in ancient times compared with this? The annual product of the ancient Egyptian mines of gold and silver is said by Herodotus to have been inscribed on the walls of the palace of the ancient kings at Thebes, and the sum, as he states it in Grecian money, was equal to six millions sterling! This Jacob[^[22]] considers to be a gross exaggeration; but he believes, nevertheless, that “the produce of the mines of that country, together with that of the other countries whose gold and silver was deposited there, far exceeded the quantity drawn from all the mines of the then known world in subsequent ages, down to the discovery of America.”

And what did America yield after the discovery by Columbus, (1492,) and the triumphs of Cortes and Pizarro? Humboldt estimates the annual yield of gold, from the plunder of the people and from the mines united—

From	1492 to 1521 at	£52,000
„	1521 to 1546 at	£630,000

And from the discovery of the silver mine of Potosi in 1545, to the end of the century, the produce of silver and gold together was about £2,100,000 from America; and from America and Europe together, £2,250,000 a-year.

Again, during the eighteenth century, the yearly produce of the precious metals—gold and silver together—obtained from the mines of Europe, Africa, and America, is estimated by Mr Jacob (ii. p. 167) at £8,000,000; and for the twenty years previous to 1830, at about £5,000,000 sterling.[^[23]] And although the greatly enlarged produce of the Russian mines, in gold especially, has come in to make up for the failure or stoppage of the American mines since 1800, yet what does the largest of all past yields of gold amount to, compared with the quadrupled or quintupled supply there seems now fair and reasonable grounds for expecting?

And what are to be the consequences of the greatly augmented supply of gold which these countries promise? Among the first will be to provoke and stimulate the mining industry of other countries to new activity and new researches; and thus, by a natural reaction, to add additional intensity to the cause of change. Such was the effect of the discovery of America upon mining in Europe, and especially in Germany. “In fourteen years after 1516, not less than twenty-five noble veins were discovered in Joachimsthal in Bohemia, and in sixty years they yielded 1,250,000 marcs of silver.”[^[24]] And,

“The discovery of America, and of the mines it contained,” says Mr Jacob, “seems to have kindled a most vehement passion for exploring the bowels of the earth in search of gold in most of the countries of Europe, but in no part of it to so great an extent as in the Bishopric of Salzburg. The inhabitants of that country seemed to think themselves within reach of the Apple of the Hesperides and of the Golden Fleece, and about to find in their streams the Pactolus of antiquity. Between the years 1538 and 1562,[^[25]] more than a thousand leases of mines were taken. The greatest activity prevailed, and one or two large fortunes were made.”—(Jacob, i. p. 250.)

This impulse has already been felt as the consequence of recent discovery. The New York papers have just announced the discovery of new deposits of gold in Virginia, “equal to the richest in California;” in Queen Charlotte’s Island gold is said to have been found in great abundance; in New Caledonia and New Zealand it is spoken of; and the research after the precious metal is at the present moment propagating itself throughout the civilised world. And that the activity thus awakened is likely to be rewarded by many new discoveries, and by larger returns in old localities, will appear certain, when we consider, first, that the geological position and history of gold-producing regions is far better understood now than it ever was before; second, that the value of quartz veins, previously under-estimated, has been established by the Californian explorations, and must lead in other countries to new researches and new trials; thirdly, that the increased supply of quicksilver which California promises may call into new life hosts of deserted mines in Southern America and elsewhere; and, lastly, that improved methods of extraction, which the progress of chemical science is daily supplying, are rendering profitable the poorer mines which in past days it was found necessary to abandon.

About the end of the seventeenth century the reduction in the price of quicksilver, consequent on the supplies drawn from the mines of Idria, greatly aided the mines of Mexico, (Jacob, ii. p. 153;) and of the effects of better methods Rose gives the following illustrations, in his description of the celebrated Schlangenberg mine in Siberia:—

“At first, ores containing only four solotniks of silver were considered unfit for smelting, and were employed in the mines for filling up the waste. These have long already been taken out, and replaced by poorer ores, which in their turn will probably by-and-by be replaced by still poorer.”—“The ancient inhabitants washed out the gold from the ochre of these mines, as is evident from the heaps of refuse which remain on the banks of the river Smejewka. This refuse has been found rich enough in gold to pay for washing and extracting anew.”[^[26]]

The history of all mining districts, and of all smelting and refining processes,[^[27]] present us with similar facts; and the aspects of applied science, in our day, are rich in their promise of such improvements for the future. If, therefore, to all the considerations we have presented we add those from which writers like M’Culloch[^[28]] had previously anticipated an increased supply of the precious metals—such as the pacification of Southern America, and the application of new energy to the mines of that country, and probably under the direction of a new race—the calmest and coolest of our readers will, we think, coincide with us in anticipating from old sources, as well as from new, an increased and prolonged production of the precious metals.

Of the social and political consequences of these discoveries, the most striking and attractive are those which are likely to be manifested in the immediate neighbourhood—using the word in a large sense—of the countries in which the new gold mines have been met with. The peopling of California and Australia—the development of the boundless traffic which Western America and the islands of the Australasian, Indian, and Chinese seas are fitted to support—the annexation of the Sandwich Islands(!)—the establishment of new and independent dominions on the great islands to the south and west—the throng of great ships and vessels of war we can in anticipation see dotting and over-awing the broad Pacific—the influence, political and social, of these new nations on the old dominions and civilisation of the fabled East, and of still mysterious China and hidden Japan;—we may almost speak of this forward vision, as Playfair has written of the effect upon his mind of Hutton’s expositions of the past—“The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time; and while we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher, who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much further reason may sometimes go than imagination can venture to follow.”

But its influence, though less dazzling, will be as deep and perceptible upon the social relations of the older monarchies of Europe. Our own richly commercial and famed agricultural country, and its dependencies, will be especially affected. Prices will nominally rise—commerce and general industry will be stimulated—and a gilding of apparent prosperity will overspread class interests, which would otherwise languish and decline. How far this is likely to be favourable to the country, on the whole—to interfere with, disguise, or modify the effect of party measures—we have recently discussed in previous articles, and shall for the present pass by.

Perhaps that portion of its influence which, in this country of great money fortunes, and in some of the Continental states, is attracting most attention, is the change likely to be produced by it in the bullion market, especially in the relative values of gold and silver, and even (should this not materially alter, in consequence of an enlarged produce from the silver mines) in the real value of annuities, stock, and bonds of every description. It has occasionally happened in ancient times, that by a sudden large influx of gold the comparative value of that metal has been lowered in an extraordinary degree. Thus Strabo, in his Geography, (book iv. chap. vi. sect. 9,) has the following passage:—

“Polybius relates that, in his time, mines of gold were found among the Taurisci Norici, in the neighbourhood of Aquilea, so rich that, in digging to the depth of two feet only, gold was met with, and that the ordinary sinkings did not exceed fifteen feet; that part of it was in the form of native gold, in pieces as large as a bean or a lupin, which lost only one-eighth in the fire; and that the rest, though requiring more purification, gave a considerable product; that some Italians, having associated themselves with the barbarians to work the mines, in the space of two months the price of gold fell one-third throughout the whole of Italy; and that the Taurisci, having seen this, expelled their foreign partners, and sold the metal themselves.”[^[29]]

Were anything of this nature to happen—though very far less in degree—as a consequence of the recent discoveries, it could not fail to produce a serious monetary revolution, and much pecuniary distress, both individual and general, which the wisest legislation could neither wholly prevent nor remove. Such a sudden and extreme effect many have actually anticipated from them, and measures have, in consequence, been taken, even by Continental governments, such as are detailed in the following passage from Mr Wyld’s pamphlet:—

“Among the many extraordinary incidents connected with the Californian discoveries, was the alarm communicated to many classes, which was not confined to individuals, but invaded governments. The first announcement spread alarm; but, as the cargoes of gold rose from a hundred thousand dollars to a million, bankers and financiers began seriously to prepare for an expected crisis. In England and the United States the panic was confined to a few; but, on the Continent of Europe, every government, rich and poor, thought it needful to make provision against the threatened evils. The governments of France, Holland, and Russia, in particular, turned their attention to the monetary question; and, in 1850, the government of Holland availed itself of a law, which had not before been put in operation, to take immediate steps for selling off the gold in the banks of Amsterdam, at what they supposed to be the then highest prices, and to stock themselves with silver. This operation was carried on concurrently with a supply of bullion to Russia for a loan, a demand for silver in Austria, and for shipment to India; and it did really produce an effect on the silver market.

