dent opinion, when he was ready to dispense with it. He was willing that Mr. Parker should assess the estimated profits of the first edition, and to accept half for his share; but if he disposed of the copyright of the first edition, he was determined to secure a sum down, and drew back when he found that the half profits, if any, were to be contingent on the result of the sales. He actually received £665 for the first edition of fifteen hundred copies, and £500 for the copyright of the second edition of two thousand.

His immediate success was deserved by the industry with which he had studied a clear and popular style, reading and rereading the great masters, French and English, going through Johnson's Dictionary and Milton's prose works to enlarge his vocabulary, writing out in his own words the substance of a passage of Hallam and Macaulay, to see where his own inferiority lay. Besides, his habit of never leaving a subject in conversation till he had made his meaning perfectly clear must have served him as valuable practice in exposition, even if part of the audience were wearied at the time.

The author's want of systematic training was itself an advantage for the immediate effect of his work; he knew nothing but the prejudices he had escaped, the facts he had accumulated, and the doctrines he had marshalled them to support; he addressed a public as ignorant as he had been, and as acute as his father had been. He had followed the scientific movement of his day, and observed with prophetic insight that the discussion of the transmutation of species was the weak point in Lyell's great work on Geology, but he had not busied himself with the speculative movement then mainly political or theological. If he had done so he would have been in danger of losing himself in side issues. As it was he stated and illustrated clearly and weightily, so that the work will not have to be done again for any section of the Western world, the conception of an orderly movement of human affairs depending upon ascertained facts of all degrees of generality. This is his great service his special theories were of value chiefly as they furnished headings under which facts could be classified. Such conceptions as the "principle of protection" and the "principle of scepti

cism" are not made for immortality; it is not a key to the history of France to be told that there the spirit of protection manifested itself in secular affairs, while in Spain it manifested itself in spiritual. Nor can we explain the difference between the history of Spain and Scotland by observing that a bigoted clergy opposed the Crown in Scotland and supported the Crown in Spain; or the difference between America and Germany by observing that the ablest minds of Germany devoted themselves to the deductive method and the accumulation of knowledge and the ablest minds of America to the inductive method and the diffusion of knowledge.

He was never too far in advance of his day; he thought women ought to be educated, but not for careers in which they would compete with men. He made instinctively all the reserves for which the orthodox are fighting more or less hopefully now; he took over without discussion the sharp dualism between body and mind transmitted through Locke from Descartes. Even such a phrase as mental disease displeased him. Disease could only consistently be thought of in connection with a material organism. After this it is not surprising that he held that in another life there would be no difference between the genius and the idiot of this: they differed because their brains differed. At the same time, the difference between learning and ignorance might be more permanent, for it is by its own action that the mind acquires learning. He understood, and was half inclined to adopt, Kant's distinction between transcendental freedom and empirical necessity, although he was fully convinced by his statistical studies that any limited power of self-determination the individual might imaginably possess could safely be neglected in the scientific study of masses. Most important of all, he recognized as clearly as Pascal the logic of the heart. Instead of treating the convictions as a mere disturbing force warping the action of the pure reason, he dwelt eloquently upon their character as an orderly independent factor in our deepest convictions. This combination of fundamental conservatism with revolutionary energy upon two or three large yet definite questions is not unlike Mr. Bright—a politician who is, or was, un

popular with just the critics who depreciated Buckle as a thinker.

One can hardly think that the literary class were so much to blame for their hostility as Mr. Huth supposes. They had emancipated themselves as far as they cared to be emancipated; they held implicitly a great deal that Buckle proclaimed emphatically; they held it with all sorts of qualifications which they felt not unreasonably it was easier to apply in practice than to formulate beforehand; they found plenty of crudity in Buckle's special theories, and were angry with him not advancing knowledge upon special matters in the way in which Sainte-Beuve or even Macaulay did. It was not their fault that in their eyes individual facts, which Buckle made a point of despising, were more interesting as well as less uncertain than the general facts, which no doubt are more important. Besides, it was quite true, if not exactly relevant, that they might have found whatever they were inclined to accept in Buckle, in Comte, or Quetelet before. Their justification is complete when we remember that Buckle's method and generalizations have been quite unfruitful. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer and Sir H. S. Maine have had followers; Buckle had only readers. At the time criticism did not hurt him, as he said himself he throve on it. His superiority to his critics was too evident. He was the lion of the literary season; he was elected a member of the Athenæum, after some ineffectual threats of clerical opposition; he lectured at the Royal Institution on the Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge, and Faraday, Owen, and Murchison severally thanked him for the great treat they had enjoyed.

