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gion, or as he terms it superstition, is the source of the chief evils which afflict society. The motto of his book ought to be

' arctis

Relligionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo.'

But Mr. Buckle's aversion to the doctrines and institutions of Christianity is still more unphilosophical and unjust in a writer professing to trace the modern civilisation of Europe from general causes. Be it for good or for evil, the modern world is what Christianity has made it. Mr. Buckle sees only the dark side of the picture- the shades of superstition, the fires of persecution, the excesses of enthusiasm ;-he does not perceive that the same power which he execrates and reviles for its occasional abuses, is the dayspring of the nations, and that wherever the law of Christianity prevails human society rises immeasurably above the limits of the pagan, the heathen, or the Mohammedan world.

In truth, we must be permitted on this and on many other points to express our surprise that Mr. Buckle should have read so many books to so little He relies too much upon a purpose. well-stored common-place book and a rapacious literary appetite. There is nothing so absurd or so untrue that some evidence may not be collected in support of it from the dusty shelves of huge libraries. But what is the worth of such evidence? He who would write history aright must seek to trace its course in the living reality of human action, not merely in the dry records of the dead. Mr. Buckle will produce you a statistical return or a literary authority for every statement in his book. He is indignant at the bare idea that anyone should call his accuracy in question. For everything he has ample and irre'fragable evidence.' We do not doubt it. He has so much evidence that he imposes on himself with it. His statements will bear every test except that of being confronted with reality. He repeats his own paradoxes till he believes them to be truths; and although he is always lauding the blessings of scepticism, there is one kind of scepticism which he is seldom disposed to practise, that, namely, which consists in a prudent distrust of his own infallibility.

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The intention of Mr. Buckle in his second volume is not to pursue the inductive line of argument, to which he says that he is at present unable to add anything new, but to strengthen it by application and verification, showing how his conclusions explain the history of different countries and their various fortunes. For this purpose he has selected the history of Spain

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and the history of Scotland (to which that of Germany and the United States of America are hereafter to be added), with 'the object of elucidating principles on which the history of England supplies inadequate information.' The history of civilisation in England being still Mr. Buckle's chief object, and the title of his book, it is extremely characteristic of his mode of writing that he first devotes two or three octavo volumes to an ample discussion of what his subject does not comprise.

However, we are quite ready to follow him on to this ground, and we readily acknowledge that the fairest test of the soundness of his general principles is to be found in their application to the history and condition of particular countries. The question then now before us is, whether Mr. Buckle's theory of general causes, aspects of nations, and invariable laws explains the history and condition of Spain and Scotland better than they have been explained before. To answer this question in Mr. Buckle's favour it must be shown that he has traced the leading facts of their history and condition to the operation of those causes, and that he has not either misapprehended these facts, or suppressed other causes of equal or greater efficacy. This is the test we shall endeavour to apply to his reasoning.

It might be supposed by a cursory observer that in selecting Spain and Scotland as the fields of his inquiries, Mr. Buckle had intended to choose the two countries of modern Europe most unlike in physical character, in race, in their past political history, and in their present condition. The Spanish Peninsula basks in a southern sun and verges on the confines of Africa; Northern Britain partakes of the natural aspect of the Scandinavian kingdoms. The soil and climate of Spain are capable of producing in unlimited abundance all the fruits of the earth, from the finest corn to the vegetation of the tropics, but these splendid gifts are comparatively neglected; the soil and climate of Scotland can in many parts barely ripen wheat, our shocks of oats are not unfrequently garnered in the October snows, our best produce is roots, but the industry, perseverance, and science of our agricultural population have made many an acre of Scottish moorland worth more than five times the same extent of the favoured soil of Spain. Spain owes whatever she has enjoyed of wealth and splendour to the matchless advantages of her position, and to the favours of fortune, but these to a great extent she has thrown away. Scotland owes her slow but constant progress in the scale of civilisation to herself; she has never receded a hair's breadth in her onward course; and she has gradually worked out a destiny

which the proudest nations of the earth may envy. The indolence and wealth of one country are only surpassed by the enterprise and the poverty of the other. Spain has ever been a nation essentially self-contained, hating all foreign innovations; Scotland has borrowed largely from her neighbours. In Spain the aristocracy has for centuries been extremely weak and the authority of the Crown paramount: in Scotland the Crown long maintained an unequal contest with the great houses, and even in modern times the landed aristocracy of the northern kingdom has a larger share of influence than in any other part of Britain. But notwithstanding these and many other salient points of difference, it is by way of comparison rather than of contrast, that Mr. Buckle has directed his attention to these two countries. Whatever their other differences may be, there is, he thinks, the most striking similarity be'tween those countries in regard to superstition. Both nations 'have allowed their clergy to exercise an immense sway, and both 'have submitted their actions, as well as their consciences, to the 'authority of the Church.' (Vol. ii. p. 160.) To say nothing at present of the gross misapplication of terms which describes under the same formula the intensely absolute authority of Spanish Catholicism and the intensely democratic constitution of the Scottish Presbytery, we shall here content ourselves with replying to Mr. Buckle, that if this powerful and irresistible general law has been, as he asserts, in equal operation in the two kingdoms-if Scotland is indeed as superstitious and priestridden as Spain-the results have, as Mr. Buckle himself admits, been diametrically opposite; for whilst the political strength and intellectual power of Spain have faded away, Scotland has sent forth a host of her sturdy sons, year by year, to reap the harvest of the world; she has given, in one century, Adam Smith to speculative science-James Watt to industrial art-Walter Scott to literature-names so great that we know not what other names can in their respective walks be placed beside them; and she has been foremost in arms, in government, in enterprise, in research, and every form of intelligent labour throughout the globe. Either therefore the parallel which Mr. Buckle has attempted to establish on this point is as false as it is fanciful; or if it be admitted to exist, then this general cause has not the importance which Mr. Buckle attaches to it, since the same principle, in two widely dissimilar countries, is followed and accompanied by opposite results. His entire thesis therefore breaks down at the outset; for while he chooses to assert that the general cause of theological superstition has operated for centuries in Scotland as in Spain, he