“The particular way in which the Netherlands operations were carried out was especially calculated to produce the greatest disturbance of prices. The ten-florin gold pieces were sent to Paris, coined there into napoleons, and silver five-franc pieces drawn out in their place. At Paris, the premium on gold, in a few months, fell from nearly two per cent to a discount, and at Hamburg a like fall took place. In London, the great silver market, silver rose between the autumn and the New Year, from 5s. per oz. to 5s. 1⅝d. per oz., and Mexican dollars from 4s. 10½d. to 4s. 11⅝d. per oz.; nor did prices recover until towards the end of the year 1851, when the fall was as sudden as the rise.”—(Wyld, pp. 20, 21.)

Now, without identifying ourselves with any unreasonable fears, or partaking of the alarms occasionally expressed, either at home or abroad, we cannot shut our eyes to the certainty of a serious amount of influence being exercised upon monetary and financial affairs, by a long continuance of the increased supplies of gold which are now pouring into the European and American markets. We concede all that can fairly be demanded, in the way of increased supply—to meet the wants of the new commerce springing up in the Pacific and adjacent seas—to allow of the increased coinage which the new States in North America, and the growing population of our own colonies require—to make up for the extending use of gold and silver in articles of luxury which increasing wealth and improving arts must occasion—to restore the losses from hoarding, from shipwreck, from wear and tear of coin, and the thousand other causes of waste—and to admit of the large yearly storing of coin for the purposes of emigration: all that can fairly be demanded to meet these and other exigencies we admit; and yet there will still, at the present rate of yield, be a large annual surplus, which must gradually cheapen gold in the market. There are no data upon which we can base any calculations as to the yearly consumption of gold alone for all these purposes; but estimates have been made by Humboldt, Jacob, and M’Culloch, of the probable consumption of gold and silver together, up to a very recent period. The latter author disposes of the annual supply of the metals—estimated at nine millions before the recent discoveries—in the following manner:—

Consumption in the arts in Europe and America,	£4,840,000
Exportation to Australia and India,	2,600,000
Waste of coin (at 1 per cent,)	1,600,000
Making together,	£9,040,000

which was very nearly the supposed yield of all known mines, when Mr M’Culloch’s estimate was made. If we add a half to all these items—as we conceive a very liberal allowance—we shall have a round sum of thirteen and a half millions sterling of gold and silver together, as sufficient to supply all the wants of increasing use in the arts, waste in coinage, extending commerce, colonial settlement, State extension, and Eastern exportation. But the actual produce

for 1851 is estimated at	£30,000,000
and if we deduct	13,500,000
there remains a balance of	£16,500,000

—irrespective of all increase which is likely to be caused by the extension of the Australian gold field, and by the operation of the various other causes we have adverted to in the present article. This surplus also will consist chiefly of gold; so that whatever interest may otherwise attach to the curious fact stated by Mr Wyld, it is clear that his conclusion is premature, that no alteration is to be looked for in the relative market values of the two precious metals. Only a greatly increased activity and produce in the silver mines can prevent it.

But, independent of the question as between the two metals, there remains as certain the influence of the surplus gold supply upon the general bullion and other markets. The immediate demands, or actual outlets for increased coinage, may for a few years absorb even this large surplus, but its final action in lowering the comparative value of gold, and in altering nominal prices and values generally, cannot be reasonably doubted.

LIFE OF NIEBUHR.[^[30]]

The name of Niebuhr is so inveterately associated with certain profound discussions in historical criticism, that we must beg our readers to read twice over the notice at the foot of our page, in order to assure themselves that it is not the History of Rome, but the Life of its author, that we are about to bring before their attention. We shall hardly, perhaps, be able to abstain from some glance at that method of historical criticism so justly connected with the name of Niebuhr, but it is the life and personal character of the man which will occupy us on the present occasion.

One observation on that historical criticism we will at once permit ourselves to make, because it has a distinct bearing upon the intellectual character of Niebuhr, as well as on the peculiarities of his historical work. The distinguishing character of that school of historical criticism, of which he may be considered the founder, is not its scepticism, for it was no new thing to doubt of the extraordinary events related of the early periods of Roman, or of any other history. There have been always people sceptically disposed. Our David Hume could very calmly give it as his opinion that true history begins with the first page of Thucydides. It was nothing new, therefore, to disturb our faith in the earlier portions of the Roman history, or to pronounce them to be fables. The novelty lay in the higher and more patient and more philosophical manner in which those fables were investigated, and their origin, and their true place and connection with history, determined. The elder sceptic, having satisfied himself that a narrative was fabulous, threw it aside: the modern critic follows the spirit, the life of the nation, into the fable itself. He does not attempt, as the half-doubting, half-believing historian has done, to shape it at once to the measure of modern credence, by merely modifying a few of the details, reducing an extravagance, or lopping off a miracle; but, taking his stand on whatever facts remain indisputable, or whatever knowledge may be obtained from collateral sources, he investigates thoroughly the fabulous or poetic narrative. He endeavours to transport himself into the times when men thought after a poetic fashion—or, at all events, when pleasure and excitement, not accuracy and instruction, were the objects they aimed at; he labours to form an estimate of the circumstances that kindled their imagination, to show how the fable grew, and thus to extract from it, in every sense of the word, its full historical significance.

How difficult such a task, and how precarious, after all, the result of such labours, we must leave at present to the reflection of our readers. What we have here to observe is, that such a method of historical criticism is not to be pursued by a mind stored only with dry erudition, or gifted only with the faculty of withholding its belief. Such store of erudition is indispensable, but it must be combined with that strong power of imagination which can recall into one vivid picture the scattered knowledge gained from many books, and which enables its possessor to live in the scenes and in the minds of the bygone ages of humanity. Accordingly, it is this combination of ardent imagination with most multifarious erudition that we meet with in Niebuhr; and it is not the life of a dry pedant, or of one of cold sceptical understanding, or of a mere philologer, that we have here presented to us.

These two volumes are extremely entertaining. They are chiefly composed of the letters of Niebuhr; nor do we remember to have ever encountered a series of letters of more unflagging interest. This interest they owe in great measure to the strongly-marked personal character of the writer. They are not only good letters, containing always something that suggests reflection, but they sustain their biographical or dramatic character throughout. It ought to be added, too, that they are most agreeably translated. The work has been altogether judiciously planned, and ably executed. A candid and explicit preface at once informs us of the sources from which it is derived; we are forewarned that many materials requisite to a complete life of Niebuhr still remain inaccessible; meanwhile, what is here presented to us bears an authentic stamp, and appears, as matters stand, to be the best biography that could be given to the English public. Of the merits of Niebuhr himself the author has preferred that others should speak. He has chosen almost entirely to restrict himself within the modest province of the translator or the editor. Into the motives of this reticence we have no business to pry: whatever is done, is done well; whatever is promised is ably performed. A book professing to be the Life of Niebuhr will excite some expectations which this publication will not satisfy; but when an author limits himself to a distinct and serviceable task, and performs that task well, he is entitled to our unreserved thanks, and to our simple commendation, unmixed with any murmur of complaint.

Interesting as we have found this book, still the perusal of two compact octavo volumes may deter some readers who might desire, at a rather less cost of time, to obtain an insight into the life and character of Niebuhr. To such readers the following abbreviated sketch may not be unacceptable. We must premise that the present work is founded on a memoir of Niebuhr published by his sister-in-law, Madame Hensler. This consists of a series of his letters divided into sections, each section being preceded by such biographical notice as was necessary to their explanation. The English author has retained this arrangement, adding, however, considerably to the narrative of Madame Hensler from other authentic sources, and omitting such of the letters as he judged might be devoid of interest. Nearly one-half of these, we are told, have been omitted—chiefly on the ground that they were on learned subjects, and might detract from the interest of the biography. We have no doubt that a sound discretion has been exercised on this point; nevertheless we trust that these two volumes will meet with sufficient encouragement to induce the author to publish that third volume at which he hints, and which is to contain “the letters referred to, together with the most valuable portions of his smaller writings.” We sincerely hope that one who has performed this task so well will continue to render the same good services to the English public. The arrangement we have alluded to—that of letters divided into sections, with a biographical notice at the head of each, sufficient to carry us over the ensuing section—seems to us very preferable to the ordinary plan of our memoir writers, who attach the explanatory notice to each separate letter. Under this last plan, one never settles down fairly to letter-reading. We cannot, of course, in the following sketch, retain the advantages of this arrangement, but must put together our facts and our quotations in the best order we can.