In the midst of his success the great sorrow of his life came upon him his mother's health had been failing since 1852, and in 1856 she feared that she should not live to see the reception of his work, and the fame that her counsel and sympathy had done so much to prepare. When at last her son showed her the first volume, with its magnificent dedication, he was frightened at her agitation. On the 11th of August, 1857, he writes: "Month after month she is now altering for the worse, at times slightly better, but perceptibly losing ground. Her mind

is changed even since I was here last : she is unable to read; she confuses one idea with another; and nothing remains of her as she once was, except her smile, and the exquisite tenderness of her affections. I while away my days here doing nothing, and caring for nothing-because I feel I have no future." "For the last six months of her life she was from time to time delirious, but such was her strength of mind that always when her son entered the room she became perfectly rational." He was no longer able to write except after the stimulus of conversation; and at last the sight of her "slowly but incessantly degenerating, mind and body both going," brought his work to a standstill, and Mr. Capel sug gested that he should try the distraction of reviewing Mill's" Essay on Liberty." On the first of April, 1859, he entered in his diary, 'At 9.15 my angel mother died peacefully, without pain." When all was over he sat down, in the dull and dreary house, once so full of light and love," to write his proof of the immortality of the soul. It is very like St. Anselm's proof of the being of a God. It is a weak feeling that can believe that it adds to or creates its object; a strong feeling is sure that its object is eternal.

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The next twelve days were spent upon his review of Mill's "Liberty," which is still memorable for the grotesque, pathetic, eloquent philippic on Pooley's case. It is never clear what we are to be indignant at: no doubt it was a miscarriage of justice that the judge did not find out that Pooley was mad: perhaps the law under which he was sentenced was getting rather rusty; still poachers are sentenced more severely, and Pooley was as great a nuisance as a poacher in a respectable neighborhood. But Buckle was in a state of exaltation where he had too little sense of the proportion of things to measure the personal responsibility of the judge or the importance of the case, but he saw correctly that while damaging his own position he was doing something to make further prosecutions for blasphemy difficult, and he had the sense to turn a deaf ear to the many letters from people with grievances that poured in upon him.

He said himself, about this time, "Only they are wise who can harden their hearts." His health was failing. Even

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before his first volume appeared he fainted in crossing the park; though his hours of work were not immoderate, seldom exceeding eight a day, his recreations-chess and conversation-were equally exhausting. He was only able to work very fitfully upon his second volume, and before long he lost his nephew, a very promising boy, who could appreciate him, saying, When you talk to me, uncle, it is like being in a dream. Children were always fond of him. A little girl whom he met in his walks at Blackheath could conceive no consolation for his leaving except the hope of being "his little girl." His landlady, who read his works, took charge of some children from India, and one of these soon found what liberties she could take with the philosopher.

a

When he visited Mr. Capel's pupils at Carshalton, he romped with them and got them holidays; they followed him about like a pack of dogs, and wrote home, "When he was here he was jolly chap." "He is a very nice fellow, and never talks philosophy to us." His theories of education were simple; he was very much afraid of children being overworked, and thought that if moral suasion failed the cane was the safest punishment; keeping children in only made them dull.

But his forbearance was inexhaustible. When he fainted, after a discussion on political economy with Mr. Huth, he went upstairs to try to sleep for two hours. At the end of the time Mr. Huth heard the landlady's children singing loudly and jumping violently, as it seemed, just over Mr. Buckle's room. He stopped the noise and then went to inquire if he had slept. Mr. Buckle said, No, the noise had prevented it. Why did he not ring the bell? "Oh, no, poor little things! it was their time for singing and jumping, not their sleeping time. When Mr. Huth's sons were travelling with Buckle in the peninsula of Sinai they told him how they had been amusing themselves by knocking off the tails of lizards to see how these jumped, while the lizards ran away as if nothing had happened. Mr. Glennie remarked that it was very cruel, and ought to be put a stop to, which made the boys angry; Buckle quietly said that it was the nature of boys to be

cruel, and that they would know better when they grew older; they were ashamed of what they had done, and did

so no more.