is compelled to acknowledge that a multitude of special causes have conspired to produce in the two countries very different effects. Mr. Buckle is singularly unfortunate in the selection of his general principle and of its application; for if the principle were true, and his doctrine of the science of history sound, the results must be similar in the two cases; but the results are absolutely dissimilar; whence it may seem either that his principle is not true, or that general principles are liable to be converted in their application and results by special causes.

Let us now proceed to examine with greater detail some of Mr. Buckle's actual statements with reference to Spain. It will be seen that scarcely one of them is sufficiently accurate and irrefragable to support the large generalisations he rests upon them.

To begin with his physical description of the country.

'If we except the northern extremity of Spain, we may say that the two principal characteristics of the climate are heat and dryness, both of which are favoured by the extreme difficulty which nature has interposed in regard to irrigation. For, the rivers which intersect the land, run mostly in beds too deep to be made available for watering the soil, which consequently is, and always has been, remarkably arid. Owing to this, and to the infrequency of rain, there is no European country as richly endowed in other respects, where droughts and therefore famines have been so frequent and serious. At the same time the vicissitudes of climate, particularly in the central parts, make Spain habitually unhealthy; and this general tendency being strengthened in the middle ages by the constant occurrence of famine, caused the ravages of pestilence to be unusually fatal. When we moreover add that in the Peninsula, including Portugal, earthquakes have been extremely disastrous, and have excited all those superstitious feelings which they naturally provoke, we may form some idea of the insecurity of life, and of the ease with which an artful and ambitious priesthood could turn such insecurity into an engine for the advancement of their own power.

'Another feature of this singular country is the prevalence of a pastoral life, mainly caused by the difficulty of establishing regular habits of agricultural industry. In most parts of Spain, the climate renders it impossible for the labourer to work the whole of the day; and this forced interruption encourages among the people an irregularity and instability of purpose, which makes them choose the wandering avocations of a shepherd, rather than the more fixed pursuits of agriculture.' (Vol. ii. pp. 3-7.)

Mr. Buckle has thought proper in reference to this subject to attempt to answer the criticisms justly called forth by his random assertions. He has collected a great array of authorities, and employed some vehemence of language in defence of his preposterous theory that the superstition of the Spanish people is

attributable to the prevalence of earthquakes and volcanoes in the Peninsula; and he attacks this journal in particular for having held up to ridicule this gross exaggeration. We had stated that there is no volcano in the Spanish Peninsula, ' and the only earthquake known to have occurred there was 'that of Lisbon.' Mr. Buckle, on the contrary, does not scruple to assert that in Spain there have been more earthquakes 'than in all other parts of Europe put together, Italy excepted.' Let us now see which of these statements displays such marvellous ignorance, that it deserves to be rescued from ⚫ oblivion and put on record as a literary curiosity.'

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In April, 1858, when we reviewed Mr. Buckle's first volume, we had not had the advantage of consulting Professor Mallet's Earthquake Catalogue, which was published complete in that year, though some of the Professor's Reports had been read at previous meetings of the British Association. Fortunately, however, Professor Mallet's volume now supplies us with materials to bring Mr. Buckle's statement to an exact test. No part of Europe, or indeed of the globe, is entirely free from earthquakes, and our assertion clearly meant, not that no earthquakes had ever occurred there, but that they have been less frequent, and (with one exception) of less historic moment than in other countries; whence we argued that it was absurd to attribute to this cause a peculiar effect upon the moral and intellectual condition of the people of Spain. Messrs. Mallet have certainly brought to light some instances of these phenomena, and they state that more than once this agency has been displayed in the Peninsula upon the most tremendous scale. But what are the facts as compared with other parts of Europe? The number of recorded earthquakes in the British Isles, since the 11th century, is 234; in the Scandinavian Peninsula and Iceland, since the 12th century, 252; in the basin of the Danube, since the 5th century, 318; in the basin of the Rhine and Switzerland, since the 9th century, 557; in Turkey in Europe, since the 4th century, 570; in France, Belgium, and Holland, since the 4th century, 702; in the Italian Peninsula, since the 4th century, 1085; but in the Spanish Peninsula, since the 11th century, 220 only, being the smallest number in the whole catalogue, and below the record even of the British Isles and of these the great majority occurred not in Spain, but in Portugal. Very few of them have been of a very destructive character, as indeed is apparent from the fact, that many of the finest buildings still to be seen in Spain are of great antiquity, yet unshaken by these convulsions of the soil.

The mere scientific question of the number of shocks of

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