Nymph of the wood and forest glade, On some Alpine height, One more must be added to this long list, the pretty Clochette des Alpes, its delicate stem bearing two bell-shaped lilac flowers, fringed at the edges, growing out of a tuft of round leaves like a shilling, and therefore named soldanella. From all these let us make up our bouquet, placing round it the maiden-hair, the holly fern, the cystopteris and numberless club-mosses and lichens. But the flowers are not the only attraction to the lover of nature. Ere the sky is colored, or the light breeze announces the approach of day, the birds give the signal for Nature to awake. There are those that seldom descend lower than the snow-line, and love the wild and magnificent peaks. Such are the now rare birds the golden eagle and the lammergeier, only met with in the deepest recesses of the Tyrol. Organized for the highest flights, they are the true sailors of the atmosphere. There is also the chouca or chough, a crow of intensely black plumage, with a yellow beak and bright red claws, which loves the snowy regions. Those tourists who seek the glaciers of Monte Rosa and the Col du Géant will perhaps remember large flocks of them uttering their discordant notes among the broken rocks and steep precipices. Every thing that rises to a dizzy height in the air has a charm for them. Tall fir-trees, steeples, old towers, the battlements of castles overlooking the valleys, isolated peaks, sharp-pointed aiguilles are the places they choose for their nests. Sociable hermits of the air, condemned like those who dwelt in the desert of Thebes to the most frugal and austere food, they delight in solitude, and the more space that separates them from man the more are they in their element. There are other interesting species which the Swiss naturalists describe for tation ceases and perpetual snow begins. Nine thousand feet above the sea do they seek and find the insects necessary for their existence; beetles, butterflies, and spiders are nestled in the crags and clefts of the rocks, placed there by Him who giveth food to every living thing in due season. It has often been remarked by naturalists that the song of birds is borrowed from the sounds heard around. Whether that be true or not, the cry of a bird has often formed its name. Some of these have passed down to us from age to age, and from people to people. Take the crow as an instance; in the Sanscrit we find it called kara-va, in Greek korax, in German krähe, in Latin corvus, in French corbeau. The imploring cry of the crane is expressed in many languages by its name; German krane, in French grane, in Latin grus, in Greek gera-nos. Where is the sportsman who, when hearing that the Sanscrit name for partridge is titiri, would not recognize the sound he has so often heard in the evening? A particular page in Aristotle puzzled naturalists, until the curlew's cry pronounced its own name, and cleared up the mystery. One very remarkable but shy Alpine bird should not be omitted. When the traveller is passing through the pine forests he will hear a sound proceeding from their deep recesses resembling crack," or at some seasons curr." It is the nut-cracker, which feeds on the pinecones, and is rarely seen. Long before other birds have begun to build, in March, ere the snow has melted off the ground under the trees, it builds its nest; and instead of being noisy, it becomes silent and stealthy in its movements. Standing beside the torrent as it rushes down over the huge boulders, the observer will notice a conspicuous little bird, with throat and breast of white, darting arrow-like up the stream, or perched upon a rock. It is named, like its British congener, the dipper. Then there is the beautiful wall-creeper, with its ash-colored back and breast, crimson and black wings, and black tail tipped with white, ranging to above ten thousand feet, playing on the snow-beds, and feeding on the scanty vegetation which here and there takes root among the rocks. Strange to say, there is an abundant L supply of insects upon which these birds live, even in the most desolate regions. The Desoria or glacier flea thrives in a temperature seldom rising above the freezing-point; they may be seen in great numbers in the shallow pools of water under the glacier stones, and when disturbed, jump about and rush to the bottom, where they form an animated mass of black dots. Grasshoppers and beetles love the higher pastures; and many butterflies, very rare in England, may there be collected as they flutter from flower to flower. Very interesting it is to notice the various examples of the wonderful way in which the Creator adapts the forms of animal life to their position. Let us learn a lesson of joy from each of them, breaking through the chrysalis, like the insect, to reach a higher life, and rising like the bird with its joyous song, true to the kindred points of heaven and home."-Chambers's Journal. HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE.