with special pleasure of the system introduced by him for the disposal
of newly-procured books as well as of the cataloguing, and the following
innovations: Here, as elsewhere, the titles of the books desired by
different individuals were written upon cards and handed in. If it was
impossible to satisfy the demand thus expressed, the card was simply
returned, and such returns were far more frequent in the Berlin library
than in any other. Lepsius therefore directed that thenceforth the cards
containing such demands as could not be complied with should be kept,
and he made it the duty of the higher officials of the library to find
out whether the refusal was owing to any negligence of the subordinate
employees. The cards requiring books which could not be furnished were
preserved, and it was soon evident that certain books were repeatedly
called for. These were naturally such as were particularly important for
students, and Lepsius caused several copies of them to be immediately
procured. He also invited the most experienced professors to supply him
with the names of those works which were of special weight in their own
departments, but too costly to be procured by individuals of narrow
means. He proceeded upon the correct principle that precisely those
books which students could not buy for themselves should be at their
disposal in the library. According to his own reckoning, up to that time
a third of the books demanded had not been delivered, while a year after
he took the management only one-twelfth were not delivered. The scant
courtesy, indeed the incivility, of the Berlin library under Pertz, had
been really notorious, and presented a glaring contrast to the obliging
spirit encountered in the other large German libraries, especially those
of Göttingen, Munich and Leipsic. This bad reputation was in some
measure improved under the administration of Lepsius.
The multitude of duties which devolved upon the chief librarian did not
hinder him from continuing to hold the office of president of the board
of directors of the Archaeological Institute. This, although it
conferred honor, yet consumed much time. Lepsius had held the post since
Gerhard’s death in 1867, and when he became manager of the library the
directors were no less men than Haupt, Curtius, Mommsen, Kirchhoff, and
afterwards Hercher. Under his presidency the Institute had been enlarged
from a Prussian institution to a scientific institution of the whole
German empire. The construction of a stately building at the capital had
been authorized and completed. It was also largely owing to Lepsius that
the scholarships for young archaeologists were increased in number and
amount. The application for them constantly became more numerous, and
among the archaeologists were many philologists, who wished to
participate in the benefits of the Institute. The archaeologists
generally received the preference, but Lepsius specially and rightly
interested himself for the young private professors of the university
and the teachers at the gymnasiums. He desired that they might acquire
more elevated views of art, and a more enlightened conception of science
and of life, by a sojourn on the classical soil of Italy, where the
whole spiritual existence of a well-prepared and susceptible youth is so
easily broadened and ennobled. Entirely apart from whatever scientific
gains he may have won, the memory of Italy must illumine the teacher’s
life, his academical discourses, and even his dryest teaching, and lend
to all a higher inspiration. Lepsius was also enthusiastically
interested in the founding of a subordinate branch of the Roman
Institute at Athens, and exerted all the influence in his power in favor
of it. Ernest Curtius, “whose intellectual Fatherland is Greece,” showed
himself most active in carrying out this project. The correspondence
which Lepsius had to conduct, as president of the board of directors in
Berlin, had so increased that in 1874 he was obliged to write about
eighty letters in a quarter of a year. Since 1833 he had belonged to the
Institute as a corresponding member, since 1835 as a regular member,
since 1836, first as a director, and finally as presiding member of the
central board. When he retired in 1880 the Institute awarded him the
well-deserved honor by electing him an honorary member.
He had been made a Doctor of the Theological Faculty in Leipsic in 1859.
Since 1850 he had been a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and
since 1858 a corresponding member of the _Institut de France_. He had
besides been elected member of almost half a hundred learned societies.
After the death of Trendelenburg, when the office of secretary of the
Berlin Academy of Sciences was vacant, he was asked if he would be
inclined to assume it, and only after his decided refusal, and at his
suggestion, was E. Curtius chosen. In 1872 he received the most
honorable of all German decorations, the order _pour le mérite_ for
science and the arts. He had already, in 1869, been appointed a knight
of the Bavarian order of Maximilian, which was closely related to the
foregoing. In 1883 he was appointed Government Upper Privy Councellor.
