“My earnest hope is that every member of this illustrious race, while he may cherish the particular country of his birth as he does his home, will extend his devotion beyond its narrow limits, and exult in the name of a German, and recognize the claim of Germany to the love and affection and patriotic exertions of all her sons.
“I hope I judge the feelings of every German by those which were excited in my own breast (in the breast of a foreigner and a stranger) by a simple ballad, that seemed, however, to concentrate the will of a mighty people, and said emphatically,—
“They shall not have the Rhine.”
“They will not have it: and the Rhine will be protected by a song, if the sentiments which that song embodies pervade, as I hope and trust they do, every German heart.
“You will begin to think that I am a good German myself, and so I am, if hearty wishes for the union and welfare of the German race can constitute one.
“Believe me, most faithfully yours,
“Robert Peel.”
When Bunsen was on the point of leaving London, he received the unexpected and unsolicited appointment of Prussian Envoy in England, an appointment which he could not bring himself to decline, and which again postponed for twelve years his cherished plans of an otium cum dignitate. What the world at large would have called the most fortunate event in Bunsen's life proved indeed a real misfortune. It deprived Bunsen of the last chance of fully realizing the literary plans of his youth, and it deprived the world of services that no one could have rendered so well in the cause of freedom of thought, of practical religion, and in teaching the weighty lessons of antiquity to the youth of the future. It made him waste his precious hours in work that any Prussian baron could have done as well, if not better, and did not set him free [pg 370] until his bodily strength was undermined, and the joyful temper of his mind saddened by sad experiences.
Nothing could have been more brilliant than the beginning of Bunsen's diplomatic career in England. First came the visit of the King of Prussia, whom the Queen had invited to be godfather to the Prince of Wales. Soon after the Prince of Prussia came to England under the guidance of Bunsen. Then followed the return visit of the Queen at Stolzenfels, on the Rhine. All this, no doubt, took up much of Bunsen's time, but it gave him also the pleasantest introduction to the highest society of England; for as Baroness Bunsen shrewdly remarks, “there is nothing like standing within the Bude-light of royalty to make one conspicuous, and sharpen perceptions and recollections.” (II. p. 8.) Bunsen complained, no doubt, now and then, about excessive official work, yet he seemed on the whole reconciled to his position, and up to the year 1847 we hear of no attempts to escape from diplomatic bondage. In a letter to Mrs. Fry he says:—
“I can assure you I never passed a more quiet and truly satisfactory evening in London than the last, in the Queen's house, in the midst of the excitement of the season. I think this is a circumstance for which one ought to be thankful; and it has much reminded me of hours that I have spent at Berlin and Sans Souci with the King and the Queen and the Prince William, and, I am thankful to add, with the Princess of Prussia, mother of the future King. It is a striking and consoling and instructive proof that what is called the world, the great world, is not necessarily worldly in itself, but only by that inward worldliness which, as rebellion against the spirit, creeps into the cottage as well as into the palace, and against which no outward form is any protection. Forms and rules may prevent the outbreak of wrong, but cannot regenerate right, and may quench the spirit and poison inward truth. The Queen gives hours daily to the labor of examining into the claims of the numberless petitions addressed to her, among other duties to which her time of privacy is devoted.”