Idle and cursory readers, who have only heard or thought of Niebuhr as the provoking destroyer of some agreeable fictions—as the ruthless enemy of poetic and traditionary lore—will be surprised to find what a deep earnestness of conviction there was in this man, and how his enthusiasm for truth and for all virtue rises into romance. Once for all, let no man parade his love of poetry, with the least hope of being respected for it, who has not a still greater love of truth. Nay, if we reflect patiently and calmly upon this matter, we shall find that there is but one way to keep this flower of poesy in perennial bloom—it is to see that the waters of truth are flowing free and clear around it. We may be quite sure that to whatever level this stream, by its own vital force, shall rise or sink, the same fair lily will be seen floating just on the surface of it. Just where these waters lie open to the light of heaven, do we find this beautiful creation looking up from them into the sky.

The scene and circumstances amongst which the childhood of Niebuhr was passed, appear to us to be singularly in accordance with the future development and character of the man. They were favourable to concentration of thought, and to an independent, self-relying spirit; they were favourable to the exercise of an imagination which was fed continually by objects remote from the senses, and by knowledge obtained from books, or else from conversation with his father, who was both a learned man and a great traveller. If nature, in one of her freaks—or, let us say, if some German fairies, of an erudite species, had resolved to breed a great scholar, who should be an independent thinker—who should be devoted to books, yet retain a spirit of self-reliance—who should have all the learning of colleges without their pedantry, and read through whole libraries, and yet retain his free, unfettered right of judgment—how would they have proceeded to execute their project? Would they have thrown their little pupil at the feet of some learned professor at Bonn or Göttingen? Not at all. They would have carried their changeling into some wild tract of country, shut him up there with his books, and given him for his father a linguist and a traveller. They would have provided for him just those circumstances into which young Niebuhr was thrown. His childish imagination was no sooner kindled than he found himself wandering in all quarters of the globe, and listening to the stories of the most remote ages.

This father of our historian—Carsten Niebuhr—was himself a remarkable man; full of energy, of great perseverance, and of strong feelings. He had been one of five travellers despatched by the Danish Government on an expedition of discovery into the East. In crossing the deserts of Arabia, his four companions sank under the hardships and calamities they encountered. This was in the first year of their journey; nevertheless, he pursued his way alone, and spent six years in exploring the East. He had returned to Copenhagen, and “was on the point,” says our biography, “of undertaking a journey into the interior of Africa, when he fell in love with a young orphan lady, the daughter of the late physician to the King of Denmark.” He gives up Africa, and all the world of travel and discovery, for this “young orphan lady;” and a few years after his marriage, we find him settled down at Meldorf, as land-schreiber to the province of South Dithmarsh—a civil post, whose duties seem chiefly to have concerned the revenues of the province.

This Meldorf is a little, decayed, antiquated town, not without its traditions of municipal privileges; and Dithmarsh is what its name suggests to an English ear—an open marshy district, without hills or trees, with nothing but the general sky, which we all happily share in, to give it any beauty. One figures to one’s self the traveller, who had been exploring the sunny regions of the East, or who had been living at Copenhagen, in the society of scholars and of statesmen, retiring, with his young orphan lady, to this dreary Dithmarsh, peopled only by peasantry. Even the high-road runs miles off from his habitation, so that no chance can favour him, and no passing or belated traveller rests at his door. He occupies his spare hours in building himself a house; in which operation there is one little fellow standing by who takes infinite delight. This is our Barthold George Niebuhr, who had been born in Copenhagen on the 27th of August 1776. He and an elder sister will be principal inhabitants of the new house when it is built, and their education be the chief care and occupation of the traveller.

Barthold is in his sixth or seventh year when his father writes thus of him:—

“He studied the Greek alphabet only for a single day, and had no further trouble with it: he did it with very little help from me. The boy gets on wonderfully. Boje says he does not know his equal; but he requires to be managed in a peculiar way. May God preserve our lives, and give us grace to manage him aright! Oh if he could but learn to control the warmth of his temper—I believe I might say his pride! He is no longer so passionate with his sister: but if he stumbles in the least in repeating his lessons, or if his scribblings are alluded to, he fires up instantly. He cannot bear to be praised for them; because he believes he does not deserve it. In short, I repeat it, he is proud; he wants to know everything, and is angry if he does not know it.... My wife complains that I find fault with Barthold unnecessarily. I did not mean to do so. He is an extraordinarily good little fellow; but he must be managed in an extraordinary way; and I pray God to give me wisdom and patience to educate him properly.”

Here we have “his picture in little;” the wonderful quickness and application, the extreme conscientiousness, and the warmth of temper which distinguished the man Niebuhr through his career. But who is this Boje, who says “he does not know his equal?” And how happens it that there is any one in Meldorf—a place, we are told, quite destitute of literary society—who is entitled to give an opinion on the subject? This Boje was ex-editor of the Deutsches Museum, and translator, we believe, of Walter Scott’s novels; and has been lately appointed prefect of the province. His coming is a great event to the Niebuhrs, a valuable acquisition to their society, and of especial importance to young Barthold; for Boje has “an extensive library, particularly rich in English and French, as well as German books,” to which library our youthful and indefatigable student is allowed free access. French and English he has, from a very early age, been learning from his father and mother. Are we not right in saying, that no Teutonic fairies could have done better for their pupil? By way of nursery tale, his father amuses him with strange accounts of Eastern countries, of the Turks, of sultans, of Mahomet and the caliphs. He is already a politician. “He had an imaginary empire called Low-England, of which he drew maps, and he promulgated laws, waged wars, and made treaties of peace there.” Then comes Boje to give him his first lesson upon myths. The literary prefect of Dithmarsh, writing to a friend, says:—

“This reminds me of little Niebuhr. His docility, his industry, his devoted love for me, procure me many a pleasant hour. A short time back, I was reading Macbeth aloud to his parents, without taking any notice of him, till I saw what an impression it made on him. Then I tried to render it intelligible to him, and even explained to him how the witches were only poetical beings. When I was gone, he sat down, (he is not yet seven years old,) and wrote it all out on seven sheets of paper, without omitting one important point, and certainly without any expectation of receiving praise for it; for, when his father asked to see what he had written, and showed it to me, he cried for fear he had not done it well. Since then, he writes down everything of importance that he hears from his father or me. We seldom praise him, but just quietly tell him when he has made any mistake, and he avoids the fault for the future.”

Very surprising accounts are given of the boy’s precocious sagacity in picturing to himself a historic scene, with all its details, or following out the probable course of events. These accounts are rather too surprising. When the war broke out in Turkey, it so excited his imagination that he not only dreamt of it, but anticipated in his dreams, and we suppose also in his waking hours, the current of events. His notions were so just, and his knowledge of the country, and the situations of the towns, so accurate, that, we are told, “the realisation of his nightly anticipations generally appeared in the journals a short time afterwards.” One would say that the fairies had indeed been with him. Madame Hensler’s narrative partakes here, in some measure, of that marvellous character which accompanies family traditions of all kinds, whether of the Roman gens or the Danish household. But on other occasions, and from Niebuhr’s own words, we learn that, owing to his minute knowledge, his most tenacious memory, and his vivid imagination, he, at a very early time, manifested that spirit of quite philosophical divination which led him to his discoveries in Roman history. We say quite philosophical divination; for we do not suppose that Niebuhr claimed for himself, or his friends for him, any mysterious intuition into the course of events; but there is occasionally, both in the memoir and in the letters, a vagueness of expression on this subject which might lead to misapprehension, and which one wishes had been avoided.

We must now follow this precocious pupil to the University at Kiel. A lad of seventeen, we find him already a companion for professors. Writing home to his parents, he says of Dr Hensler:—“My ideas about the origin of the Greek tribes, the history of the colonisation of the Greek cities, and my notions in general about the earliest migration from west to east, are new to him; and he thinks it probable that they may be correct. He exhorts me to work them out, and bring them into as clear a form as I can.” Meanwhile, he is to be occupied, heart and soul, in studying metaphysics under Reinhold, one of the most celebrated disciples of Kant. To enumerate the studies in which he is alternately engaged, would be to pass in review the whole series of subjects which are taught in a university; just as, at a somewhat later period, to enumerate all the languages which he had learnt, would be simply to name in order every language which a European scholar, by the aid of grammar and dictionary, could learn. His father, with a very excusable pride, makes out, in one of his letters, a list of his son’s attainments of this kind: he was, more or less, master of some twenty languages.

