OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 249 



indispensable to the idea of restoration. Bunsen was undoubtedly san- 

 guine. His language glows with the warmth of his convictions and the 

 ardor of his hopes. It is even as strong as this : " The chronological 

 dates which we deduce from Egyptian research render it necessary to 

 remodel history, and enable us to remodel it." And surely a more 

 honorable instance of steadfast industry can hardly be named in our 

 day than his attempt to accomplish this. The title of his great work, 

 " Egypt's Place in Universal History," bears witness to the wide range 

 of his purpose and wish, and its execution is a monument of hopeful 

 study. In restoring ancient chronology he knew the extreme difficulty 

 of the task he undertook. He is very positive in his conclusions, 

 though many of them are contested by able scholars. Egyptologers 

 must fix Bunsen's place in their science. They can perhaps tell us 

 how many degrees of Egyptian darkness he has cleared off. What is 

 here said merely aims to point out his purpose and connect it with the 

 great objects of his life. 



Though Bunsen's apothegms and theses are not always transparent, 

 at least to a common reader, he was not a man to deal in vague and 

 sounding phrases that found no echo in his own heart. So far from 

 this, it is impossible for his reader, even when a little doubtful of his 

 meaning, to have the shadow of a doubt as to his zealous, hearty, and 

 liberal spirit. Whoever approaches him, whether he agrees with the 

 thinker or not, must respect the man. He was a stanch and fearless 

 friend of liberal institutions in church and state, and found the war- 

 rant for them in the Christian religion itself. He rejoiced in the grow- 

 ing importance of the middle class in his own country, and made it his 

 boast to have sprung from it himself. If in controversy his polemic 

 zeal fell sometimes heavy on an opponent, it was not in any poor or 

 grovelling cause. Materialism and despotism he hated with all his 

 soul. He had the eye to recognize and the force to stimulate the stud- 

 ies and efforts of others, and his death snaps one of the last links be- 

 tween men of the past, like Heyne, Niebuhr, and Arndt, and younger 

 scholars, like Lepsius and Max Miiller, whose co-operation he gladly 

 sought and fairly acknowledged. His long residence at the Court of 

 St. James's, the last of a line of diplomatic distinctions, naturalized 

 him in the English language and in English society ; and it was en- 

 riched with the cordial regard of such men as Arnold, Hare, and 

 Kingsley. In all the variety of his active toils, whether in spinning 

 again the thread of ancient history, in denouncing ecclesiastical in- 



voL. V. 32 



