“I am luxuriating in the delights of Oxford. There has never been
enough said of this queen of all cities.”
But what as a German he admired and envied most was, after all, the House
of Commons:—
“I wish you could form an idea of what I felt. I saw for the first
time _man_, the member of a true Germanic State, in his highest,
his proper place, defending the highest interests of humanity with
the wonderful power of speech-wrestling, but with the arm of the
spirit, boldly grasping at or tenaciously holding fast power, in
the presence of his fellow-citizens, submitting to the public
conscience the judgment of his cause and of his own uprightness. I
saw before me the empire of the world governed, and the rest of
the world controlled and judged, by this assembly. I had the
feeling that, had I been born in England, I would rather be dead
than not sit among and speak among them. I thought of my own
country, and was thankful that I _could_ thank God for being a
German and being myself. But I felt, also, that we are all
children on this field in comparison with the English; how much
they, with their discipline of mind, body, and heart, can effect
even with but moderate genius, and even with talent alone! I drank
in every word from the lips of the speakers, even those I
disliked.”
More than a year was thus spent in England in the very fullness of life.
“My stay in England in 1838-39,” he writes at a later time, the 22d of
September, 1841, “was the poetry of my existence as a man; this is the
prose of it. There was a dew upon those fifteen months, which the sun has
dried up, and which nothing can restore.” Yet even then Bunsen could not
have been free from anxieties for the future. He had a large family
growing up, and he was now again, at the age of forty-seven, without any
definite prospects in life. In spite, however, of the intrigues of his
enemies, the personal feelings of the King and the Crown Prince prevailed
at last; and he was appointed in July, 1839, as Prussian Minister in
Switzerland, his secret and confidential instructions being “to do
nothing.” These instructions were carefully observed by Bunsen, as far as
politics were concerned. He passed two years of rest at the Hubel, near
Berne, with his family, devoted to his books, receiving visits from his
friends, and watching from a distance the coming events in Prussia.
In 1840 the old King died, and it was generally expected that Bunsen would
at once receive an influential position at Berlin. Not till April, 1841,
however, was he summoned to the court, although, to judge from the
correspondence between him and the new King, Frederick William IV., few
men could have enjoyed a larger share of royal confidence and love than
Bunsen. The King was hungering and thirsting after Bunsen, yet Bunsen was
not invited to Berlin. The fact is that the young King had many friends,
and those friends were not the friends of Bunsen. They were satisfied with
his honorary exile in Switzerland, and thought him best employed at a
distance in doing nothing. The King too, who knew Bunsen’s character from
former years, must have known that Berlin was not large enough for him;
and he therefore left him in his Swiss retirement till an employment
worthy of him could be found. This was to go on a special mission to
England with a view of establishing, in common with the Church of England,
a Protestant bishopric at Jerusalem. In Jerusalem the King hoped that the
two principal Protestant churches of Europe would, across the grave of the
Redeemer, reach to each other the right hand of fellowship. Bunsen entered
into this plan with all the energy of his mind and heart. It was a work
thoroughly congenial to himself; and if it required diplomatic skill,
certainly no one could have achieved it more expeditiously and
successfully than Bunsen. He was then a _persona grata_ with bishops and
archbishops, and Lord Ashley—not yet Lord Shaftesbury—gave him all the
support his party could command. English influence was then so powerful at
Constantinople that all difficulties due to Turkish bigotry were quickly
removed. At the end of June, 1841, he arrived in London; on the 6th of
August he wrote, “All is settled;” and on the 7th of November the new
Bishop of Jerusalem was consecrated. Seldom was a more important and more
complicated transaction settled in so short a time. Had the discussions
been prolonged, had time been given to the leaders of the Romanizing party
to recover from their surprise, the bill that had to be passed through
both houses would certainly have been defeated. People have hardly yet
understood the real bearing of that measure, nor appreciated the germ
which it may still contain for the future of the Reformed Church. One man
only seems to have seen clearly what a blow this first attempt at a union
between the Protestant churches of England and Germany was to his own
plans, and to the plans of his friends; and we know now, from Newman’s
“Apologia,” that the bishopric of Jerusalem drove him to the Church of
Rome. This may have been for the time a great loss to the Church of
England; it marked, at all events, a great crisis in her history.
In spite, however, of his great and unexpected success, there are traces
of weariness in Bunsen’s letters of that time, which show that he was
longing for more congenial work. “O, how I hate and detest diplomatic
life!” he wrote to his wife; “and how little true intellectuality is there
in the high society here as soon as you cease to speak of English national
subjects and interests; and the eternal hurricanes, whirling, urging,
rushing, in this monster of a town! Even with you and the children life
would become oppressive under the diplomatic burden. I can pray for our
country life, but I cannot pray for a London life, although I dare not
pray against it, _if it must be_.”
Bunsen’s observations of character amidst the distractions of his London
season are very interesting and striking, particularly at this distance of
time. He writes:—
“Mr. Gladstone has been invited to become one of the trustees of
the Jerusalem Fund. He is beset with scruples; his heart is with
us, but his mind is entangled in a narrow system. He awaits
salvation from another code, and by wholly different ways from
myself. Yesterday morning I had a letter from him of twenty-four
pages, to which I replied early this morning by eight.
“The Bishop of London constantly rises in my estimation. He has
replied admirably to Mr. Gladstone, closing with the words, ‘My
dear sir, my intention is not to limit and restrict the Church of
Christ, but to enlarge it.’ ”