In this philologist, however, there was no want of poetic feeling or vivid imagination. When reading the ancients, he completely lived in their world and with them. He once told a friend who had called on him and found him in great emotion, that he often could not bear to read more than a few pages at a time in the old tragic poets; he realised so vividly all that was said, and done, and suffered. “He could see Antigone leading her blind father—the aged Œdipus entering the grove—he could catch the music of their speech.” Neither in this youth, so stored, so fed with books, was there any deadness of heart towards the living friend. We have some letters full of a painful sensitiveness at the apprehension that his correspondent had forgotten or grown cold towards him. The gravest fault in his character was too quick a temper; but if this led him to take offence unjustly, he was always sufficiently just and generous to seek for reconciliation. Least of all had his erudition or his erudite labours quenched the moral enthusiasm of his nature. From childhood up to manhood, from manhood to his latest day, the same high sense of moral rectitude pervaded all his judgments, and influenced all his actions. The same boy who would not receive praise if he did not think he deserved it, in after years would not draw a salary if he did not think it was rigidly earned, nor accept a present even from a municipality—from the city of Geneva—for rendering a service which he had spontaneously performed. At the university of Kiel we find him breaking with an intimate friend, and much to his own regret, because he finds that friend holding philosophical tenets destructive, as he thinks, of the sentiment of moral obligation. “He is a fatalist and indifferentist. I subscribe to Kant’s principles with all my heart. I have broken with M., not from any dispute we have had, but on account of the detestable conclusions which necessarily follow from his opinions, conclusions that absolutely annihilate morality. I really loved him notwithstanding, but, with such principles, I could not be his friend.” Considering the singular and precarious tenure by which a Kantian holds his faith in the freedom of the will, this was rather severe dealing, not a quite perfect example of philosophical toleration; but it shows, at least, that the heart was in the right place.

Up to this moment have not the fairies done well? But now comes a new element into the calculations, a new phase of the drama, with which no fairies condescend to deal. Young Niebuhr like the rest of us must live, must earn the wherewithal, must choose his career, his profession. Here the fairies forsake him. Here, in more true and prosaic style, he is unfaithful to himself. We cannot but regard it as the great and continuous error of his life, that he did not devote himself to learning as his profession. He could have done so. At the very same time there came an offer of a professorship, and a proposal to be the private secretary of Count Schimmelman, the Danish minister of finance. He chose the latter. That the professorship offered to him was connected with but slender emolument, can have had little to do with the determination, because other and more eminent and more lucrative professorships would have speedily been open to him, and because the mere love of money was never a strong inducement in the mind of Niebuhr. Political ambition seems to have been the motive that turned the scale. Looking now at his life as an accomplished completed career, it is impossible not to regret this choice. We see ten of the most precious years of his early manhood wasted in financial and other public business, which a hundred others could have transacted as well; it is, in fact, a mere fragment of his life that is exclusively or uninterruptedly devoted to letters. He is more frequently at the head of some national bank, or revenue department, than in the professor’s chair; and the author of the Roman history has to say of himself, that “calculations are my occupation; merchants, Jews, and brokers, my society.”

Niebuhr had, whilst at the university, formed an acquaintance which led afterwards to a matrimonial engagement. Amelia Behrens, younger sister of Madame Hensler, who was the daughter-in-law of the Professor Hensler previously mentioned, seems from the first to have thoroughly appreciated the high character and great attainments of the young student. She herself must have been a woman of very superior mind; she had great sweetness of temper, and was in every way calculated for the wife of the ardent, generous, hasty, but affectionate Niebuhr. The first mention that is made of Miss Behrens is not very auspicious. In a letter to his father, he has been lamenting his painful timidity and bashfulness before ladies, and thus continues,—“However much I may improve in other society, I am sure I must get worse and worse every day in their eyes; and so, out of downright shyness, I scarcely dare speak to a lady; and as I know, once for all, that I must be insupportable to them, their presence becomes disagreeable to me. Yesterday, however, I screwed up my courage, and began to talk to Miss Behrens and young Mrs Hensler. Now, in gratitude and candour, I must confess that they were sociable enough towards me to have set me at my ease, if my shyness were not so deeply rooted. But it is of no use. I avoid them, and would rather be guilty of impoliteness, by avoiding them, than by speaking to them, which I should now feel to be the greatest impoliteness of all.” Circumstances, however, after he had left the university of Kiel, brought him into social and unreserved communication with the family of the Behrens; and this lady whom he avoided, dreading her precisely because she did interest his youthful imagination, became his betrothed.

Here the biography takes a very eccentric course. Niebuhr not only comes to England on foreign travel, which is precisely what we should expect of such a person, but he settles himself down at Edinburgh as a student. The life seems to go back. After having entered on official duties, engaged himself to be married, and thus pledged himself to the real business of life, we see this erudite youth, with his tale of twenty languages nearly complete, entering the classes at Edinburgh, and writing about them as if he were recommencing his university career. If this work of Madame Hensler were one of old date, and we felt authorised to exercise upon it that conjectural criticism so fashionable in our times, we should boldly say that the authoress, deceived by the similarity of name, had intercalated into her series some letters of another Niebuhr; we should dispute the identity of the Niebuhr who writes from the university of Edinburgh, with him who passed through the university of Kiel, and was afterwards, for a short time, secretary to Count Schimmelman. Such conjectural emendations being, however, altogether inadmissible, we must accept the facts and the letters as they are here given us.

Niebuhr’s motives for this residence in Scotland were, according to Madame Hensler’s account, of a very miscellaneous description. Besides the advantages to be derived from visiting a foreign land, “he was to brace up and strengthen both his mental and physical energies in preparation for active life.” Why this should be better accomplished as a student in Edinburgh than as a citizen in Copenhagen, we do not apprehend; nor what there was in the air of Denmark that had enfeebled the spirit of self-reliance or of enterprise. But we are told that “he had become too dependent on the little details of life. He felt that he stood, so to speak, outside the world of realities.” Therefore he sets himself down for a year as a student at Edinburgh.

London, of course, is first visited. He speaks highly of the English. Throughout his life he entertained a predilection for our countrymen, and extols the integrity and honesty of the national character. We feel a certain bashfulness, a modest confusion, when we hear such praises; but, as national characters nowhere stand very high, we suppose we may accept the compliment. Occasionally we sell our patriotic votes, as at St Alban’s and elsewhere; occasionally we fill our canisters of preserved meats with poisonous offal; and there is not a grocer’s shop in all England where some adulterated article of food is not cheerfully disposed of. Nevertheless, it seems we are a shade more honest than some of our neighbours. The compliment does not greatly rejoice us.

However, it is not all praise that we receive. He finds “that true warm-heartedness is extremely rare” amongst us. We shall be happy to learn that it is commonly to be met with in any part of the world. He laments, too, the superficiality and insipidity of general conversation. “That narrative and commonplaces form the whole staple of conversation, from which all philosophy is excluded—that enthusiasm and loftiness of expression are entirely wanting, depresses me more than any personal neglect of which, as a stranger, I might have to complain. I am, besides, fully persuaded that I shall find things very different in Scotland; of this I am assured by several Scotchmen whom I already know.”

In this full persuasion he sets forth to Scotland. We have an account of his journey, which, read in these railroad times, is amusing enough. The translator of the letters has evidently been determined that we should not miss the humour of the contrast. Niebuhr gives his absent Amelia as minute a description of the mode of travelling as if he were writing from China. After describing the post-chaises, “very pretty half-coaches, holding two,” and the royal mail, rapid, “but inconvenient from the smallness of its build, and particularly liable to be upset,” he proceeds to the old-fashioned stage-coach—

“In travelling by this, you have no further trouble than to take your place in the office for as far as you wish to go; for the proprietor of the coach has, at each stage, which are from ten to fifteen English miles at most from each other, relays of horses, which, unless an unusual amount of travelling causes an exception, stand ready harnessed to be put to the coach. Four horses, drawing a coach with six persons inside, four on the roof, a sort of conductor beside the coachman, and overladen with luggage, have to get over seven English miles in the hour; and, as the coach goes on without ever stopping, except at the principal stages, it is not surprising that you can traverse the whole extent of the country in so few days. But, for any length of time, this rapid motion is quite too unnatural. You can only get a very piecemeal view of the country from the windows, and, with the tremendous speed with which you go, can keep no object long in sight; you are unable also to stop at any place.”

After three days’ travelling “at this tremendous speed,” he reached Newcastle, from which the above letter was dated. The rest of the journey was also performed with the same unnatural rapidity. By some chance he made acquaintance with a young medical student, and the two together commenced housekeeping in Edinburgh on a very frugal and sensible plan.

