OP ARTS AND SCIENCES. 247 



that kingdom, was led to remove to Dresden. The Greek insurrection 

 having spread in 1821 through the Morea and the ishinds, he felt an 

 impulse to take part in the movement; and, sailing from Marseilles, 

 spent parts of that year and of 1822 in the struggle for Greek inde- 

 pendence. But he was disapj^ointed and discouraged : he felt con- 

 strained to give up his Philhellenic plans, and reached Ancona in Italy 

 almost destitute. From Ancona finding his way to Rome, he hecame 

 acquainted with Niebuhr, the historian, then Prussian ambassador to 

 the Pope, and was taken into his family to assist in the education of 

 his son. In a letter from Niebuhr to his sister-in-law, from which 

 Judge Thayer of Philadelphia, Lieber's intimate friend, has given an 

 extract, the historian thus speaks of the young Philhellene : " A young 

 man, Lieber of Berlin, has arrived here, who went as a volunteer to 

 Greece, and at length returned, partly not to die of hunger, partly 

 because the rascality of the Moreans and their cowardice became insuf- 

 ferable to him. His veracity is beyond suspicion, and his tales fill the 

 hearer with horrors. He is sad and melancholy, because his soul is 

 very noble. He interests and touches vis much, and we try to cheer 

 him by kindness. He belongs to the youth of the beautiful time of 

 1813 [1815], when he fought and was wounded. He is now here 

 without a cent. I shall help him at any rate." 



When Niebuhr returned to Germany in the spring of 1823, Lieber 

 visited Prussia once more, only to find that the suspicions against him 

 were still awake. He was arrested and confined at Kopenick, but 

 the intervention of Niebuhr procured his release. Finding that his 

 own country gave him no welcome, he went at once to London, where 

 he supported himself by teaching and correspondence with German 

 journals. 



It is hard to believe that the man so sober in his political principles, 

 so little inclined to a fanatical spirit of liberty or to agitation, could 

 ever, even in the eflPervescence of youthful liberalism, have been re- 

 garded with any good reason as a dangerous character in Prussia. 

 It is possible that his varied experience in life, especially his contact 

 with the liberty " ignorantly worshipped " in Greece, and his inter- 

 course with so wise and broad a man as Niebuhr, may have corrected 

 some misjudgments due to the unselfish ardor of his boyhood ; but we 

 cannot imagine that there was any ground for the fi-own of the Prussian 

 government. Had he remained at home, he would have been a healthy, 

 moderate, and weighty member of the liberal party ; not a radical, for 

 such was not his nature, but an earnest advocate of constitutional free- 

 dom. But what Prussia lost we gained. Among all the exiles that 



