odies. If
people, while in health, would heed the honest advice which Dr.
Holmes gives in this volume, they would force physicians to be less
hypocritical in their management of them when they are ill, and they
would destroy the wide-spread evil of quackery under which the world now
groans.

_History of Civilization in England._ By HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. Vol. II.
From the Second London Edition. To which is added an Alphabetical Index.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 8vo.

The present volume of Mr. Buckle's history consists of a deductive
application to the history of Spain and Scotland of certain leading
propositions, which, in his previous volume, he claims to have
inductively established. These are four; "1st, That the progress of
mankind depends on the success with which the laws of phenomena are
investigated, and on the extent to which a knowledge of those laws
is diffused; 2d, That, before investigation can begin, a spirit of
skepticism must arise, which, at first aiding the investigation, is
afterwards aided by it; 3d, That the discoveries thus made increase
the influence of intellectual truths, and diminish, relatively, not
absolutely, the influence of moral truths,--moral truths being more
stationary than intellectual truths, and receiving fewer additions; 4th,
That the great enemy of this movement, and therefore the great enemy of
civilization, is the protective spirit, or the notion that the good of
society depends on its concerns being watched over and protected by a
State that teaches men what to do, and a Church which teaches them what
to believe."

Mr. Buckle, with great abundance of learning and fulness of thought,
attempts to prove that the history of Spain and Scotland verifies these
propositions. The general causes which, according to him, have sunk
Spain so low in the scale of civilization are loyalty and superstition.
The Church and State have been supreme, and the consequence has been
that the people are profoundly ignorant. Under able rulers, like
Ferdinand, Charles V., and Philip II., the loyal nation attained a great
height of power and glory; under their incompetent successors, the loyal
nation, obedient to crowned sloth and stupidity as to crowned energy and
genius, descended with frightful rapidity from its high estate, thus
proving that the progress which depends on the character of individual
monarchs or statesmen is necessarily unstable. Circumstances similar
to those which made Spain loyal