The letters which Niebuhr wrote to his parents from Edinburgh, and which contained his observations on the graver matters of politics and of learning, were unfortunately burnt; those which were addressed to his betrothed have been alone preserved, and these chiefly concern matters of a domestic and personal nature. We hear, therefore, very little of the more learned society into which, doubtless, Niebuhr occasionally entered. With Professor Playfair he formed an intimacy which was afterwards renewed at Rome. Other names are mentioned, but no particulars are given. The subjects which he principally studied in Edinburgh were mathematics and physical sciences. Philological and historical studies he prosecuted by himself, and by way of recreation. “In these departments he regarded the learned men there as incomparably inferior to the Germans.” A Mr Scott, an old friend of his father’s, and to whom he brought letters of introduction, was the most intimate acquaintance he possessed. The quite patriarchal reception that he received from Mr Scott and his family will be read with interest. As to his impressions of the Scotch, as a people, these are extremely various: he is at one time charmed with their unexampled piety; at another, he finds it a dreary formalism; and then, again, from the height of his Kantian philosophy, he detects a shallow French infidelity pervading the land. Such inconsistencies are natural and excusable in a young man writing down his first impressions in a most unreserved correspondence. But there would be very little gained by quoting them here at length. We pass on from this episode in the life, and now proceed with the main current of events.

On his return to Copenhagen, Niebuhr was appointed assessor at the board of trade for the East India department, with some other secretaryship or clerkship of a similar description. Thereupon he married, (May 1800;) and in some letters written soon after this event, he describes himself as in a quite celestial state of happiness. “Amelia’s heavenly disposition, and more than earthly love, raise me above this world, and as it were separate me from this life.”

Then come official promotion and increased occupation. Nevertheless his favourite studies are never altogether laid aside. The day might be spent at his office or in the exchange, in drawing up reports, in correspondence or in interviews with most uninteresting people, and when the night came he was often exhausted both in body and in mind; yet, “if he got engaged at once in an interesting book or conversation, he was soon refreshed, and would then study till late at night.”

Towards the end of 1805 a distinguished Prussian statesman, whose name is not here given, and who was then at Copenhagen on a mission from his government, sounded Niebuhr on his willingness to enter the Prussian service in the department of finance. After much hesitation and some correspondence, Niebuhr finally accepted a proposal made to him of “the joint-directorship of the first bank in Berlin, and of the Seehandlung,” a privileged commercial company (as a note of the editor informs us) for the promotion of foreign commerce. Such were the labours to which Niebuhr was willing to devote the extraordinary powers of his mind—such were the services which his contemporaries were willing to accept from him. But we have only to glance at the date of these transactions to call to mind that we are traversing no peaceful or settled times. We are, in fact, in the thick of the war. Whilst Niebuhr was working at his assessorship in Copenhagen, that city was bombarded by the English; and now that he goes to take possession of his directorship in Berlin, he has to fly with royalty itself before the armies of Napoleon. The battle of Jena, and many other battles, have been fought and lost, and the French are advancing on the capital. Flight to Memel, ministerial changes, alternate rise and fall of Von Stein and Count Hardenberg—in all these events poor Niebuhr was now implicated. When peace is made with Napoleon, we find him despatched to Holland to negotiate a Dutch loan, the Prussian government being in great distress for money to pay the contributions imposed upon them by the French. Then follows some misunderstanding with Count Hardenberg, who has succeeded to power, which happily interrupts for a time the official career of our great scholar. He is appointed Professor of History in the university of Berlin. In Michaelmas 1810 the university reopened, and Niebuhr delivered his first course of lectures on the history of Rome.

For about three years we now see him in what every one will recognise as his right and legitimate place in the world, and labouring at his true vocation. His lectures excited the keenest interest—he was encouraged to undertake his great work, The History of Rome: it is in this interval that both the first and second volumes were published. An extract from his letters will show the pleasant change in his career, and give us some insight into the position he held in the university.

“Milly (his wife Amelia) has told you that the number of my hearers was much greater than I had anticipated. But their character, no less than their number, is such as encourages and animates me to pursue my labours with zeal and perseverance. You will feel this when I tell you that Savigny, Schleiermacher, Spalding, Ancillon, Nicolovius, Schmedding, and Süvern were present. Besides the number and selectness of my audience, the general interest evinced in the lecture exceeds my utmost hopes. My introductory lecture produced as strong an impression as an oration could have done; and all the dry erudition that followed it, in the history of the old Italian tribes, which serves as an introduction to that of Rome, has not driven away even my unlearned hearers. The attention with which Savigny honours me, and his declaration that I am opening a new era for Roman history, naturally stimulates my ardent desire to carry out to the full extent the researches which one is apt to leave half finished as soon as one clearly perceives the result to which they tend, in order to turn to something fresh....

“With a little more quiet, my position would be one more completely in accordance with my wishes than I have long ventured even to hope for. There is such a real mutual attachment between my acquaintances and myself, and our respective studies give such an inexhaustible interest to conversation, that I now really possess in this respect what I used to feel the want of; for intercourse of this kind is quickening and instructive. The lectures themselves, too, are inspiriting, because they require persevering researches, which, I venture to say, cannot remain unfruitful to me; and they are more exciting than mere literary labours, because I deliver them with the warmth inspired by fresh thoughts and discoveries, and afterwards converse with those who have heard them, and to whom they are as new as to myself. This makes the lectures a positive delight to me, and I feel quite averse to bring them to a close. What I should like, would be to have whole days of perfect solitude, and then an interval of intercourse with the persons I really like, but not to remain so many hours together with them as is customary here. It would be scarcely possible to have less frivolity and dulness in a mixed society. Schleiermacher is the most intellectual man amongst them. The complete absence of jealousy among these scholars is particularly gratifying.”

It is not long we are allowed to pause upon this agreeable and fruitful era of intellectual activity. Two volumes, however, are published of that history of which it is not here our purpose to speak, of which we would not wish to speak lightly or inconsiderately, which we admire and would cordially applaud, but which, we feel, has not yet received its exact place or value in the historical literature of Europe. We have not the time, nor will we lay claim to the profound erudition requisite, to do full justice to Niebuhr’s History of Rome. We do not regret, therefore, that the present occasion calls for no decided verdict; and that it does not devolve on us to draw the line, and show where just, and bold, and discriminating criticism terminates, and where ingenious and happy conjecture begins to assume the air and confidence of history. On one point there can be no dispute—that his work exercised a great, and, upon the whole, a most salutary influence on historical criticism. It is not too much to say, that no history has been written since its appearance in which this influence cannot be traced.

Both volumes were received in a most cordial and encouraging manner by his friends and by the public, and materials for a third volume were being collected, when suddenly we hear that our professor—is drilling for the army! Napoleon’s disastrous campaign in Russia has given hope to every patriotic German to throw off the degrading yoke of France. Niebuhr, though by his father’s side of Danish extraction, was, in heart, wholly a German. When the Landwehr was called out he refused to avail himself of the privilege of his position to evade serving in it—he sent in his name as a volunteer, and prepared himself by the requisite exercises. Meanwhile, till he could do battle with the musket, he fought with the pen, and edited a newspaper. “Niebuhr’s friends in Holstein,” writes Madame Hensler, “could hardly trust their eyes when he wrote them word that he was drilling for the army, and that his wife entered with equal enthusiasm into his feelings. The greatness of the object had so inspired Madame Niebuhr, who was usually anxious, even to a morbid extent, at the slightest imaginable peril for the husband in whom she might truly be said to live, that she was willing and ready to bring even her most precious treasure as a sacrifice to her country.”

French troops were now constantly passing through Berlin, on their way from the fatal plains of Russia. The dreadful sufferings which they had manifestly endured did not fail to excite a general compassion; but their appearance excited still more the patriotic hopes of the citizens to liberate themselves from the degrading domination of France. Berlin was evacuated by the French. Then came the Cossacks, following in the route of the common enemy. “They bivouac,” says a letter of Niebuhr, “with their horses in the city; about four in the morning they knock at the doors, and ask for breakfast. This is a famous time for the children, for they set them on their horses, and play with them.” Here is an extract that will bring the times vividly before us. Niebuhr is writing to Madame Hensler:—

“I come from an employment in which you will hardly be able to fancy me engaged—namely, exercising. Even before the departure of the French, I began to go through the exercise in private, but a man can scarcely acquire it without a companion. Since the French left, a party of about twenty of us have been exercising in a garden, and we have already got over the most difficult part of the training. When my lectures are concluded, which they will be at the beginning of next week, I shall try to exercise with regular recruits during the morning, and, as often as possible, practise shooting at a mark.... By the end of a month, I hope to be as well drilled as any recruit who is considered to have finished his training. The heavy musket gave me so much trouble at first, that I almost despaired of being able to handle it; but we are able to recover the powers again that we have only lost for want of practice. I am happy to say that my hands are growing horny; for as long as they had a delicate bookworm’s skin, the musket cut into them terribly....