The unusual and numerous ovations which he received during the same year
upon the occasion of his Doctor’s Jubilee of fifty years, were such as
have fallen to the lot of but few scholars.
His later works on Egyptian art and the oldest texts of the “Book of the
Dead” have been already mentioned. Connected with these were a series of
valuable monographs[88] published in the Transactions and Monthly
Reports of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and in the “Zeitschrift für
ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde.” In his seventieth year, after
an apoplectic attack which slightly crippled his arm, he presented his
long-expected Nubian Grammar[89] to science.
This work, which marked an epoch, comprised the results of many years of
study. Throughout his whole life as a master workman he had been engaged
in arranging the philological material which he had acquired while in
Ethiopia and on the Blue Nile. He had illuminated this mass of knowledge
by profound study, and so greatly added to it that, as far as the works
then in existence permitted, he had gained a mastery over all branches
of language upon the African continent.
The introduction to this book, consisting of a hundred and twenty-six
pages, is in itself a colossal achievement. We devoted a special
treatise[90] to it soon after its appearance. By means of it the reader
is as it were raised upon a hovering cloud, whence he can survey all
Africa, and pass in review a portion of the early history of its
peoples. He is able, under the guidance of the most skillful of
commentators, to obtain thence a general view of all the African nations
and their languages. These are presented to him classified into zones
and groups, and in fact, in all those stages of their historical
existence which are accessible to investigation. This is particularly
the case with regard to those peoples with whom the book is especially
concerned. The author had recognized in the Nubians a branch of the
original African population, who never possessed a historical literature
in their own language, and it was no slight matter, from the records of
the Egyptians and the occasional reports of the Greeks, Romans and
Arabians, to construct the general outlines of a history which begins at
such an early period as the building of the pyramids, and ends with the
destruction of the great Christian Nubian kingdom at the end of the
thirteenth century after Christ.
Lepsius was also induced to construct a history of the Kushite peoples
from the records on the monuments of the struggles which the more feeble
Nubians had to sustain against that race. At an early date the Kushites
were in possession of both shores of the Red Sea, and had also made
themselves masters of the eastern bend of the Nile adjacent thereto.
Lepsius was also inspired by the desire to approach more nearly to a
solution of the problem whether the so-called Ethiopian stone
inscriptions, which were yet undeciphered and many of which are to be
found between Philae and the confluence of the two sources of the Nile,
were written in the African tongue of the Nubians, or in the Kushite
language. Of this latter the present Begá language, which is
comparatively little known must be considered the successor. This
portion of his work is one of the author’s boldest intellectual feats.
The chapters which he devotes to the Kushite Puna, as the predecessors
of the Phoenician colonists on the Mediterranean, and to their
emigration to Babylon, have roused much opposition, and have encountered
serious doubt even in ourselves. But other portions of this same
historical statement are of great value, and must give repeated impulse
to fresh investigation.
The final result of all these researches is that the key to the
“Ethiopian” inscriptions so frequently mentioned is to be sought, not in
the Nubian but in the Begá language, and the future, we think, will
prove the correctness of this supposition. Had Lepsius, during his long
journey, been in a position to arrive at those conclusions whence he
afterwards inferred the high historic and linguistic importance of the
Begá language, he would have given it the first place in his
philological researches. He would have devoted to it the thorough study
which, as a matter of fact, he gave to the Nubian tongue. The
fundamental and comprehensive manner in which he prosecuted this latter
study is proved by the second part of the work mentioned above, which
comprises the Nubian grammar and its rules of pronunciation, etymology
and syntax, as well as reading exercises. These include the whole Gospel
of St. Mark, the “Our Father,” and a series of Nubian songs, besides the
lexicon and scheme of the Nubian dialects. Good old Achmet Abu Nabbut, a
native of Derr, who was perfect master of two Nubian dialects, (the
Kennez and Mahas), and first introduced Lepsius to the Nubian tongue,
has been for months in my own service, and assures me that Lepsius was
the only European who knew how to write the language of his native land.
