bloodshed, the gossip of kingly biographies, and the trivial chronicles of diplomatic insincerity. Few subjects are so worthy of the consideration of reasonable beings as the growth of a nation, and the slow but sure progression of that freedom and intelligence without which a people's life lacks all dignity and interest. The early part of the introductory volume is occupied with an inquiry as to the influence which physical laws, theological doctrines, and metaphysical studies have had upon civilization in different stages of its history. In this portion of his work Mr. Buckle fails to satisfy us. His attempt to subject all facts to the last analysis betrays him into empiricism, and his reasonings are often dependent upon a vivid imagination rather than upon sober and inexorable truths. The vast and inexhaustible materials which his industry has accumulated prevent his grasp of the whole subject, and betray him into unphilosophical divisions and illogical conclusions. Much of this is perhaps inseparable from the greatness of the theme which he has chosen to elucidate, but part seems to us to spring from an overweening desire to rise above ordinary prejudice and to oppose existing opinions. Originality is perhaps unattainable without the destruction of received opinions, but it seems scarcely worth while to proclaim our freedom from popular, only to manifest more clearly our subjection to individual, prejudices.1 One serious omission detracts greatly from the value of this book; we nowhere meet with any definition as to what the author understands by this word civilization, the history of which is to occupy so much space that the mere introduction will take up at least 'On this subject the reader will not be displeased to have the just and discriminating language of Burke recalled to his mind :— "I am bold enough to confess that we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and to take more shame to ourselves we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own stock of reason, because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice with the reasons involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice with its reason has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature."-Reflections on the Revolution in France. See also Cory in his Metaphysical Inquiry into the Method, &c. of Ancient and Modern Philosophy, pp. 41-51. However successful Mr. Buckle may have been in divesting himself of many venerable prejudices, he has not been able to prevent the accretion of others. He seems, indeed, to have strangely developed prejudices against Christianity, George the Third, and Sir Archibald Alison. two volumes of no ordinary size. M. Guizot, when engaged with the same subject, was careful to commence his labours by enumerating the different ways in which the word might be used, and to mark out the sense in which it was his intention to employ it. It would have added much to the reader's convenience if, in like manner, Mr. Buckle had, at the outset, clearly defined the sense in which it is employed by him. From neglect of this we rise from the perusal of this interesting volume without any clear comprehension of what the term embraces. It is true that, limited as Mr. Buckle's task is to a consideration of civilization as it manifests itself in England, we may assume that that state of society which we find existing in this country is the kind of civilization with which his book is concerned. This inference, however, is less satisfactory to us than a statement by the author would have been. Such a definition is due at once to the reader and to the writer, since without it the book loses in value, and we are the less able to form a judgment as to the skill and accuracy displayed. Like M. Guizot, however, Mr. Buckle rightly considers the civilization in his native country the fittest subject for his pen. Neither of these writers, indeed, plead guilty to so much of human infirmity as to acknowledge that they have been influenced by the natural ties of their own country. They both in words rise above such prejudices. The great French statesman has chosen French civilization as the most important type of civilization in general, because of its influence on the whole of Europe. Mr. Buckle, on the other hand, prefers to consider English civilization, because, in the first place, of its normal character, as influenced in a less degree, than all other instances, by foreign influence; and, secondly, because of its spontaneous growth as less subject to government or protective direction. But in truth, M. Guizot employed his thoughts and pen upon French, and Mr. Buckle upon English civilization for no such reasons. Happily, they were both under the dominion of prejudices which they repudiated; and the Frenchman has related the history of French civilization, and the Englishman of English, because they are natives of these countries respectively, and cannot free themselves from the trammels of birth. It had been better if Mr. Buckle had pleaded this physical fact, rather than have given us the reasons we have mentioned above, since on examination both these fail and the facts of history are diametrically opposed to the reveries of fancy. "Of all European countries, England is the one where, during the longest period, the government has been most quiescent, and the people most active.1 . . . In no great country have literary men been so little connected with the government or rewarded by it.2. . When... we add that England, owing to its insular formation, was, until the middle of the last century, rarely visited by foreigners, it becomes evident that, in our progress as a people, we have been less affected than any other by the two main sources of interference, namely, by the authority of government and the influence of foreigners." This is stated oftener than once, and Mr. Buckle goes beyond generalities, and tells us, "In the seventeenth century there were many of our cities in which none but Englishmen ever set their feet; and inhabitants, even of the Metropolis, might grow old without having once seen a single foreigner, except, perhaps, some dull and pompous ambassador, taking his airing on the banks of the Thames," one happy result of all this fancied isolation being, according to our author, "that although we have been, and still are, greatly indebted to the French for our improvement in taste, in refinement, in manners, and indeed in all the amenities of life, we have borrowed from them nothing absolutely essential, nothing by which the destinies of nations are permanently altered."3 Now without entering on the question whether anything ' absolutely essential' to the destiny of a nation can be borrowed: whether it must not needs be of home growth, and spring from within the body corporate, like the body of man, supplying its own needs; this imaginary freedom of English civilization from that influence which the presence of foreigners may have upon the nation, is contrary to clear and indisputable facts. An instant's reflection upon the history of the country will convince the most careless reader that there are few nations in which intercourse with foreigners has been greater, and where their presence must have been more the normal condition of the country, than our own. far from there being many of our cities in which none but Englishmen ever set their feet,' we question if there were one such virgin city throughout the whole island; but to talk of the inhabitants of the Metropolis growing old, without having once seen a single foreigner, is simply absurd. So The repeated complaints made against foreigners for engrossing the trade of the country to the "undoying of Englyshmen,"4-the riot which on "Evil May-day" 1518 ended in the massacre of several of these alien residents, whose only crime was their success in trade, the frequent statutes providing for their protection, ought to have saved Mr. Buckle from this hasty conclusion. The long and intimate connexion of England with France through the possession of Normandy and the other continental hereditary possessions of the sovereign,-the commercial intercourse with Flanders, and the asylum which was freely offered, not more from sympathy with misfortune than from policy, to the natives of that province, had from the reign of Edward the Third dotted England and even Wales with colonies of these industrious foreigners.5 On the 1 P. 213. 