“I mentioned to you a short time since, my hopes of getting a secretaryship on the general staff. With my small measure of physical power, I should have been a thousand times more useful in that office than as a private soldier. The friend I have referred to would like me to enter the ministry. Perhaps something unexpected may yet turn up. Idle, or busy about anything but our liberation, I cannot be now.”

It is impossible to read the account of these stirring times just now, without asking ourselves whether it is probable that our own learned professors of Oxford and Cambridge may ever have their patriotism put to a similar trial. Perhaps, even under similar circumstances, they would act the wiser part by limiting themselves to patriotic exhortations to the youth under their control or influence. Of one thing we feel persuaded, that there would be no lack of ardour, or of martial enthusiasm, amongst the students of our venerable universities. After a few months drilling and practising, there would be raised such a corps of riflemen from Oxford and Cambridge as fields of battle have not often seen. How intelligence tells, when you put a musket in its hands, is as yet but faintly understood. We, for our own part, hope that the voluntary principle will here arouse itself in time, and do its bidding nobly. For as to that ordinary militia, which is neither voluntary service nor thorough discipline, where there is neither intelligence, nor ardour, nor professional spirit, nor any one good quality of a soldier, we have no confidence in it whatever: we would not willingly trust our hen-coops to such a defence; there is neither body nor soul in it. As a reserve force from which to recruit for the regular army, it may be useful. But to drill and train a set of unwilling servitors like these, with the intention of taking the field with them, would be a fatal mistake; for it would lull the nation into a false sense of security. But a regiment of volunteers of the spirited and intelligent youth of England, we would match with entire confidence against an equal number of any troops in the world. Why should not there be permanent rifle-clubs established in every university, and in every town? These, and our standing army, increased to its necessary complement, would constitute a safe defence. Volunteers, it is said, cannot be kept together except in moments of excitement. And this was true while the volunteers had only to drill and to march; but practice with the rifle is itself as great an amusement as archery, or boating, or cricket, or any other that engages the active spirit of our youth. There is a skill to be acquired which would prompt emulation. There is an art to learn. These clubs would meet together, both for competition, and for the purpose of practising military evolutions on a larger scale, and thus the spirit of the institution would be maintained, and its utility increased. Nor would it be difficult to suggest some honorary privilege which might be attached to the volunteer rifleman. Such, we are persuaded, is the kind of militia which England ought to have for her defence; such, we are persuaded, is the only force, beside the standing army, on which any reliance can safely be placed.

All honour to the historian who unravels for us the obscurities of the past! Nevertheless, one simple truth will stare us in the face. We take infinite pains to understand the Roman comitia; we read, not without considerable labour, some pages of Thucydides; yet the daily English newspaper has been bringing to our door accounts of a political experiment now enacting before us, more curious and more instructive than Roman and Grecian history can supply. The experiment, which has been fairly performed on a neighbouring shore, gives a more profound lesson, and a far more important one, than twenty Peloponnesian wars. That experiment has demonstrated to us that, by going low enough, you may obtain a public opinion that shall sanction a tyranny over the whole intelligence of the country. A man who, whatever his abilities, had acquired no celebrity in civil or military life, inherits a name; with that name he appeals to the universal suffrage of France; and universal France gives him permission to do what he will with her laws and institutions—to destroy her parliament—to silence her press—to banish philosophy from her colleges. It is a lesson of the utmost importance; and moreover, a fact which, at the present moment, justifies some alarm. It is not intelligent France we have for our neighbour, but a power which represents its military and its populace, and which surely, if we are to calculate on its duration, is of a very terrific character. But we must pursue our biographical sketch of the life of Niebuhr.

Although our professor never actually shoulders that musket of which we have seen him practising the use, and gets no nearer to the smoke of powder than to survey the battle of Bautzen from the heights, he is involved in all the civil turmoils of the time. He is summoned to Dresden, where the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Russia are in conference together. He follows the Sovereigns to Prague; he is again despatched to Holland, to negotiate there for subsidies with the English commissioners. Saddest event of all, his domestic happiness receives a fatal blow in the death of his wife. She must have been a woman of tender spirit and elevated character. She entered ardently into all the pursuits, and shared all the fame, of her husband. A few days before her death, Niebuhr, as he was holding her in his arms, asked her if there was no pleasure that he could give her—nothing that he could do for her sake. She replied, with a look of unutterable love, “You shall finish your history, whether I live or die.”

The history, however, proceeded very slowly. When public tranquillity was restored, Niebuhr did not return to his professor’s chair; he went, as is very generally known, to Rome on a diplomatic mission. Here he spent a considerable portion of his life; and although his residence in that city might seem peculiarly favourable to his great undertaking, yet it proved otherwise;—either his time was occupied in the business or the ceremonial attached to his appointment, or his mind was unhinged. Besides, we have seen, from his own confession, that he needed such stimulants as those he found at Berlin, of friends, and conversation, and a literary duty, to keep him to one train of inquiry or of labour. It was very much the habit of his mind to propose to himself numerous works or literary investigations. We have amongst his loose memoranda of an earlier date one headed thus, “Works which I have to complete.” The list comprises no less than seven works, every one of which would have been a laborious undertaking. No scheme or outline of these several projected books was to be found, but the writer of the Memoir before us remarks that we are not to infer from this that such memoranda contain mere projects, towards whose execution no step was ever taken.

“That Niebuhr proposed,” says Madame Hensler, “any such work to himself, was a certain sign that he had read and thought deeply on the subject; but he was able to trust so implicitly to his extraordinary memory, that he never committed any portion of his essays to paper till the whole was complete in his own mind. His memory was so wonderfully retentive that he scarcely ever forgot anything which he had once heard or read, and the facts he knew remained present to him at all times, even in their minutest details.

“His wife and sister once playfully took up Gibbon, and asked him questions from the table of contents about the most trivial things, by way of testing his memory. They carried on the examination till they were tired, and gave up all hope of even detecting him in a momentary uncertainty, though he was at the same time engaged in writing on some other subject.”

Niebuhr married a second time. Madame Hensler, accompanied by her niece, had visited him in his affliction; their presence gradually cheered him; and Margaret Hensler, the niece, “soothed him with her gentle attentions, and gave him peculiar pleasure with her sweet singing. After some time he engaged himself to her, and married her before he left Berlin.”

We have now to follow him to Rome. The correspondence is here, as indeed throughout these volumes, very entertaining; and it would be utterly impossible to convey to our readers, in our brief survey, a fair impression of the sort of interest this work possesses. The memoir may be regarded as merely explanatory of the letters, and the letters themselves are not distinguished so much by remarkable passages as by a constantly sustained interest. They are not learned, for the erudite portion of the correspondence has been omitted, but they are never trivial; they perpetually suggest some topic of reflection, and are thoroughly imbued with the character and personality of the writer. We have lately had several biographies of eminent men written on the same plan, the letters being set forth as the most faithful portraiture of the man; but in none of these, so far as we can recall them to mind, are the letters at once so valuable in themselves, and so curious for the insight they give us into the character and feelings of the writer.

In reading Niebuhr’s letters from Italy, we must always bear in mind that they are written by one of warm and somewhat irascible temper, and who has a standard of moral excellence which would be thought of a most inconvenient altitude by the people of any country in Europe. He is honest as the day, but open to receive very sudden and much too strong impressions. We must also look at the date of his letters, and ask ourselves what changes may have taken place since Niebuhr wrote. With these precautions, they will be found to convey many very instructive hints. From his first entrance into Italy to the last hour of his residence, he expresses the same opinion of the low standard of intellectual culture amongst its educated classes. Whilst he is yet at Florence, he writes thus:—

“My preconceived opinion of the scholars and higher classes in Italy has proved perfectly correct, as I was convinced would be the case, because I possessed sufficient data to form an accurate idea of them. I have always allowed the existence of individual exceptions, as regards erudition; but even in these cases, there is not that cultivation of the whole man which we demand and deem indispensable. I have become acquainted with two or three literary men of real ability; but, in the first place, they are old men, who have only a few years longer to live; and when they are gone, Italy will be, as they say themselves, in a state of barbarism; and, in the second, they are like statues wrought to be placed in a frieze on the wall—the side turned towards you is of finished beauty, the other unhewn stone. They are much what our scholars may have been sixty or eighty years ago. No one feels himself a citizen....

“The three genuine and intellectual scholars of my acquaintance, Morelli, Garatoni, and Fontana, are all ecclesiastics. They are, however, only ecclesiastics by profession, for I have not found in them the slightest trace either of a belief in the dogmas of Catholicism, or of the pietism which you meet with in Germany. When an Italian has once ceased to be a slave of the Church, he never seems to trouble his head about such matters at all. Metaphysical speculations are utterly foreign to his nature, as they were to the old Romans. Hence the vacuity of mind which has become general since the suppression of freedom, except in the case of those who find a sphere of action in writing literary and historical memoirs. Their public men are immeasurably behind the Germans in knowledge and cultivation.”

