"The child's character early exhibited a rare union of the faculty of poetical insight with that of accurate practical observation. The amusements he contrived for himself afford an illustration of this. During the periods of his confinement to the house, before he was old enough to have any paper given him, he covered with his writings and drawings the margins of the leaves of several copies of Forskaal's works, which were used in the house as waste paper. Then he made copy books for himself, in which he wrote essays, mostly on political subjects. He had an imaginary empire called Low-England, of which he drew maps, and he promulgated laws, waged wars, and made treaties of peace there. His father was pleased that he should occupy himself with amusements of this kind, and his sister took an active part in them. There still exist among his papers many of his childish productions; among others, translations and interpretations of passages of the New Testament, poetical paraphrases from the classics, sketches of little poems, a translation of Poncet's Travels in Ethiopia, an historical and geographical description of Africa, written in 1787 (the two last were undertaken as presents to his father on his birth-day), and many other things mostly written during these years."
Here is Niebuhr, at the age of thirty-four, Professor in Berlin, after he had retired from official trusts which had imposed as many toils upon him as would have made an enormously active life for one of the most ancient tenants of our English pension list to look back upon:
"Niebuhr's relinquishment of office, in 1810, forms an important epoch in his life. He was now thirty-four years of age, and since his twentieth year (with the exception of the sixteen months passed in England and Scotland), had been actively engaged in the public service. During this period he had indeed never lost sight of his philological researches, but he had only been able to devote to them his few hours of leisure; now, it was to be seen whether he could find satisfaction in the life of a student, after years passed in the midst of the great world, and surrounded by exciting circumstances. How far he had, however, turned these leisure hours to account, may be judged by the following memorandum, found, with many others of a similar kind, among his papers, and written most probably in Copenhagen about 1803: