of the Apostolic Age, and at another the Life of Christ, but always returning to his General History, as the one great task appointed him of God to do.  As I parted with him in the spring of 1848, my heart drawn out toward him with an admiring tenderness and reverence, such as I had never experienced toward any other living scholar, I could not forbear assuring him, that many prayers would go up for him in America as well as in Europe, that he might be spared to complete his work.  “I hope it,” he replied, “but that must be as God wills.”  But this wish of his heart was denied him.  He died in Berlin on Sunday, July 14th, 1850, in the midst of his unfinished labors.  He had published what brings us down to the year 1294, and was then at work upon the centuries which lie between that and the Reformation.  The posthumous volume, edited by Schneider, still falls short, by nearly a hundred years, of that important epoch.  Had he been spared to proceed thus far, we had been the better reconciled to his dying; although his countrymen were anxious to have him turn his peculiar powers upon the Reformation itself, and the world-wide movements which have grown out of it.  But this was not to be.  He died, leaving no one to take his mantle; died, too, somewhat prematurely, for he was only sixty-one years old.

Of his personal appearance, which was altogether unique, descriptions have frequently been given.  He was small of stature, his height not exceeding five feet and four or five inches.  He had studied so hard, exercised so little, eaten so sparingly and suffered so much from imperfect health, that his muscles seemed entirely relaxed and flabby.  His hand, when he gave it in salutation or in parting, was like that of a sick child.  But his hair remained as black as a raven.  His brows were shaggy and overhanging, and his black eyes, when ever and anon the drooping lids were lifted away from them, shot forth a very deep and searching light.  As one sat over against him, watching his words, he might easily imagine himself gazing through those glowing orbs back into the ages.  His study, up two flights of stairs, overlooking one of the public squares of the city, was a place to be remembered.  Its furniture was a plain round table, a standing-desk, an old sofa and two or three chairs.  High up on the walls between the book-shelves and the ceiling, nearly all round the room, hung engraved portraits of distinguished men; and he showed his noble catholicity of spirit, in having the great men of his native land all there, without regard to their peculiar schools and sentiments.  His library contained about 4,000 volumes.  They filled the room; table, chairs and sofa were loaded with them; they lay in stacks upon the floor; and, in some cases, were piled, two or three tiers deep, into the shelves against the walls.  To anybody else the library would have been a chaos; but he could lay his hand at once upon any book he wished for.  It was in this room,