In 1853, a post was offered to him, which seemed to meet the wish he had cherished, to be able to wield direct practical influence in ecclesiastical affairs. He was called to be Prälat of Baden. This office or dignity—to which nothing exactly corresponds in our own country—conferred on its holder a seat in the Upper Chamber of Deputies, as the representative of the Evangelical Church; but, singularly enough, did not necessarily make him a member of the Upper Ecclesiastical Council, so that his direct influence was more personal than official. Ullmann hesitated at first to sacrifice the quiet and independence of his University position, and the opportunities of free action which he largely enjoyed, possessing, as he did, the confidence of the better clergy throughout the country; but at length he yielded. Considerations, such as loyalty to his prince, disgust at the illiberal liberalism that was increasingly gaining the upper hand at Heidelberg, and perhaps, too, an unconscious stirring of ambition, influenced his decision; but the main reason, undoubtedly, was the one to which reference has already been made. Before making this change, he did as he had done when he consented to remove from Halle to Heidelberg, and his experience, as a man of a less idealistic turn of mind might have anticipated, was again the same. He stipulated for many alterations, both in the principles and methods of ecclesiastical procedure. Could the programme which he laid before the Grand Duke have been thoroughly carried out, a great reform would have been the consequence; but the programme was a professor's programme, and the professor was not the man to make it a reality. He soon found that bureaucratic redtapeism, vested interests, indifference, incapacity, not to mention intrigue and open opposition, were as common in the higher ecclesiastical as in the political circles, and as difficult to vanquish.
In 1857, he was appointed to the office of Director of the Upper Ecclesiastical Council—a position equivalent, in some respects, to that of the Minister of Cultus in Prussia. The increase of honour brought an increase of care, but the increase of apparent power did not bring a corresponding increase of real power. He was associated with men who, besides being narrow bureaucrats, and having no sympathy with the higher interests of the Church, looked on Ullmann as a sort of interloper; the consequence being perpetual struggles and annoyance, without adequate compensation. Dislike to him personally began also to spread among the clergy, and the laity charged him with being a High Church reactionary. His difficulties culminated in the so-called Agenden-Streit, and in the disputes relating to the new constitution proposed for the Church; the upshot of the whole, being that, in 1860, he retired from office, broken in health, and almost broken in spirit.
He was never able to resume independent literary work, though he did again undertake the direction of the Studien und Kritiken, which for several years had mainly devolved on his colleague Umbreit. After the death of the latter, in 1860, he associated Dr. Rothe with himself as joint editor; but, owing to an ever-increasing divergence of their views—both practical and theoretical—this arrangement terminated in 1864, at which date the journal passed into the hands of its present editors.
The faith that Ullmann had expounded and defended in life, sustained him in the decline of health and in the hour of death. In the autumn of 1863, both bodily and intellectual vigour began seriously to fail; and on the 12th of January, 1865, he died, surrounded by his family, and repeating to himself the closing words of that grand, but almost too moving hymn—
'O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden.'
Art. II.—Aerial Voyages.
Travels in the Air. By James Glaisher, F.R.S., Camille Flammarion, W. de Fonvielle, and Gaston Tissandier. Edited by James Glaisher, F.R.S. With 125 illustrations. London: Richard Bentley and Son. 1871.
A few years ago a Frenchman, apostrophising the Genius of Humanity as none but a Frenchman can do, took the liberty of reproaching that metaphorical being for its extreme backwardness in one department of duty. He called upon it to 'march,' an injunction which his countrymen are so fond of issuing that they sometimes forget to tell you where, or to state the reason why. The present age, he intimated, demanded this movement: the coming generations would be greatly disappointed if it were not accomplished. 'One effort,' said he encouragingly to the Genius, 'and the future is thine (l'avenir t'appartient)!' The crooked places, he promised, should be made straight, and the rough ones delightfully smooth. There should be no more mountains (Pyrenees or otherwise), and the valleys should become as level as the plains!
And what does the reader suppose was the duty in respect of which the genius in question was so shamefully in arrear? It was, says M. Farcot, in the matter of aerostation. How is it, asked this individual, somewhat sharply, that man, who is so anxious to conquer everything and everybody (except, we might add, himself), should not have made greater exertions to subdue the sole element which continues in a state of rebellion? How is it that a being who has such magnificent forces at command, and can traverse the ocean with an ease and a rapidity which the fleetest denizens of the deep cannot surpass, should suffer himself to be outstripped in the air by an insignificant fly? M. Farcot could not comprehend it; M. Farcot would not submit to it. He therefore offered his services to mankind as the precursor of a new era, in which the balloon was to become the prominent figure, and entreated the object of his invocation to wake up, and with a single bound to overleap the gulf that lay between it and its greatest triumphs.