* BY G. A. SIMCOX. MR. BUCKLE's reputation is unique in more ways than one; after a long preparation he burst upon the world with a masterpiece, and this masterpiece was received with instant acclamation by the public, and depreciated so far as possible by most of those to whom the public generally looks for guidance. The most singular thing of all is that during the period of preparation he deliberately abstained from any partial or tentative work, and that he entered upon the work of preparation with an utterly undisciplined, not to say unexercised intelligence. He was a very delicate child, and had hardly mastered his letters at eight, and was quite indifferent to childish games. Dr. Birkbeck was of opinion that he ought to be spared in every possible way, and never made to do any thing but what he chose. His great delight was to sit for hours by the side of his mother to hear the Scriptures read. Up to the age of eighteen he read hardly any thing but the "Arabian Nights," "Don Quixote," Bunyan and. Shakespeare, whom he began at fifteen. He was sent to school for a short time to give him a change from home, with strict directions that he was never to be punished or forced to learn; nevertheless, out of curiosity, he learned enough to bring home the first prize for mathematics before he was fourteen. Being asked what reward he would have for this feat, he chose to be taken away from school. He knew hardly any thing, and was proud of * 'Life and Writings of Henry Thomas Buckle." By Alfred Henry Huth. Sampson Low & Co. showing off what he knew. He would stand on the kitchen table, and recite the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in Latin and French, translating sentence by sentence. He would play with his cousin at " Parson and Clerk," always preaching himself, according to his mother, with extraordinary eloquence for a child. This is more like a precocious child of four than a clever and backward child of fourteen. The same may be said of his less intellectual amusements. "On one occasion, for instance, he turned every chair and table in the kitchen over, gave his nurse's daughter a pea-shooter, and had shooting matches with her; and on another occasion, when he went to call on his old nurse, turned every thing there topsyturvy, romped about, threw the daughter's cat out of the window, and, finally, walking with them down the street, sang and was generally uproarious, seizing fruit from the open shops, and behaving so as to make them quite afraid that he would get into trouble." He was sent again to a private tutor's, and there, though he never seemed to learn his lessons, he was always foremost. His health, however, failed, and again he had to be taken home. In the latter part of this time his father's conversation gave him an interest in politics and political economy, and by the time he was seventeen he had composed a letter to Sir Robert Peel on Free Trade. His father, a cultivated man who had been at Cambridge, and used to recite Shakespeare to his family, wished his son to be an East India merchant like himself. Buckle entered the office much against his will, but when he was a little over eighteen he was released by his father's death, which occurred on the 22d of January, 1840. His last words were to bid his son, "Be a good boy to his mother." Buckle was taken fainting from the room. He always repaid her self-sacrificing devotion with the tenderest attachment; he never really recovered from the shock of her death. She was a very remarkable woman. Miss Shirreff said, after meeting her in 1854: manners of different countries, and taking lessons in the languages from masters, who taught him to talk them fluently, but could never break him of his British accent; the grammar he found he could master more quickly and thoroughly by himself. At the same time he began a course of omnivorous reading, and his wonderful memory very soon made him seem a prodigy of information, especially as, like Dr. Johnson, he had the talent of tearing the heart out of a book. The way he began his studies with a plan of the "History of Civilization" in his mind is exceedingly characteristic. He began the History of the Middle Ages in Lardner's" Cabinet Cyclopædia," finishing thirteen pages in two hours, during which he referred to Hallam and Hawkins's little work on Germany for verification of dates. "This brings me from the invasion of Clovis in 496 to the murder of Sigebert by Fredegonde in 575. I have at the same time made copious abstracts of the times referred to." Apart from her being the mother of such a son, she was a very interesting person to know. It is curious how many people there are on whom their own lives seem to have produced no impression; they may have seen and felt much, but they have not reflected upon their experience, and they remain apparently unconscious of the influences that have been at work around and upon them. With Mrs. Buckle it was exactly the reverse. The events, the persons, the books that had affected her at particular times or in a particular manner, whatever influenced her actions or opinions, remained vividly impressed on her mind, and she spoke freely of her own experience, and eagerly of all that bore upon her son. He was the joy, even more than the pride of her heart. This is from the first entry Having saved him from the early peril that in his diary, October 15th, 1843. Ten threatened him, and saved him, as she fondly days later we read, "The sketch, then, believed, in a great measure by her loving care, of the History of France during the he seemed twice her own; and that he was saved for great things, to do true and permavas Middle Ages has occupied me just ten nent service to mankind, was also an article of days, but then on one of those days I did that proud mother's creed, little dreaming how not read at all (on account of a thick fog). short a time he was to be allowed even for And besides that I am now in better train sowing the seeds of usefulness. I said above that Mrs. Buckle spoke freely of think, on an average, I may say eight When for reading than I was at first, so that I days will suffice for each history." He was aware that this proceeding was hasty and superficial, and he looked forward to completing his knowledge by further study of larger and more elaborate works, such books as Sismondi's “Histoire des Français," and by reading in biographical dictionaries the lives of all the notabilities of