He continued to live at Copenhagen for ten years; but at length the retirement of Count Bernstorf from the ministry, and a report that General Huth designed to despatch him into Norway for the purpose of making a geographical survey of that country, disgusted him with the capital. He therefore demanded of the government permission to exchange his military for a civil appointment, and accordingly obtained the situation of secretary of the district of Meldorf, whither he removed his family in the year 1778. This town afforded Niebuhr few opportunities of entering into society. He consequently endeavoured to extract from solitude and from study the pleasures which he could not take in the company of mankind, and addicted himself to gardening and books. When his children had reached an age to require instruction, he undertook to conduct their education himself. “He instructed us,” says his son, “in geography, and related to us many passages of history. He taught me English and French—better, at any rate, than they would have been taught by anybody else in such a place; and something of mathematics, in which he would have proceeded much further, had not want of zeal and desire in me unfortunately destroyed all his pleasure in the occupation. One thing, indeed, was characteristic of his whole system of teaching: as he had no idea how anybody could have knowledge of any kind placed before him, and not seize it with the greatest avidity, and hold to it with the steadiest perseverance, he became disinclined to teach whenever we appeared inattentive or reluctant to learn. As the first instruction I received in Latin, before I had the good fortune to become a scholar of the learned and excellent Jäger, was very defective, he helped me, and read with me “Cæsar’s Commentaries.” Here again, the peculiar bent of his mind showed itself: he always called my attention much more strongly to the geography than the history. The map of Ancient Gaul by D’Anville, for whom he had the greatest reverence, always lay before us. I was obliged to look out every place as it occurred, and to tell its exact situation. His instruction had no pretensions to be grammatical; his knowledge of the language, so far as it went, was gained entirely by reading, and by looking at it as a whole. He was of opinion that a man did not deserve to learn what he had not principally worked out for himself; and that a teacher should be only a helper to assist the pupil out of otherwise inexplicable difficulties. From these causes his attempts to teach me Arabic, when he had already lost that facility in speaking it without which it is impossible to dispense with grammatical instruction, to his disappointment and my shame, did not succeed. When I afterward taught it myself, and sent him translations from it, he was greatly delighted.
“I have the most lively recollection of many descriptions of the structure of the universe, and accounts of eastern countries, which he used to tell me instead of fairy tales, when he took me on his knee before I went to bed. The history of Mohammed; of the first califs, particularly of Omar and Ali, for whom he had the deepest veneration; of the conquests and spread of Islamism; of the virtues of the heroes of the new faith, and of the Turkish converts, were imprinted on my childish imagination in the liveliest colours. Historical works on these same subjects were nearly the first books that fell into my hands.
“I recollect, too, that on the Christmas-eve of my tenth year, by way of making the day one of peculiar solemnity and rejoicing to me, he went to a beautiful chest containing his manuscripts, which was regarded by us children, and indeed by the whole household, as a kind of ark of the covenant; took out the papers relating to Africa, and read to me from them. He had taught me to draw maps, and with his encouragement and assistance I soon produced maps of Habbesh and Soudan.
“I could not make him a more welcome birthday present than a sketch of the geography of eastern countries, or translations from voyages and travels, executed as might be expected from a child. He had originally no stronger desire than that I might be his successor as a traveller in the East. But the influence of a very tender and anxious mother upon my physical training and constitution, thwarted his plan, almost as soon as it was formed. In consequence of her opposition, my father afterward gave up all thoughts of it.
“The distinguished kindness he had experienced from the English, and the services which he had been able to render to the East India Company, by throwing light upon the higher part of the Red Sea, led him to entertain the idea of sending me, as soon as I was old enough, to India. With this scheme, which, plausible as it was, he was afterward as glad to see frustrated as I was myself, many things, in the education he gave me, was intimately connected. He taught me, by preference, out of English books, and put English works, of all sorts, into my hands. At a very early age he gave me a regular supply of English newspapers: circumstances which I record here, not on account of the powerful influence they have had on my maturer life, but as indications of his character.”