After Lepsius returned to Germany the Nubian ‘Ali wed Schaltuf, whom
Count W. von Schlieffen had brought from Africa with him, also did him
good service. The Nubian Grammar is certainly a useful work in itself,
but the magnificent introduction which precedes it is of yet greater
weight and higher significance. It may be described as the beautiful and
enduring result of many years of faithful industry and difficult
preparatory labor,[91] upon a wide domain of research which had been
almost untrodden before.
Max Müller, a faithful friend of the departed, and of his family, has
made the following appropriate remarks on this introduction: “While most
comparative philologists are at present absorbed in details regarding
the character of the possible dialectal diversities of individual
vowels and consonants, Professor Lepsius draws with bold strokes the
mighty outlines of a history of language which covers four or five
thousand years, and embraces the whole continent of Africa and the
neighboring coasts of Asia. As the admirers of Gerard Douw shake their
heads before the immense surfaces which Paul Veronese has covered with
color, so we can readily understand that scholars who are absorbed in
the question whether the Arian language had originally four or five
distinct “A’s,” turn with a sort of terror from investigations like
those of Lepsius, where languages are traced back to a common origin.
Happily there is room for both in science, for the Gerard Douws and the
Veroneses; indeed it is to be sincerely desired in the interests of
science that the two styles may ever exist side by side. There is still
much rough work to be done among the hitherto unstudied languages of the
world, and for this work the bold, far-seeing eye of the huntsman is far
more necessary than the concentrated labor of the philological
microscopist.”
For the rest, the Grammar contains much which shows with how fine an ear
and sense of detail its author was endowed. He has also proved himself
to be a microscopist in his chronological and metrological
investigations. To these, as we know, he remained faithful to the end.
The effects of his apoplectic attack could not break down his vigorous
nature, and his last papers in the “Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache
and Alterthumskunde,” his controversial treatise against Herr Dörpfeld,
his “Linear Measures of the Ancients,” best prove that the vigor and
acuteness of his mind were entirely untouched by this ominous
misfortune, and by the heavy blows of destiny which he encountered
during the last years of his life.
Lepsius’ career as a Master Workman ended with his life. He was a
diligent and faithful laborer up to the boundaries of this earthly
existence. He, the Senior Master of a most ambitious branch of study,
has laid down his office of pioneer and leader. Egyptology, to which he
consecrated the best part of his great powers, will deserve the name of
a science so long as she follows the way which the departed pointed out
to her. In him the Berlin university lost one of its ornaments, and the
Fatherland an investigator who, far beyond its borders, was accounted
one of the most eminent of his time.
[Illustration: THE HOME OF LEPSIUS.]
THE HOME OF LEPSIUS.
Since Lepsius’ fortunate entrance into the haven of matrimony we have
devoted our whole attention to estimating his scientific achievements as
a master workman, leaving unmentioned his personal experiences, except
so far as they fell within the sphere of his scholarly labors. We
thought it better to depict his domestic life, and the man Lepsius, in
the circle of his family and friends, quite apart from his scientific
occupations. These latter were carried on in the sanctuary of his study,
in the lecture room, or in the public library. No one ever understood
more thoroughly than he how to disengage his mind from his special
pursuits, and to enjoy intercourse with wife or child, with individuals
or general society. None better knew how to participate with both
intellect and heart in animated conversations on art or literature,
science or politics. His special acquirements remained hidden until a
desire was expressed for information on such subjects, and he was
appealed to.
The Lepsius who returned from the Orient and founded a home of his own,
was essentially different from the young scholar who had been reckoned
among the conservatives in Göttingen, and whom we saw indignantly quit
Schleiermacher’s lectures on the Life of Jesus, in Berlin. During a long
sojourn in England, which had brought him into connection with the
leaders of political life, he had learned to appreciate the rights of
the people, and the advantages of a free state under a constitutional
government. He had spent three years in the East under unusual
conditions, always in a position of authority and subject to none. What
can so quickly expand even the most limited views, what can more
certainly conduce to an unfettered and vigorous use of existence, what
can more strengthen even the feeblest self-confidence, what can lead
with more imperious necessity to self-examination and to knowledge of
one’s own faults and merits, than a prolonged sojourn in the East, and
in the silent desert?
