and talking over very distant days.

I had come over to London expecting to stay about a fortnight, but I
had been there working at the Library in Leadenhall Street for nearly
a month, and my work was far from done, when I thought that I ought to
call and pay my respects to the Prussian Minister, Baron Bunsen. I
little thought at the time when I was ushered into his presence that
this acquaintance was to become the turning-point of my life. If I
owed much to Burnouf, how can I tell what I owed to Bunsen? I was
amazed at the kindness with which from the very first he received me.
I had no claim whatever on him, and I had as yet done very little as a
scholar. It is true that he had known my father in Italy, and that
Humboldt, with his usual kindness, had written him a strong letter of
recommendation on my behalf, but that was hardly sufficient reason to
account for the real friendship with which he at once honoured me.

Baroness Bunsen, in the life of her husband, writes: "The kindred
mind, their sympathy of heart, the unity in highest aspirations, a
congeniality in principles, a fellowship in the pursuit of favourite
objects, which attracted and bound Bunsen to his young friend (i. e.
myself), rendered this connexion one of the happiest of his life." I
am proud to think it was so.

At first the chief bond between us was that I was engaged on a work
which as a young man he had proposed to himself as the work of his
life, namely, the _editio princeps_ of the Rig-veda. Often has he told
me how, at the time when he was prosecuting his studies at Goettingen,
the very existence of such a book was unknown as yet in Germany. The
name of Veda had no doubt been known, and there was a halo of mystery
about it, as the oldest book of the world. But what it was and where
it was to be found no one could tell. Mr. Astor, a pupil of Bunsen's
at Goettingen, had arranged to take Bunsen to India to carry on his
researches there. But Bunsen waited and waited in Italy, till at last,
after maintaining himself by giving private lessons, he went to Rome,
was taken up by Brandes and Niebuhr, the Prussian Ambassador there,
became the friend of the future Frederick William IV, and thus
gradually drifted into diplomacy, giving up all hopes of discovering
or rescuing the Rig-veda.

People have hardly any idea now, how, in spite of the East India
Company conquering and governing India, India itself remained a _terra
incognita_, unapproachable by