In the winter of 1788 he received from Herder a copy of his “Persepolis,” which afforded him one proof that he was not forgotten by his countrymen. He took a deep interest in the war which was then raging against Turkey; for, in proportion to his love for the Arabs, was his hatred of the Turks, whom he cordially desired to see expelled from Europe. The French expedition to Egypt, however, was no object of gratification to him; for his dislike of the French was as strong as his dislike of the Turks, convinced that their absurd vanity and want of faith would infallibly neutralize the good effects even of the revolution itself. I am sorry to discover that, among other prejudices, he was led, partly, perhaps, from vanity, to accuse Bruce of having copied his astronomical observations; of having fabricated his conversation with Ali Bey; as well as, to borrow the strange language of his recent English biographer, “the pretended journey over the Red Sea, in the country of Bab el Mandeb, as well as that on the coast south from Cosseir.” The same writer informs us that “Niebuhr read Bruce’s work without prejudice, and the conclusion he arrived at was the same which is, since the second Edinburgh edition, and the publication of Salt’s two journeys, the universal and ultimate one.” During the composition of these Lives, I have almost constantly avoided every temptation to engage in controversy with any man; I hope, likewise, that I have escaped from another, and still stronger temptation, to exalt my own countrymen at the expense of foreigners; but I cannot regard it as my duty, on the present occasion, to permit to pass unnoticed what appears to me a mere ebullition of envy in Niebuhr, and of weakness and want of reflection in his biographer. What is meant by a “journey over the Red Sea?” And where does Bruce pretend to have travelled in the “country of Bab el Mandeb?” These Arabic words are, I believe, by oriental scholars acknowledged to signify the “Gate of Tears,” and were anciently applied to what is commonly called the “Strait of Bab el Mandel,” from the belief that those who issued through that strait into the ocean could never return. The biographer seems to misunderstand the state of the question. Bruce has often been charged with never having sailed down the Red Sea so far as the strait, notwithstanding his assertions in the affirmative. But who are his accusers? Lord Valentia, Salt, and others of that stamp; men who never dared to venture their beards amid the dangers which Bruce encountered intrepidly. With respect to the coast from Cosseir southward, what, I will venture to inquire, could Niebuhr have known about the matter? Had he ever set his foot upon it? Had he even beheld it from a distance? If he relied, as in fact he did, upon the testimony of others, who were they? what were their opportunities? and what their claims to be believed? I am far from insinuating that Lord Valentia and Mr. Salt have entered into a conspiracy to wound the memory of Bruce; but, to adopt the language of an old orator, I would ask these gentlemen if they themselves could have been guilty of the impudent mendacity which they impute to Bruce? If, as there can be no doubt on the subject, Lord Valentia and Mr. Salt would spurn the imputation, is it to be for a moment believed that the discoverer of the sources of the Nile, the honourable, the fearless, the brave Bruce, could have condescended to do what these individuals, who, compared with him, are insignificant and obscure, would, by their own confession, have shrunk from perpetrating? But my unwillingness to speak harshly of Niebuhr, whose name ranks with me among those of the most honest and useful of travellers, forbids me to carry this discussion any further. I honour him for his knowledge, for his integrity, for his high sense of honour; but, for this very reason, I vehemently condemn his unjust attack upon the memory of our illustrious traveller. The opinion of his recent biographer, an able and, I make no doubt, a conscientious man, appears evidently to have arisen from an imperfect knowledge of the subject, and is therefore the less entitled to consideration.
The account given by his distinguished son of the latter days of this meritorious traveller is worthy of finding a place here. “His appearance,” says he, “was calculated to leave a delightful picture in the mind. All his features, as well as his extinguished eyes, wore the expression of the extreme and exhausted old age of an extraordinarily robust nature. It was impossible to behold a more venerable sight. So venerable was it, that a Cossack who entered an unbidden guest into the chamber where he sat with his silver locks uncovered, was so struck with it, that he manifested the greatest reverence for him, and a sincere and cordial interest for the whole household. His sweetness of temper was unalterable, though he often expressed his desire to go to his final home, since all which he had desired to live for had been accomplished.
“A numerous, and as yet unbroken, family circle was assembled around him; and every day in which he was not assailed by some peculiar indisposition he conversed with cheerfulness and cordial enjoyment on the happy change which had taken place in public affairs. We found it very delightful to engage in continued recitals of his travels, which he now related with peculiar fulness and vivacity. In this manner he once spoke much and in great detail of Persepolis, and described the walls on which he had found the inscriptions and bas-reliefs, exactly as one would describe those of a building visited within a few days and familiarly known. We could not conceal our astonishment. He replied, that as he lay in bed, all visible objects shut out, the pictures of what he had beheld in the East continually floated before his mind’s eye, so that it was no wonder he could speak of them as if he had seen them yesterday. With like vividness was the deep intense sky of Asia, with its brilliant and twinkling host of stars, which he had so often gazed at by night, or its lofty vault of blue by day, reflected in the hours of stillness and darkness on his inmost soul; and this was his greatest enjoyment. In the beginning of winter he had another bleeding at the nose, so violent that the bystanders expected his death; but this also he withstood.
“About the end of April, 1815, the long obstruction in his chest grew much worse; but his friendly physician alleviated the symptoms, which to those around him appeared rather painful than dangerous. Towards evening on the 26th of April, 1815, he was read to as usual, and asked questions which showed perfect apprehension and intelligence; he then sunk into a slumber, and departed without a struggle.”
Niebuhr had attained his eighty-second year. He was a man rather below than above the middle size, but robust in make, and exceedingly oriental in air and gestures. As might be clearly enough inferred from his works, he was no lover of poetry; for, though he is said to have admired Homer in the German translation of Voss, together with the Herman and Dorothea of Goëthe, this might be accounted for upon a different principle. His imagination, however, was liable to be sometimes excited in a very peculiar way. “It is extraordinary,” says his son, “that this man, so remarkably devoid of imagination, so exempt from illusion, waked us on the night in which his brother died, though he was at such a distance that he knew not even of his illness, and told us that his brother was dead. What had appeared to him, waking or dreaming, he never told us.”