He had returned home entirely self-reliant, understanding himself and
his aims, and capable of maintaining his own stand in the face of
opposition. He had become a free-thinker of dispassionate and temperate
views, who had learned to despise the barriers which prejudices and
one-sided opinions of every kind malevolently set between men. He no
longer held to the dogmas and formulas of a circumscribed confession,
but he still adhered to that Christ to whom his free-thinking father had
taught him to look up as the harbinger of pure self-sacrificing human
love.
And the choice of this man had fallen upon a maiden of eighteen years.
All who knew her as a bride speak of her as a charming, happy creature,
full of childlike archness. But nevertheless passionate blood ran
through the veins of this young girl; Elizabeth’s finely cultivated mind
was restless and over-active, and her soul was completely filled with
ardent and fanatical religious zeal.
What contrasts! Seldom has there been a pair in every respects so
different; and yet they confirmed Schiller’s lines: “For where the
severe with the tender, where the strong and the gentle unite.” Love was
the metal of that bell whose voice had drawn them together, and bound
them to each other for a life time. It gave forth a pleasant sound, and
only one discord, which became especially perceptible in their latter
years, and which was produced by the great difference in their religious
convictions. This disturbed his ear but slightly, for, calm and assured
of his own aims, happy in his work and in his life, he devoted his time
to labor and science, and his intervals of recreation to his children,
to social pleasures, to the learned societies of which he was a member,
to his garden, to music, whose pleasures he gladly shared with his wife,
and to his beloved chess. At first she had attempted to realize the
dream of her girlhood, and to kindle his heart with the fire of her own
enthusiasm; but in vain. Tranquilly and cheerfully he accompanied her to
church, and whenever his occupations permitted it, usually on Sunday, he
took part in the daily household worship which she had instituted. He
allowed her to train the children, and to instil into them that
religious feeling in which he himself was not wanting, and in which he
recognized the loveliest flower of the soul, and of the feminine soul
especially. But he warned her against excess and exaggeration, which
were so alien to his own nature, and possibly this unsympathetic
attitude towards what to her was highest and holiest, only contributed
to cause in her ardent heart still warmer devotion to the doctrines of
her positive Protestant faith. We should here assert, in the most
decided manner, that this devotion was of the most unobtrusive kind.
Frau Lepsius never gave it public manifestation, and the only ones whom
she allowed to share in it were her nearest relatives, her pastor, and
her diary. She was ever averse to the course of the zealots and
pietists, who enjoyed such palmy days under Frederick IV., and once, on
hearing a sermon by the famous pastor Knak, she left the church in
indignation. The noble Jonas and the excellent Kögel were her pastors,
and certainly had more frequently to moderate than to kindle her zeal.
Her husband saw no reason for serious interference with the excessive
religious aspirations of her soul, for to him she gave everything that a
man can ask from the companion of his existence: a heart overflowing
with love, esteem heightened to admiration, and a warm interest in all
his labors and productions, even the most abstruse. In addition to this
she cared with prudence, skill and indefatigable industry for the
management and embellishment of the home, and there were few houses
where the hostess was able to make her guests so thoroughly at ease.
Nothing was farther from her thoughts than a puritanical renunciation of
the pleasures and delights of this world, and she gave a zest to the
household festivals by the inexhaustible fertility of her ideas in the
way of original representations and spectacles. She pleased in society
by her amiability and wit; she was the best of mothers; and as the
children grew up she was so excellent and untiring a teacher that he,
who had never had any confidence in his own ability as a pedagogue, was
glad and thankful to resign to her the charge of the mental and moral
education of the children. Among them were boys who were hard to govern,
yet they all turned out excellently. In matters of charity he gave her
entire liberty.
