302 



History"* is, on the strength of a received and unex- 

 plained kiss,t which M. Merle d'Aubigne was 

 compelled to bestow, accused of Rationalism and 

 sinful Romanism, and where a much more agree- 

 able process Pastor Kind boasts of having been 

 kissed on the shoulder by a pretty Neapolitan 

 chambermaid, with all the fervour of Evangelical 

 semi-conversion. 



As owing to the approach of my tiresome birthday, I 

 have received since the eighth August upwards of three 

 hundred letters and parcels, I know nothing about 

 the date at which yours came to hand, but remember 

 perfectly well receiving a letter on black-edged paper, 

 dated " Madrid, 15th July," from your distinguished 

 kinsman, Adolfo de Varnhagen, and subsequently a 

 fragment of his history. I shall send him my best 

 thanks. His history is not devoid of interest. You 

 are aware that by the appointment of a Finance 

 Commission in the Cabinet Council, it was hoped 

 that Minister von der Heydt, whose activity has 



* Bunsen. 



f The reader should be reminded that in September, 1857, a meeting of the 

 Evangelical Alliance took place at Berlin. On the occasion of the presentation 

 at Potsdam, Merle d'Aubigne of Geneva, and Bunsen old friends met for the 

 first time after a long interval, and, in keeping with an abominable continental 

 custom, greeted each other with a kiss. A fraction of the " Faithful" was 

 much disgusted at that, and among them more particularly one Pastor Krum- 

 macher, from Duisburg, a brother of, and no less a zealot than, the well-known 

 Court preacher Friedrich Adolf Krummacher, who interrogated the Genevese 

 as to the reason of meeting so cordially a person like the author of the "Signs 

 of the Times." Upon this, the historian of the Eeformation explained, with 

 strict injunctions to spread it among the " Brethren," that Bunsen was a dear 

 friend of his of long standing ; that he never swerved from his friends ; that, 

 however, it had not been he who had embraced Bunsen, but that the latter 

 had taken the initiative ; and that, as regarded Bunsen' s doctrine, he was far 

 from approving its errors : this explanation seems to have removed the scru- 

 ples of the pious interpellant and of the other " Brethren." TR. 



