thinks the nation is going on in a course of improvement, preserving what is good in its institutions, and reforming what is bad in a peaceable constitutional way. This is undoubtedly the true mode of reform.

But the changes of civil government are not confined to acts of parliament or measures of government. Time, says Bacon, is the greatest of innovators. Time and the course of events have made the English government and social system what they now are, and may be silently working greater changes than any ministry or political agitators.

VIII

BUCKLE'S HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION

This is the most important work, in its line, from a British hand, which the world has seen for many a year. The theme is one of the greatest in the world. The author has treated it better, with more learning and profound comprehension, than any of his English predecessors. Who is Mr. Buckle? We know not. The name is new; this is his first work, as he thus tells us: To my mother I dedicate this, the first volume of my first work," a pious and appropriate dedication, which promises other things to come.

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No Englishman has written a more claborate book in this century. It is learned also, though not so comprehensive in its erudition as we might wish. The list of "authors quoted" occupies fifteen pages, and comprises about six hundred titles and perhaps three thousand volumes. Half as many more are referred to in the copious and well-studied notes, which enrich the volume. Notwithstanding the imposing array which this catalogue presents at the first glance, its deficiencies, in a writer who thinks so meanly of the labors of his predecessors, are more remarkable than its seeming completeness. Not to speak of ancient writers, of whom only three are referred to, no mention is made of Grotius, Prideaux, Vico, Creuzer, Du Cange, Duchesne, Malte-Brun, Becker, W. v. Humboldt, Wachler, Hegel (Phil. d. Gesch.), Müller (J. v. and C. O.), Fichte (Grundz. d. gegenw. Zeitalt.), Schelling (Phil. d. Myth.), Boeckh, Wachsmuth, Eich

horn, Savigny, Raumer, Heeren (Gesch. d. Syst. d. Eur. Staat.), Thierry, and a host of others whose writings bear more or less directly on the subject of this volume. The author speaks in the highest terms of the works of German philosophers, but names but four or five German books in his catalogue, none of which are the works of the masters in the philosophy of history.

This volume is but half of the Introduction to the History of Civilization in England. How many volumes the history itself shall contain we are not told. It is so bulky that we fear it will not immediately be reprinted here. The great cost of the original will prevent it from circulating much in a country where a laboring man may buy his week's reading for a quarter of a dollar. But its contents are so valuable that we shall make a careful analysis of the most important, though perhaps not the most interesting parts, and lay it before our readers, with some additional comments of our own. The paper will consist of two parts, an abstract of the work itself, and some criticisms thereon.

The volume contains fourteen chapters; the first five are general, and relate to the development of mankind under various circumstances friendly or hostile thereto, to the method of inquiry, and the influence of various causes upon civilization. The sixth is a transitional chapter, in which the author leads his readers over from his general laws to their particular applications. The other eight treat mainly of the development of civilization in England and France.

In Chapter I he tells us that history is the most. popular branch of knowledge; more has been written on it than on any other, and great confidence is felt in

its value.

It enters into all plans of education, materials of a rich and imposing appearance have been collected, political and military annals have been compiled; and much pains taken with the history of law, religion, science, letters, arts, useful inventions, and of late with the manners and customs of the people. Political economy has become a science; statistics treat of the material interests of mankind, their moral peculiarities, the amount of crime, and the effect of age, sex, and education thereupon. We know the rate of mortality, marriages, births, deaths, the fluctuation of wages, the price of needful things. Physical geography has been studied in all its details; all food has been chemically analyzed, and its relation to the body pointed out. Many nations have been studied in all degrees of civilization. Put all these things together, they seem to be of immense value.

But the use of these materials is less satisfactory; the separate parts have not been combined into a whole, while the necessity of generalization is admitted in all other great fields of inquiry, and efforts are made therein to rise from particular facts to universal laws, this is seldom attempted in the history of man.

Any author who, from indolence of thought or from natural incapacity, is unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowledge, has only to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he is qualified to be an historian; he is able to write the history of a great people, and his work becomes an authority on the subject which it professes to treat. The establishment of this narrow standard has led to results very prejudicial to the progress of our knowledge. Owing to it historians, taken as a body, have never recognized the necessity of such a wide and preliminary study as would enable them to grasp their subject in the whole of its natural relations; hence the singular spectacle of one historian being ignorant of political economy, another knowing nothing of law, another nothing of ecclesiastical affairs and changes of opinion; another neg

lecting the philosophy of statistics and another physical science; although these topics are the most essential of all, inasmuch as they comprise the principal circumstances by which the temper and character of mankind have been affected and in which they are displayed."

Accordingly, in the whole literature of Europe there are only three or four really original books, which contain a systematic attempt to investigate the history of man in the scientific manner belonging to other departments. Yet in the last hundred years there has been a great gain, and the prospects of historical literature are more cheering than ever before; but scarcely anything has been done towards discerning the principles which govern the character and destiny of nations. "For all the higher purposes of human thought, history is still miserably deficient, and presents that confused and anarchical appearance natural to a subject of which the laws are unknown, and even the foundation unsettled." Auguste Comte, "who has done more than any man to raise the standard," contemptuously notices "the incoherent compilation of facts hitherto called history." The most celebrated historians are manifestly inferior to the great men of science, none of them is at all entitled to be compared with Kepler and Newton. Yet the study of history requires the greatest talents on account of the complication of its phenomena, and the fact that nothing can be verified by experiment.

Hence the scientific study of the movements of mind, compared with that of the movements of nature, is still in its infancy. So in physics, the regularity of events and the possibility of predicting them are always taken for granted, while the regularity of history is not only not so taken, but is often denied. It is said in the affairs of men there is something mysterious and