What matter for reflection there is here, the reader will not need our assistance to point out. Let those who censure Protestantism for the spirit of speculation it is connected with, either as cause or effect, consider how important a part that speculative tendency plays in sustaining the intellectual activity of a people.

When Niebuhr arrives at Rome, the picture that he draws is still darker. Even the antiquities of the city seem to have given him little pleasure; he was more disturbed at what had been taken away than gratified by the little that remained. Then, although he well knew that the life of an ambassador at Rome could not be free from restraint and interruption, yet the courtly formalities he was compelled to observe were far more vexatious than he had anticipated. Housekeeping, too, perplexed him. Things were dear, and men not too honest. “Without a written agreement nothing can be done.” In a letter to Savigny, he writes thus:—

“Rome has no right to its name; at most, it should be called New Rome. Not one single street here goes in the same direction as the old one; it is an entirely foreign vegetation that has grown up on a part of the old soil, as insignificant and thoroughly modern in its style as possible, without nationality, without history. It is very characteristic that the really ancient and the modern city lie almost side by side.

“There are nowhere any remains of anything that it was possible to remove. The ruins all date from the time of the emperors; and he who can get up an enthusiasm about them, must at least rank Martial and Sophocles together.... St Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel, and the Loggie, are certainly splendid; but even St Peter’s is disfigured internally by the wretched statues and decorations.... Science is utterly extinct here. Of philologists, there is none worthy of the name except the aged De Rossi, who is near his end. The people are apathetic.

“This, then, is the country and place in which my life is to be passed! It is but a poor amends that I can get from libraries, and yet my only hope is from the Vatican. That we may be crossed in every way, this is closed till the 5th of November, and to have it opened sooner is out of the question; in other respects, all possible facilities have been promised me by the Pope himself, Cardinal Gonsalvi, Monsignor Testi, and the Prefect of the library, Monsignor Baldi. This last is now engaged in printing, at his own cost, a work on which he has expended six hundred scudi, without hope of receiving any compensation for it. It is on seventeen passages in the Old Testament, in which he has found the cross mentioned by name.... At Terni, I found the old art of land-surveying still extant: I rode along what was probably an ancient ‘limes,’ found the ‘rigor,’ and the ‘V. Pedes.’ I shall go there again, if I live till next autumn. It is a charming place. There are at least fifty houses in the town, among them one very large, which date from the Roman times, and which have never yet been observed or described by any traveller. Several of the churches are Roman private houses. If one could but discover in Rome anything like this! I long inexpressibly to have it for my burial-place. Everything is ancient in Terni and its neighbourhood—even the mode of preparing the wine. Oh to have been in Italy five hundred years ago!”

One of the most agreeable topics mentioned in the period of his biography, is the interest Niebuhr took in the new school of German art then springing up at Rome. Every one, from prints and engravings, if from no other source, is now acquainted with the works of Cornelius, Overbeck, Veit, Schadow, and others. They were then struggling with all the usual difficulties of unemployed and unrecognised genius. Niebuhr neither possessed, nor affected to possess, any special knowledge of art, but he was delighted with the genuine enthusiasm of his fellow-countrymen; he kindled in their society; he was persuaded of their great talent, and exerted whatever influence he possessed in obtaining for them some high employment. He wished that the interior of some church or other public building should be placed at their disposal, to decorate it with suitable paintings. The scattered notices that we find here of these artists we pass over very unwillingly, but we must necessarily confine ourselves to the course of our narrative.

By his first wife, Niebuhr had no family. His second, Gretchen as she is affectionately called—and who, we may observe in passing, is described as equally amiable, though not quite so intellectual or cultivated as the first—brought him several children, one son and three daughters. The birth of his son, April 1817, was an event which gave him the keenest delight, and kindled in all their fervour his naturally ardent affections. It was the first thing, we are told, that really dispelled the melancholy that fell on him after the loss of his Milly. It is curious and touching to note how he mingled up his reminiscences of his first wife with this gift brought him by the second. Writing to Madame Hensler, he says:—

“The trial is over, but it has been a terrible trial. How Gretchen rejoices in the possession of her darling child after all her suffering, you can well imagine. Her patience was indescribable. In my terrible anxiety I prayed most earnestly, and entreated my Milly, too, for help. I comforted Gretchen with telling her that Milly would send help.”

Then come plans for the education of the boy. How much does the following brief extract suggest!—

“I am thinking a great deal about his education. I told you a little while ago how I intended to teach him the ancient languages very early, by practice. I wish the child to believe all that is told him; and I now think you write in an assertion which I have formerly disputed, that it is better to tell children no tales, but to keep to the poets. But while I shall repeat and read the old poets to him in such a way that he will undoubtedly take the gods and heroes for historical beings, I shall tell him, at the same time, that the ancients had only an imperfect knowledge of the true God, and that these gods were overthrown when Christ came into the world. He shall believe in the letter of the Old and New Testaments, and I shall nurture in him from his infancy a firm faith in all that I have lost, or feel uncertain about.”

On the opposite page we read the following letter to the same correspondent, Madame Hensler:—

“I have spent yesterday and last night in thinking of my Milly, and this day, too, is sacred to these recollections. I saw her a few days ago in a dream. She seemed as if returning to me after a long separation. I felt uncertain, as one so often does in dreams, whether she was still living on this earth, or only appeared on it for a transient visit. She greeted me as if after a long absence, asked hastily after the child, and took it in her arms.

“Happy are those who can cherish such a hallowing remembrance as that of the departure of my Milly with pious faith, trusting for a brighter and eternal spring. Such a faith cannot be acquired by one’s own efforts. Oh that it may one day be my portion!”

“My son shall have a firm faith in all that I have lost, or feel uncertain about!” May the paternal hope, and the paternal confidence in its own “plans of education,” be fully justified.

One thing appears evident, that a residence at Rome (at least at the period when Niebuhr wrote) could not be very propitious to the cultivation of faith in educated minds. What is brought before us very vividly in these letters, and without any purposed design, is the combination of cold, worldly formalism, not to say hypocrisy, with harsh intolerant measures. The priesthood, with whom Niebuhr mingles, detest fanaticism, yet act with systematic bigotry. What union can be more repulsive than this—the cold heart and the heavy hand! A pious Chaldean, a man of great ability, comes to Rome to get a Bible printed there in his native language, under the censorship of the Propaganda. He applies to Niebuhr to assist him with money; Niebuhr exerts himself in his cause. The Chaldean is banished from Rome. His offence is not, as might perhaps be apprehended, the wish to print the Bible; he has accepted assistance from our Bible Society in carrying out his scheme. In sharp contrast with bigoted conduct of this description, we have Niebuhr’s general impression of the utter coldness of heart amongst the ecclesiastics at Rome. They run as follows—(the R. in this extract stands for Ringseis, a physician who had accompanied the Crown Prince of Bavaria to Rome, and who was a zealous and pious Catholic):—

“About the Italians you will have heard R’s. testimony, and we Protestants can leave it to him to paint the clergy, and the state of religion in this country. In fact, we are all cold and dead compared to his indignation. His society has been a great pleasure to us all, even to our reserved friend Bekker, who in general turns pale at the very thought of Popery, and finds me far too indulgent. With an enthusiast so full of heart as R. you can get on; between such a luxuriance of fancy and the unshackled reason, there is much such an analogy as subsists between science and art; whilst, on the contrary, the slavish subjection to the Church is ghastly death. The most superficial prophet of so-called enlightenment cannot have a more sincere aversion to enthusiasm than the Roman priesthood; and, in fact, their superstition bears no trace of it. Little as the admirers of Italy care for my words, I know that I am perfectly correct in saying, that even among the laity you cannot discover a vestige of piety.”

Meanwhile the years pass on, and the education of the little boy really begins. Niebuhr says he succeeds in the task better than he could venture to hope. Our readers cannot but be curious to know what was the course of instruction the great historian pursued.

“Marcus already knows no inconsiderable number of Latin words, and he understands grammar so well that I can now set him to learn parts of the conjunctions without their teasing him like dead matter: he derives many of the forms from his own feeling. I am reading with him selected chapters from Hygin’s Mythologicum—a book which perhaps it is not easy to use for this purpose, and which yet is more suited to it than any other, from the absence of formal periods, and the interest of the narrative. For German, I write fragments of the Greek mythology for him. I began with the history of the Argonauts; I have now got to the history of Hercules. I give everything in a very free and picturesque style, so that it is as exciting as poetry to him: and, in fact, he reads it with such delight that we are often interrupted by his cries of joy. The child is quite devoted to me; but this educating costs me a great deal of time. However, I have had my share of life, and I shall consider it as a reward for my labours if this young life be as fully and richly developed as lies within my power.