the period he was studying, for he made it a rule to go through a period in many books, instead of going through many periods in one book. One cannot say that his method of study was exactly uncritical; he found out the first day that Dr. Lardner quite deserved his reputation for inaccuracy, but he took no precaution against having to unlearn more important errors than a wrong name or date. A professional scholar does not feel that a fact is the foundation of an opinion till he is sure that he has reached the right point of view. In all but very exceptional cases this method leads to her own experience, I should add that her conversation was the very reverse of gossip. It was a psychological rather than a biographical experience that she detailed. I rarely remember any names being introduced, and never unless associated with good.". It is natural to compare Buckle's training, or want of training, with Rousseau's, and perhaps the reason it turned out so differently was, that it was conducted by a Calvinist mother instead of by a libertine father, and that the physical conditions were healthier. Rousseau when a child habitually turned night into day; it was an event when Buckle sat up to write to Sir Robert Peel. Entering life at eighteen his own master, with powers that had never been taxed, with an imagination ceaselessly stimulated, it is no wonder that he was enormously ambitious. He set to work at once to gratify his ambition. He travelled for more than a year on the Continent with his mother and an unmarried sister, studying the more questions than answers, and constructive effort has to restrict itself increasingly to monographs, and the largest speculation generally turns upon the application and extension of one or two conceptions, such as the primitive family or the survival of the fittest. Now Buckle, like Bacon, thought that it was possible to pick out facts from the best second-hand authorities, like Hallam, or even from authorities which were not the best, like the History of Helvetia," in two volumes, which he picked up for eighteenpence on a book-stall, and then to tabulate the facts picked out, and gradually sift them into a system. Wherever he could he used translations, because he could go through them faster, but, as many works were not translated, he learned nineteen languages, seven of which he could write and speak serviceably (he introduced himself to Hallam by interpreting for him in Germany). At first he still found time for travel, and formed æsthetic preferences; he thought, till he saw Egypt and Petra, that he preferred beauty of form to beauty of color. He had a marked dislike to being bullied or cheated, which reminds us of Schopenhauer. At Naples, for instance, the boatmen threatened to leave him in a cave at Capri unless he would pay more than he had bargained for. He gave them his purse, but took care to stay and have them punished. At DresAt Dresden a chess-player gave out that Buckle was not good enough for him to play with; he placarded a challenge to play the braggart for five hundred thalers, with the result that he did not venture to show his face till Buckle left. Again, when he had bought a new carpet from a man who had promised him discount for cash, and then asked for the whole sum, Buckle quietly returned the unpaid bill to his pocket, and told him to call for payment that day two years. At first chess was his favorite recreation, and by the time he was thirty he had some right to consider himself the champion player of the day, though with his customary independence he never studied printed games or openings, and had no chess-board at home which was not too small for his men. He had a special talent for giving odds, and knew by intuition what risks it was safe to run with a strange player, since the play of a 66 giver of odds can never be perfectly sound. He was a pleasant antagonist, whether he won or lost, but he avoided. exposing his temper to too great trials. One player, known as the telegraph,' he would never engage, and at last gave the following explanation: "Well, sir, the slowness of genius is difficult to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is intolerable." Even with this precaution chess. was too exacting a game to be the sole relaxation of a student, and from 1850 onward he showed an increasing preference for the stimulus of society; he was beginning to be known, and as he refused to write except for immortality, it was natural he should talk. 66 "While his mother was well enough, he gave dinners during the season of from eight to eighteen persons two or three times a week, and dined out himself frequently; indeed he could not bear dining alone, and if without any special invitation, he would drop in upon some of his relations or more intimate friends to spend the evening. Of his talk, Miss Shirreff conversation was too well known to need mentruly observes,' The brilliancy of Mr. Buckle's tion; but what the world did not know was how entirely it was the same among a few intimates with whom he felt at home, as it was at a large party where success meant celebrity. This talk was the outpouring of a full and earnest mind; it had more matter than wit, more of book knowledge than of personal observation. The favorite maxim of many dinGlissez, mais n'appuyez ner-table talkers, pas, was certainly not his. He loved to go to the bottom of a subject, unless he found that his opponent and himself stood on ground so different, or started from such opposite principles, as to make ultimate agreement hopeless, and then he dropped or turned the subject. offence at times, while he not seldom wearied others by keeping up the ball, and letting conversation merge into discussion. He was