2 P. 214. 4 Lodge's Illustrations, Vol. I. p. 8, ed. 1791. 3 P. 215. 5 Many families in Wales are still able to trace their origin to the Flemings settled in the principality. And the un-Celtic features of such families attest the correctness of tradition and genealogical records. other hand, for the purposes of commerce, English agents and merchants were settled in most of the continental sea-ports. From the time of Henry VIII., all these causes of influence have been increasing. The persecutions of Mary's reign, the policy of Elizabeth, the Puritan emigration to Holland, the troubles in the Palatinate, the success of republicanism, the proscriptions in the reign of Charles II. and his brother, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, not to descend lower, have brought the country so far as is possible under the permanent influence of foreign settlers, or of those of our own countrymen, whose long residence in foreign countries had imbued them largely with the manners and spirit of those countries. In no country of Europe indeed has there been so many colonies of foreigners settled as in England. But Mr. Buckle tells us that the "inhabitants of the metropolis might grow old without having once seen a foreigner, except perhaps some dull and pompous ambassador taking his airing on the banks of the Thames." This is true of no one moment since the reign of Canute the Dane. The fierceness of the Londoners against foreigners arose not from their unacquaintance with them, but because allured by the privileges held out to aliens, they were at all times found in such numbers within the city that they interfered greatly with the industrial pursuits of the native inhabitants. It was to no purpose that Barclay sang: "When from this wretched life at last thou must depart, Trade jealousy and perhaps insular pride were always endangering the quiet and security of the foreign traders and artizans living in London. There were some just grounds of complaint indeed to the citizens of the metropolis. The alien had been encouraged to settle by the exemption which he possessed from local taxation; and in some parishes the rates were so seriously diminished, that the poor suffered from the presence of the great number of foreigners.2 Glad indeed would the citizens have been, had the 1 The Mirror of Good Manners. 2 Howel writing in 1657 says: "This parish of S. Botolph is no great thing notwithstanding divers strangers are there harboured, as may appear by a presentment, not many years since, made of strangers inhabitants in the ward of Billingsgate, in these words: In Billingsgate ward were one-and-fifty households of strangers, whereof thirty of these householders, inhabited in the parish of S. Botolph, in the chief and principal houses, where they give £20 a year for a house letten, used to be let before for four marks: the nearer they dwell to the waterside the more they give for houses; and within thirty years before there was not in the whole ward above three Netherlanders; at which time there was within the said parish levied state of things been as represented by Mr. Buckle. Their constant complaint was, that they were impoverished by the great number of foreigners settled amongst them, not that they had so few opportunities of seeing them. But on this matter, as in many other parts of his work, it is easier to acquiesce in our author's conclusion than to agree with his premises. The civilization of England, we grant, may well be studied because of its normal character. It was but little mingled with foreign elements: not, however, because so few foreigners visited this country or resided in its cities, and Englishmen so seldom travelled on the Continent of Europe, but because foreigners and travellers have at all times little influence upon national character, and are utterly unable to direct the path of a people's civilisation. Had twenty times the number of Frenchmen, and Lombards, and Spaniards, visited the country, England would still have been England, and its civilisation would have been equally free from the intermixture of alien ingredients. A nation's course is marked out for it by the hand of Providence, and guided by that Hand, its literature, its political institutions, and its social characteristics must spring from its own heart, and bear the impress of its own necessities. For this reason, we cannot agree with Mr. Buckle in assigning to English literature so important an influence on the present condition and past revolutions of France.1 The study of the English language, and love for English institutions was not the cause, but the sign of the sympathy of the misgoverned masses of that country with constitutional government, wherever it might be found. It had little influence in directing the course of events in that country, but was the manifestation of a spirit already, and apart from alien elements, at work throughout France. If in 1789 it could have been said, as at an earlier period, that not five persons in France knew English, we are persuaded that the French Revolution would still have happened when it did, and have run precisely the same course. If monarchs have so little real power in moulding and controlling a people, still less have foreign traders, butterfly travellers, and savans with a smattering of a foreign language. there cannot be gathered above £11; the strangers being exempted to contribute to such charges as other citizens do in regard they much advance the trade of the city."-Howel's Londonopolis, p. 85. Foreigners" used not only to set their goods to sale at London, but in various other parts of the kingdom: for I find a petition exhibited to King Henry the Seventh and his Parliament, in the name of the English mercers, grocers, drapers, goldsmythes, skynners, haberdassers, taylers, ledyrsellers, pursers, poynt-makers, glovers, pouche-makers, sadlers, cutlers, pewterers, cowpers, gyrdlers, founders, cordweners, vyntners, sporyars, joyners, &c., against grete multitude of nede pepulle estraungers, as Frenchemene, Galymene, Pycards, Flemyngs, Keterycks, Spaynyars, Scotts, Lumbards, &c., who by their unlawful dealing by retail and continual hawking throughout the whole kingdom ruined the natives."-Strutt's Horda-Angel-cynnan, vol. iii., p. 50. But the proofs of the incorrectness of Mr. Buckle on this point are innumerable. 1 See chapter 12. |