“Unexpected thoughts often escape him. Two days ago he was sitting beside me and began, ‘Father, the ancients believed in the old gods; but they must have believed also in the true God. The old gods were just like men.’”

All this time we have said nothing of the political embassy of Niebuhr. He was appointed ambassador to Rome to negotiate a concordat with the Pope. But it appears that several years elapsed before he received his instructions from his own court. We hardly know, therefore, whether to say that the negotiations were prolonged, or that their commencement had been delayed. Niebuhr always speaks in high terms of the Pope, (Pius VII.,) as a man every way estimable. Between them a very friendly feeling seems to have subsisted. There does not appear, therefore, to have been any peculiar or vexatious delay on the part of the Holy See. After Niebuhr had been in Rome more than four years, Count Hardenberg, the Prussian minister, who had been attending the conference at Laybach, made his appearance on the scene. To him, as we gather from the very brief account before us, was attributed with some unfairness the merit of concluding the negotiations. However this might be, the terms of this concordat were at length agreed upon, and Niebuhr had no longer any peculiar mission to detain him at Rome. Shortly afterwards he petitioned for leave of absence, and returned to Germany. He never went back again to Rome, but happily resumed the professor’s chair—this time, however, in the University of Bonn; or rather he delivered lectures at Bonn, for it does not appear that he was an appointed professor.

But before we leave Rome for Bonn, or diplomacy for the professorial duties, we must glance at a little essay given us in the appendix, written by Chevalier Bunsen, and entitled Niebuhr as a Diplomatist in Rome. Bunsen was, during part of this period, secretary to the embassy, and of course in perpetual communication with Niebuhr. The few anecdotes he relates present us with a very distinct picture of this German Cato amongst the modern Romans. Judging by what are popularly understood to be the qualifications of a diplomatist, we should certainly say that our historian was by no means peculiarly fitted for this department of the public service. He was an unbending man, had much of the stoic in his principles, though very little of the stoic in his affections, and was more disposed to check or crush the hollow frivolity about him than to yield to it, or to play with it. He could throw a whole dinner-table into consternation, by solemnly denouncing the tone of levity which the conversation had assumed. At the house of some prince in Rome the events then transpiring in Greece had led Niebuhr to speak with earnestness on the future destiny of the Christian Hellenes. On the first pause that occurred, a fashionable diner-out contrived to turn the conversation, and in a few moments the whole table was alive with a discussion—on this important point, whether a certain compound sold at the Roman coffee-houses, under the slang name of “aurora,” was mostly coffee or mostly chocolate! Niebuhr sat silent for some time; but he, too, took advantage of the next pause to express his indignation and surprise, that “in such times, and with such events occurring around us, we should be entertained with such miserable trifles!” For a short time all were mute. Not a very diplomatic style, we should say, of conversation.

It was very characteristic of such a man, that, on the occasion of giving a grand entertainment in his character of ambassador, he should have the music of the Sistine Chapel performed in his house. He detested the modern Italian operatic music. He thought it becoming his embassadorial position that something national should be selected. He therefore chose that celebrated music which all foreigners make it a point of duty to go and listen to at the Sistine Chapel during Passion Week. When the gay assemblage, after an animated conversation, repaired for the concert to the brilliantly lighted saloon, a choir of sixteen singers from the chapel filled the air with their solemn strains. We do not wonder, as Chevalier Bunsen says, that “the assembly was evidently seized with a peculiar feeling,” or that many of them stole away to something they thought more amusing.

Even his connection with the learned men of Rome was not of long continuance. But this was owing to no want of sympathy in their studies or pursuits on the part of Niebuhr, as the following anecdote will testify—(those who know Leopardi as a poet will read it with peculiar interest):—

“I still remember the day when he (Niebuhr) entered with unwonted vivacity the office in which I was writing, and exclaimed, ‘I must drive out directly to seek out the greatest philological genius of Italy that I have as yet heard of, and make his acquaintance. Just look at the man’s critical remarks upon the Chronicle of Eusebius. What acuteness! What real erudition! I have never seen anything like it before in this country—I must see the man.’

“In two hours he came back. ‘I found him at last with a great deal of trouble, in a garret of the Palazzo Mattei. Instead of a man of mature age, I found a youth of two or three and twenty, deformed, weakly, and who has never had a good teacher, but has fed his intellect upon the books of his grandfather, in his father’s house at Recanati; has read the classics and the Fathers; is, at the same time, as I hear, one of the first poets and writers of his nation, and is withal poor, neglected, and evidently depressed. One sees in him what genius this richly endowed nation possesses.’ Capei has given a pleasing and true description of the astonishment experienced by both the great men at their first meeting; of the tender affection with which Niebuhr regarded Leopardi, and all that he did for him.”

Our diminishing space warns us that we must limit ourselves to the last scene of the life and labours of Niebuhr. After some intervals spent at Berlin, he took up his residence at Bonn, recommenced his lectures, recommenced his History. Before proceeding further in his task, he found it necessary to revise the two volumes already published. In this revision he engaged so zealously that he almost re-wrote them. The third volume, as is well known, was not published in his lifetime: the manuscript was revised for the press by his friend and disciple, Professor Classen.

This and other manuscripts ran the risk of being consumed by the flames; for his new house, in the planning and arrangement of which he had taken much pleasure, was burnt down on the night of the 6th February 1830. It was indeed a misfortune, he said, but he did not feel as he felt “that night when he was near headquarters at the battle of Bautzen, and believed the cause of his country to be, if not lost, in the most imminent peril.” But though much else was destroyed, the books and papers were preserved; and there was great rejoicing when here and there a precious treasure was found again, which had been looked on as lost; and the reappearance of the longed-for manuscript of the second volume of the history (then going through the press) was greeted with hearty cheers.

The prospect of public affairs, now embroiled by the French Revolution of 1830, seems to have disturbed him more than the loss of his house. From the selfishness of the governing party, and the rashness of their opponents, he was disposed to predict the saddest results—loss of freedom, civil and religious. “In fifty years,” he says in one place, “and probably much less, there will be no trace left of free institutions, or the freedom of the press, throughout all Europe—at least on the Continent.” In this enforced darkness, Protestantism would, of course, have no chance against her great antagonist. Wherever the spirit of mental freedom decays, the Roman Catholic must triumph. He says, “Already, all the old evils have awakened to full activity; all the priestcraft, all, even the most gigantic plans for conquest and subjugation; and there is no doubt that they are secretly aiming at, and working towards, a religious war, and all that tends to bring it on.”

The interest which Niebuhr took in the public events of Europe was indirectly the cause of his last illness. One evening he spent a considerable time waiting and reading in the hot news-room, without taking off his thick fur cloak, and then returned home through the cold frosty night air, heated in mind and body. He looked in, as he passed, on his friend Classen, to unburden some portion of his fervid cares for the universal commonwealth. “But,” said he, “I have taken a severe chill, I must go to bed.” And from the couch he then sought he never rose again.

“On the afternoon of the 1st of January 1830,” thus concludes the account of his last days which we have from the pen of Professor Classen, “he sank into a dreamy slumber: once, on awakening, he said that pleasant images floated before him in sleep; now and then he spoke French in his dreams; probably he felt himself in the presence of his departed friend De Serre. As the night gathered, consciousness gradually faded away; he woke up once more about midnight, when the last remedy was administered; he recognised in it a medicine of doubtful operation, never resorted to but in extreme cases, and said in a faint voice, ‘What essential substance is this? Am I so far gone?’ These were his last words; he sank back on his pillow, and within an hour his noble heart had ceased to beat.”

Any attempt at the final estimate of Niebuhr as a historian, we have already said we shall not make. The permanence of the structure that he has reared must be tested by time and the labours of many scholars. Indeed, where a reputation like this is concerned, old father Time will be slow in his operations—he is a long while trimming the balance and shuffling the weights—perhaps new weights are to be made. Niebuhr’s great and salutary influence in historical literature, we repeat, is undeniable; and this signal merit will always be accorded to him. For his character as a man, this is better portrayed even by the few extracts we have been able to make from his letters, than by any summary or description we could give. But these extracts have necessarily been brief, and are unavoidably taken, here and there, from letters which it would have been much more desirable to quote in extenso, and therefore we recommend every reader who can bestow the leisure, to read these volumes for himself. He will find them, in the best sense of the word, very amusing.