an applauding public. all a-tremble in presence of opinions that to him contradicted the truth and the right; and his very keenest admirers who came daily nearest him were (though not without exceptions) precisely those whom physical, material pursuits occupied, and to whom the abstract copy-liners were their philosophers. Carlyle's intellectual life was a very unhappy one-all that he was minded should fail, he saw succeed. It is not difficult to understand the set of his mind, even from the way in which he speaks of the brothers, the two Darwins, Erasmus and Charles, and especially of the book of the latter ("wonderful to me, as indicating the capricious stupidity of mankind; never could read a page of it, or waste the least thought upon it "). We may bring what is here in regard specially home to us if we will think of Buckle and the instant success of the poor boy's big, foolishly vainglorious fungus of a volume. I never heard Carlyle on that theme; but I conversed on it with his brother John (who was melancholy about such "disorder "—by which he meant Unfug), and have no difficulty in realising to myself the miserable relative feelings of Thomas-that that should be thought ächtthat it should even found a school! The truth is that a feebler general public has seldom existed than what was atmosphere to Carlyle.

Carlyle, with his vivid soul, was

If, now, we turn to what Mr. Darwin says of Buckle (i. 74, ii. 110, 386), the whole scene with the three men becomes quite a tableau vivant

"I (Darwin) was very glad to learn from him (Buckle) his system of collecting facts. He told me that he bought all the books which he read, and made a full index, to each, of the facts which he thought might prove serviceable to him. I asked him how at first he could judge what facts would be serviceable, and he answered that he did not know, but that a sort of instinct guided him. From

this habit of making indices, he was enabled to give the astonishing number of references on all sorts of subjects which may be found in his History of Civilisation. This book I thought most interesting, and read it twice, but I doubt whether his generalisations are worth anything. Buckle was a great talker, and I listened to him, saying hardly a word; nor indeed could I have done so, for he left no gaps. After I had moved away, he turned round to a friend and said, 'Well, Mr. Darwin's books are much better than his conversation.""

It is a somewhat cheap admiration, that of Mr. Darwin's in regard to Buckle's "astonishing references; for the admiration of an expert would rather have reflected on the amount of commonplace before it-the amount of commonplace implied in that vainglorious catalogue of mostly ordinary volumes that are only duodecimo and under" (or "octavo" is it?) when the size is not specially mentioned ! Think of the sandy foundation of that wonderful list of writers with correspondent footnotes, à propos of the French Revolution! Are not the tallies wonderful-the keys with the locks to them the numbers up, and the numbers down!

But, of course, it was natural that Mr. Darwin, thinking of his own indexes, should be interested in those of Mr. Buckle. To ask Buckle, however, how he knew beforehand what would prove serviceable to him was, on the part of Mr. Darwin, simply irony, barefaced, arrant irony; for, as it was only one idea (the bee) guided himself, so it was only the commonest, vulgarest, shallowest freethinking-ism (Aufklärung) guided Mr. Buckle. There could be no difficulty in either Mr. Buckle or Mr. Darwin finding his way through ten thousand volumes, inasmuch as both the one and the other had but a single thing to see. Neither need Mr. Buckle have called his eye for this" enlightenment" an "instinct!"

Earlier, Mr. Darwin wrote to his friend Hooker: "I was not much struck with the great Buckle, and I admired the way you stuck up about deduction and

induction. I am reading his book, which, with much sophistry, as it seems to me, is wonderfully clever and original, and with astounding knowledge." One likes to

read this passage so far as it bears on Sir Joseph Hooker; for, very notably, in what concerns " deduction and induction,” we have as glaring an instance as any that occurs anywhere in his big book of Mr. Buckle's peculiar mouthing, and Sir Joseph Hooker is well placed against it, but then-further-Mr. Darwin himself- ! “I hear, however, that the great Buckle highly approves of my book!"