His growing friendship with the Huths was the chief interest and consolation of his later years in spite of its rather unpromising commencement, which we will leave Mrs. Huth to describe.

But

"It was in 1857 that we became acquainted with Henry Thomas Buckle. Long before, we had heard him talked of by an enthusiastic friend, who told us that Buckle was then writing the History of Civilization.' Our friend, Mr. Capel, would not borrow a book from us to read without first asking my friend Buckle' whether it was worth reading, as he knew all books. If I praised a favorite author, I was told that my admiration was misplaced, as my friend Buckle' saw imperfections in him. would not Mr. Huth like to call on my friend Buckle?' Mr. Huth decidedly objected, saying that if that gentleman's library contained twenty-two thousand volumes, and he had read them all, as Mr. Capel assured us, it would be an impertinence for a man who had not any thing very extraordinary to recommend him to intrude upon him. I was very glad of this answer, for I hated that friend Buckle,' whose name was constantly in Mr. Capel's mouth, and bored me intensely; who was always put forward to contradict me; who was said to know every thing, and who had seemingly done nothing. We were therefore considerably surprised when Mr. Capel came one day and said, I have told my friend Buckle that you wish very much to make his acquaintance, and he will be glad to see you if you like to call upon him.' My husband looked very black, but he had nothing for it but to go to 59 Oxford Terrace, where he was told Mr. Buckle was not at home, and he left his card. Later, when our dear friend made his last stay with us, I told him how we had been forced into our acquaintance with him ; and he explained that he had only agreed to see us, as he thought it would be of advantage to Mr. Capel, who was going

to have a son of ours at his school. At that time he had never expected our acquaintance to develop into a friendship."

Mrs. Huth soon found there were two Mr. Buckles, one who lived among cold abstractions, and took the highest and the widest view. "The other Buckle was tender, and capable of feeling every vibration of a little child's heart; selfsacrificing, to a degree which he would have blamed in another, and habitually concentrating his great intellect on the consequences of individual actions to the actor. His calm and cheerfulness were but rarely interrupted. Once Mr. Capel surprised him in a flood of tears, You don't know how I miss my mother." He could never bear to go into his

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drawing-room after her death. An old lady, neither handsome nor clever, as she said herself, with neither rank nor title, bore witness to his great sympathy; it was more than human, and imparted a more than earthly soothing effect he never forgot that his mother had been fond of me!"

When his second volume was finished he was too weak to work or to meet Mr. Mill, whom he admired and greatly wished to know. He wandered through Wales and Yorkshire, fraternizing with policemen and village schoolmasters, who surprised him by their interest in Essays and Reviews," and "a still bolder man, Mr. Buckle." He roamed through the worst parts of Birmingham, keeping the middle of the road, and carrying a heavy stick. At last he set out for the East. He had long wished to see Egypt, but his decision was almost a caprice; the sense of having no future had made him capricious. At first it seemed as if it was to be a happy caprice; he made every possible provision for the safety and comfort of himself and Mr. Huth's two boys, then fourteen and

he was

eleven, whom he took with him so anxious beforehand that he had no need to be anxious afterward, and his spirits on the Nile were so high that his biographer apologizes for sending a dull letter home on the ground that Mr. Buckle will sing ri-too-rall-loo-rall-too, and so on. They both studied eagerly to please him, though it was necessary to take away the Shakespeare to give Robinson's "Biblical Researches" a fair chance. Thanks to Mr. Buckle's good arrangements, his party was the first for five years that had seen Petra leisurely by daylight. Unhappily the rains at Jerusalem interfered with Buckle's plans for camping out during their stay there. The discomfort and bad food at the hotel brought on an illness which he could not throw off; and though he was able to push on to Nazareth, Beyroot, and Damascus, and enjoy that magical city, unmistakable typhoid fever set in, and he sank under the lowering treatment of the native doctor. His monument, as massive as his works, erected by his only surviving sister, attests his faith in immortality.-Fortnightly Review.