Schelling before all must be mentioned as having received me well, after his fashion, giving me frequent occasions of becoming acquainted with his philosophical views and judgments, in his own original and peculiar manner.  His mode of disputation is rough and angular; his peremptoriness and his paradoxes terrible.  Once he undertook to explain animal magnetism, and for this purpose to give an idea of Time, from which resulted that all is present and in existence—­the Present as existing in the actual moment; the Future, as existing in a future moment.  When I demanded the proof, he referred me to the word is, which applies to existence, in the sentence that “this is future.”  Seckendorf, who was present (with him I have become closely acquainted, to my great satisfaction), attempted to draw attention to the confounding the subjective (i.e. him who pronounces that sentence) with the objective; or, rather, to point out a simple grammatical misunderstanding—­in short, declared the position impossible.  “Well,” replied Schelling drily, “you have not understood me.”  Two Professors (his worshippers), who were present, had meanwhile endeavoured by their exclamations, “Only observe, all is, all exists” (to which the wife of Schelling, a clever woman, assented), to help me into conviction; and a vehement beating the air—­for arguing and holding fast by any firm point were out of the question—­would have arisen, if I had not contrived to escape by giving a playful turn to the conversation.  I am perfectly aware that Schelling could have expressed and carried through his real opinion far better—­i.e. rationally.  I tell the anecdote merely to give an idea of his manner in conversation.

At Goettingen he was one of a remarkable set, comprising Lachmann, Luecke, Brandis, and some others, thought as much of at the time as their friends, but who failed to make their way to the front ranks of the world.  Like others of his countrymen, Bunsen began to find “that the world’s destinies were not without their effect on him,” and to feel dissatisfied with the comparatively narrow sphere of even German learning.  The thought grew, and took possession of him, of “bringing over, into his knowledge and into his fatherland, the solemn and distant East,” and to “draw the East into the study of the entire course of humanity (particularly of European, and more especially of Teutonic humanity),” making Germany the “central point of this study.”  Vast plans of philological and historical study, involving, as the only means then possible of carrying them out, schemes of wide travel and long sojourn in the East, opened on him.  Indian and Persian literature, the instinctive certainty of its connection with the languages and thought of the West, and the imperfection of means of study in Europe, drew him, as many more were drawn at the time, to seek the knowledge which they wanted in foreign and distant lands.  With