The inner being of this rare woman lies plain before us, and we are
permitted to follow the life of the Lepsius family almost from day to
day. We ourselves visited the house of Lepsius only as a friend and
guest, but the diary of its mistress, some twenty volumes, makes us a
member of the household. It is honest, simple, and yet written with
great intuitive perception. A number of poems are intermingled with the
excellent prose. They are mostly of religious tenor, and many of them
are distinguished by their lofty strain and beautiful thoughts. The
perusal of this journal has therefore afforded us genuine pleasure, and
it has exhibited to our soul as well as to our sight, the character of a
woman so singular and noble in her love, her activity and her aspiration
that we separate from it with sincere admiration, but also with deep
regret. It would be to abuse a great trust, were we to yield to the
desire to portray the character of its author from the avowals contained
in this journal, and yet this would excite quite different, and tenfold
greater, interest than that of her husband. For how much less alluring
to the psychologist is the calm progress of a man who came early to
maturity, his successful contests with the impulses of youth, and his
tranquil labors after the goal was attained, than the ceaseless
struggles of a woman distinguished above thousands by the ardor of her
soul and the keenness of her intellect. Yet we may be at least allowed
to extract from the diary all that can serve to give the reader a clear
idea of life in the home of Lepsius, its intercourse with the outside
world, and the experiences of its head as a husband, and as a member of
a select society.
Every betrothal has its history. Lilli (Elizabeth) Klein,[92] who was
greatly admired, had done some friends the favor to appear at an
entertainment as the fourteenth guest. The ominous number thirteen was
caused by Lepsius’ declining the invitation at a late moment. But,
nevertheless, he appeared, after all the guests were assembled, and it
was on this occasion that she made his acquaintance. “Oh Superstition”
she wrote in her diary, “for the first time I bless thee.”
Even this first meeting had carried the day with her. The next Sunday
she could not help thinking of him during the sermon, and when she
visited him with several of her relations, amongst whom there were some
young ladies, to inspect the curiosities which he had brought with him
from the Orient, her young heart was not only disturbed, but deeply
troubled, because he seemed to have paid more attention to her sister
than to her, and she already loved him.
The following day put an end to her anxiety. It was a Palm Sunday, and
that evening he wrote in his term-calendar “To-day the palm of life is
won,” while, at a later hour, she confided to her diary the rejoicings
of her heart. She prefaced the sentences with which she gave expression
to her rapture by Chamisso-Schubert’s “I cannot understand it, I cannot
believe it.”
She continues: “God, my God, how shall I thank thee for this unutterable
bliss! No, it is too great and too much, my Heavenly Father. ‘Beloved!’
Beloved by him! My heart is full, but I cannot write! My soul rejoices
in the thought; Beloved by him! But how can I prove myself worthy of
him?”
The letters which he wrote to Elizabeth also lie before us, and it is
not without deep emotion that we read these beautiful effusions of
tender passion from the profoundly touched heart of a man to whom we had
been accustomed to look up as an earnest teacher, and the dignified
senior master of our science. Here we see him succumb with lovable
weakness to a beautiful human emotion.
The passion for his “Lilli” compensates him for the magic of the East,
which he had felt so deeply a short time before, and he calls her his
“Shulamite” and his “Rose of Sharon.” Yet even in the bonds of love he
preserves the fundamental instincts of his soul, and he writes to her:
“Often and earnestly do I ask myself, my dear Lilli, whether it is not
after all ignoble selfishness, when I feel such intense bliss in your
devoted love, and in the consciousness that I have won you, so ardently
beloved a spirit, for my own. But then again I feel that through your
love all that is good in me is helped and strengthened, and I become
capable of a higher and purer love towards God and our fellow beings,
and then it seems as if it could not be wrong to desire such a relation
with all the strength of one’s soul; as if this happiness were our
vocation, seldom however to be attained untroubled, and never entirely
unalloyed, upon this earth. Oh, my Lilli, what a rare and rich life
would lie before us if the thoughts which we have exchanged in our
letters should one day become an actual living reality, not only in word
but in deed.”