Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453

nfortunately, the valuable series of his letters to his father was destroyed by fire a short time before his own death; but the account given of him by Mme Hensler is quite sufficient to connect all that remains; and from this, and one or two other sources open to us, we shall try to fill up our present narrative.

Niebuhr is one of those men whose advent forms an era in the history of human knowledge. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that he was the first to infuse even into Roman story that element of doubt which has changed the whole fabric of historical science. If Niebuhr was a mere sceptic, he would be only the humble follower of Bayle, Lesurgnes de Pouilly, and other writers of the last century; but his merit lies in reconstruction--in the jealous care with which he distinguishes between the true monuments of history and the mass of traditional rubbish in which they lay entombed. In his Roman history, however, although by that alone he is known in England, we find only a portion of the intell