simply bent on getting at the truth, and if he believed himself to hold it he could with difficulty be made to understand that others might be impatient while he set it forth. On the other hand, it is fair to mention that, if too fond of argument, and sometimes too prone to self-assertion, his temper in discussion was perfect; he was a most candid opponent and a most admirable listener.' His memory was almost faultless, and always ready to assist and illus trate his wonderful powers of explanation. Pages of our great prose writers,' says Miss Shirreff, were impressed on his memory. He could quote passage after passage with the same ease as others quote poetry, while of poetry itself he was wont to say, 'It stamps itself on the brain." Truly did it seem that, without effort on his part, all that was grandest in English poetry had become, so to speak, a part of his mind. Shakespeare ever first, then Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher, were so His manner of doing this, unfortunately, gave familiar to him that he seemed ever ready to recall a passage, and often to recite it with an intense delight in its beauty which would have It made it felt by others naturally indifferent.' was the same in all that was best in French literature, in Voltaire, Corneille, Racine, Boileau, and, above all, Molière. Captain Kennedy recalls an instance of this ready memory on an occasion when they were in company together. The conversation turned on telling points in the drama, and one of the party cited that scene in 'Horace' which so struck Boileau, where Horace is lamenting the disgrace which he supposes has been brought upon him by the flight of his son in the combat with the Curiaces. Que vouliez-vous qu'il fit contre trois?' asks Julie; and the old man passionately exclaims, Qu'il mourût.' Buckle agreed that it was very fine, and immediately recited the whole scene from its commencement, giving ་ the dialogue with much spirit and effect." A more formidable feat was reciting Burke's peroration on the loss of the American Colonies, to prove to Burke's biographer that it was Burke, not Sheridan, who applied the metaphor of shearing a wolf to the obstinacy of George III. In other ways his life was the reverse of ascetic he cultivated" his sense of taste, at one time actually seeing his steaks cut at the butcher's; insisting on having toast made before his eyes every Monday, when the bread was more than one day old; and teaching his womankind how to make tea, which ought, it seems, to stand rather longer when the caddy is full than when it is nearly empty, and the proportion of tea-dust which does not need to be uncurled by the steam is larger. The same spirit of minute forethought ran through his management of money matters. He had never more than £1500 a year to spend, and had made up his mind that £3000 was the least he could marry on. (He never did marry; for one cousin whom he fell in love with at seventeen married some one else, and he was parted from another every way suitable because his family thought it wrong for cousins to marry.) He spent £300 a year on books, and it is not surprising that he taught his servant to bind the ragged ones in brown paper, and that he cherished comfortable old clothes. He could spend as well as spare; his books were luxuriously lodged in glass cases, and if a friend's family needed rest or change, he was anxious to press a hundred pounds on them as a loan. He was kind, too, in immaterial ways, exercising the same minute forethought for others as for himself. From his first acquaintance with Miss Shirreff and her sister he was unwearied in his endeavors to assist them. Here are one or two fragments of his letters in 1854: "I feel it was very ill-natured on my part not to press Comte upon you last night when you so considerately hesitated as to borrowing it. To make the only amends in my power I now send it you, and beg that you will keep it as long as you like, for I promise that if I have at any time occasion to refer to it I will ask to have it back, so that you need have no scruple of you is that when not reading it you on that head. The only thing I will beg would have it put into some cupboard, as on several grounds I value it very much, and I never leave it out at home.' "You sent me the first three volumes of Comte as I happen to remember, for I put them away directly they came. I am sorry you should have missed taking them with you, as in the country one particularly needs some intellectual employment to prevent the mind from falling into those vacant raptures which the beauties of nature are apt to suggest." This is ten months later: "I am truly sorry to receive so indifferent an account of your health. To hear such things is enough to prevent one from being an optimist-how much more to you who feel them. I have often speculated on what you and Miss Shirreff could accomplish if you were made capable of real wear and tear; but this is a speculation I could never bring to maturity, because of the strong suspicion I have that with a certain mind there must and will be a certain physical structure of which we may modify the effects but never change the nature. Look at Miss Martineau ! Give her delicacy as well as power, and I believe that she could never have gone through the work she has." He was ready to criticise the second work of the sisters in MS., while his own work was passing through the press. The first volume was printed at his own expense, after negotiations with Mr. Parker, which showed a curious mixture of suspicion and generosity. would not consent to his Ms. being submitted to any person whom he did not know; but he was sincerely anxious that Mr. Parker should have some indepen |