r's
inkstand. Mr. Buckle stands at the head of this school, and has just
found a worthy disciple in M. Taine, who, in his _Histoire de la
Litterature Anglaise_, having first assumed certain ethnological
postulates, seems rather to shape the character of the literature to
the race than to illustrate that of the race by the literature.

In short, whether we consider the incompetence of men in general as
observers, their carelessness about things at the moment indifferent,
but which may become of consequence hereafter (as, for example, in the
dating of letters), their want of impartiality, both in seeing and
stating occurrences and in tracing or attributing motives, it is plain
that history is not to be depended on in any absolute sense. That
smooth and indifferent quality of mind, without a flaw of prejudice or
a blur of theory, which can reflect passing events as they truly are,
is as rare, if not so precious, as that artistic sense which can hold
the mirror up to nature. The fact that there is so little historical or
political prescience, that no man of experience ventures to prophesy,
is enough to prove, either that it is impossible to know all the terms
of our problem, or that history does not repeat itself with anything
like the exactness of coincidence which is so pleasing to the
imagination. Six months _after_ the _coup d'etat_ of December, 1851,
Mr. Savage Landor, who knew him well, said to us that Louis Napoleon
had ten times the political sagacity of his uncle; but who foresaw or
foretold an Augustus in the dull-eyed frequenter of Lady Blessington's,
the melodramatic hero of Strasburg and Bologne, with his cocked hat and
his eagle from Astley's? What insurance company would have taken the
risk of his hare-brained adventure? Coleridge used to take credit to
himself for certain lucky vaticinations, but his memory was always
inexact, his confounding of what he did and what he thought he meant to
do always to be suspected, and his prophecies, when examined, are
hardly more precise than an ancient oracle or a couplet of Nostradamus.
The almanac-makers took the wisest course, stretching through a whole
month their "about this time expect a change of weather."

That history repeats itself has become a kind of truism, but of as
little practical value in helping us to form our opinions as other
similar labor-saving expedients to escape thought. Sceptical minds see
in human affairs a regular oscillation, hopeful ones a c