One other reference, on Mr. Darwin's part, we find to Buckle. It is this" Have you read Buckle's second volume? it has interested me greatly; I do not care whether his views are right or wrong, but I should think they contained much truth. There is a noble love of advancement and truth throughout; and to my taste he is the very best writer of the English language that ever lived, let the other be who he may." ("I hear, however, that the great Buckle,” etc., ii. 315!)

Let it be as it may-grammatically or otherwise-with that "other" of Mr. Darwin's ("be he who he may!"), it is certainly to be acknowledged as true that there was in Buckle " a noble love of advancement and truth," if what that meant was only the "Revulsion" -the reaction, namely, back again to Aufklärung, against the more acquiescent political and religious views of the Scotts, Wordsworths, Coleridges, Southeys, which were themselves a reaction against the Aufklärung itself in the first instance, or, what is the same thing, against the religious, or anti-religious, enlightenment of the Humes, Gibbons, and the like. Buckle's whole soul was in that. Let him have reached, however, what depth he may in the understanding of it, he is never to be found beyond the externality of the shell-a shell in

regard of which the contents, the egg itself, had long disappeared.

Mr. Darwin's "instinct" was not far from the truth, when he doubted whether "his (Buckle's) generalisations are worth anything," and when in the same context the word "sophistry" occurred to him. But, surely, when he credits Buckle-whose knowledge consisted only of the most superficial propos of Hume, Voltaire, and Gibbon, whose knowledge then, really, and in simple and good truth, was only the ignorance of a flushed and conceited boy-surely when he credits Buckle with "astounding knowledge," and so names him, "to his taste," "the very best writer of the English language that ever lived"-surely he places that "taste deniably before us. That taste is a stage, judicially, in regard to literature, and books, and intelligence thereappertinent generally the theme that is immediately present to us. No doubt Mr. Buckle's waters run very triumphantly, and with a swell-over the usual printingpress shallows; but what do they carry and what are they? The enlightenment of Hume, Voltaire, and Gibbon indignantly infused into the current commonplace of figures and phrases traditional to the pen, but big and tumid withal from the heated conviction of a schoolboy!

un

There is no theme-to take an instance-on which Mr. Buckle swells bigger than on Political Economy. And there is no theme on which his emphatic audacity of assurance is more emphatically an assurance, not of knowledge as he means it, but of ignorance as it is. The proof is undeniable even with appeal to no standard but his own. He is sure that "the practical value of this noble study (political economy, namely) is perhaps only fully known to the more advanced thinkers;" and he is equally sure of what is "the corner-stone of political

economy."

It is a certain "discovery," he says; and

that discovery is "the theory of rent."

"It is now known that price is a compound of wages and profit, and that rent is not an element of it, but a result of it. This discovery is the corner-stone of political economy; but it is established by an argument so long and so refined, that most minds are unable to pursue it without stumbling, and the majority of those who acquiesce in it are influenced by the great writers to whom they pay deference, and whose judgment they follow."

It is a noble humility to defer to those greater than ourselves; but where it is a point of judgment that is concerned, it is clearly the duty of the very humblest of us to verify it to our own selves before we commit ourselves to its tenor. It is to be feared that Mr. Buckle in effect admits here that, in regard of rent, he spared for the nonce his own great faculty and took on trust the conclusions of those great writers to whom he paid deference and whose judgment he followed.

No matter the business here is rent. Now, when a man pays for piecework, he only, so to speak, pays for piecework for the work, that is, in itself alone, and without relation to the various workmen who were employed upon it, and who, in proportion of their various abilities, produced it. Now, that is the theory of rent-the proportion of their abilities. With a full population, the cultivation of the poorest land will pay. That is, it will pay the cultivator, but nobody else. But a land richer, or a land better placed for the market, will at the same time that the cultivation of said poor land yields a profit-pay this much, and more. The more is rent. For if the poor land will pay the cultivator a profit, competition will easily supply any number of cultivators who, for the same profit, will part with the excess over it yielded by the more advantageous land. This excess, then, is rent. So long as lands vary